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Business

SAP Asia

Well-known for its enterprise software, which runs some of the biggest names in business, SAP has 77 IT staff supporting 6,000 employees, across 46 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.The challenges for the IT department are therefore challenging, to say the least. And since its in the business of helping companies better manage their operations, SAP must itself set a good example for its customers.At SAP Asia, technology's key role is to anticipate business needs and drive business innovation. Supporting business innovation, therefore, requires a true partnership with top management to align the role of IT and business goals, and it is something that is part of the organization's DNA.
Written by ZDNet Staff, Contributor

Industry
IT

Company
Germany-based SAP was founded in 1972. Its business software is used by small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises across the world. SAP's Asia-Pacific headquarters is located in Singapore. Global revenues for FY2005 ended Dec 31, 2005, was 8.5 billion euro (US$10.8 billion) while Asia-Pacific revenues, including Japan, was 363 million euro (US$464 million) or 13 percent of SAP's global business.

Employees
More than 6,000 in the Asia-Pacific region

IT staff
77 in the Asia-Pacific region

Annual IT Budget
Confidential

Among its noteworthy achievements is the SAP Asia-Pacific Shared Services Centre (SSC) Project. Prior to setting up the center, each of SAP's 12 subsidiaries in the region was locally responsible for almost all of the finance and administrative functions, with dedicated administrative personnel processing transactional items for financial, payroll and administrative operations. Duplication of personnel across these offices meant higher expenses in salary, training and other overhead costs.

Today, located at its regional headquarters in Singapore, the SAP Asia-Pacific SSC handles the centralized transactional processing and administrative functions of its 12 subsidiaries.

The benefits have been wide-ranging. In addition to the US$2 million in annual savings, SAP enjoys improved corporate governance, increased productivity and efficiency levels, tighter operational controls, as well as improved communication flow between countries.

Another significant project is the SAP xBTR. In September 2005, SAP Asia Pacific's IT department developed the Web-based xBTR application which is used by SAP employees across the region for their business travel requests. It is a highly integrated and user-friendly application where employees log in via a Web browser and book their travel requests.

Through the use of this new application, manual routine processes and approval of trips are automated and streamlined. Employees can enter their travel information more quickly, easily and accurately, and the data is cross-checked for compliance with SAP’s global travel policies. This application is integrated to the mySAP ERP application.

The integrated process helps managers to better analyze costs according to the business need, and obtain important information such as employees' past travel history and purpose of travel. The xBTR is also easily localized and supports multi-languages, such as Japanese.

On being named a ZDNet Asia Smart50 company, Tay Beng Hang, chief technology officer for SAP Asia, said: "We are certainly excited to be recognized as one of Asia's best users of IT, and to be able to share our best practices with customers and peers.

"I am proud of our team who are very talented and dedicated to helping our internal customers through excellent IT service delivery. They are the key assets of our organization," Tay added.

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