Some of SAP’s most successful products have been the result of joint development partnerships with key customers. So when Swiss banking giant UBS needed a better system for managing its customer accounts, SAP recognized an opportunity to help a customer – and an industry.

In Switzerland, UBS is the market leader, serving 3.5 million retail customers and 180,000 corporate clients. A longtime user of SAP solutions, UBS is one of the world’s top 10 financial services organizations, with operations in 50 countries and invested assets of €2.2 trillion.

In 2000, UBS in Switzerland initiated the Strategic Solution Program (SSP) with the goal of completely renewing the application landscape of its core data processing system. In order to speed up the development, UBS turned to SAP for cooperation. The area that was identified as most promising was the bank’s vital customer cash accounting function.

Under a joint development agreement, a new solution would be designed to UBS specifications, and then offered to other SAP customers as part of the SAP for Banking portfolio.