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PRAGUE, Czech Republic - November 18, 2009 - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that a growing number of companies are using SAP® BusinessObjects™ governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions to improve and automate their compliance and risk management processes. Worldwide, customers like BearingPoint, MTU Detroit Diesel, Sharp and Valero are using SAP solutions to help achieve higher compliance ratings, promote substantial cost savings and help increase transparency across different lines of business to operate more efficiently in regulatory-mandated industries. Additionally, the global customer network of SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions has been able to benefit from new services from the SAP partner community. The announcement was made at GRC 2009, being held Nov. 18-20 in Prague.
MTU Detroit Diesel Drives Improved Global Trade Processes MTU Detroit Diesel manufactures heavy-duty diesel engines for off-road use, and is both an importer of mechanical parts and a global exporter of its products. The company used to rely on manual processes for complying with federal import and export regulations, requiring labor-intensive and time-consuming screening and licensing processes. With the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Global Trade Services application, MTU Detroit Diesel has successfully automated these processes while eliminating dependence on third parties for regulations adherence. Today, the company has greatly enhanced visibility into all international transactions, and has benefitted from improved compliance ratings, decreased risk of noncompliance and decreased costs to conduct compliance-related processes.
"The SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services application equips us with the tools we need to maintain the level of compliance that U.S. Customs expects," said Adam Wood, director of logistics, MTU Detroit Diesel. "It puts us in the driver's seat on issues that could greatly affect our compliance. This is important to us because noncompliance can result in audits, fines and penalties. Since establishing systematic, automated processes with SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services, it has helped us achieve improved compliance ratings and substantial cost savings."
Sharp Fine-Tunes Process Controls, Reduces Audit Costs As a leading electronics manufacturer with global operations and products sold around the world, Sharp needed a GRC solution that could help it meet several objectives, including providing a platform for process and control documentation. The company also needed to streamline attestation and testing procedures, and centralize and standardize controls across the organization. To achieve this, Sharp selected the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Process Control application, which has helped introduce transparency across the company's control framework.
"SAP BusinessObjects Process Control provides us with an advanced set of tools that are both sophisticated and intuitive for end users," said George Dramalis, VP CIO, Sharp. "We were able to quickly implement the solution to meet our objectives, and the overall effect on our control environment has been very positive. We have achieved our objectives, and the impact has been a more streamlined, transparent control environment that has ultimately reduced our overall testing efforts. We expect that these improvements will yield reduced external audit activity, as well as reduced external audit expenditures."
Valero Fuels Enterprise-Wide Access Control Compliance With $119 billion in revenue and 22,000 employees, Valero is the largest independent refining and marketing company in the U.S., and No. 10 on the Fortune 500. When re-evaluating its segregation of duties (SOD) for initiatives like Sarbanes-Oxley, Valero decided to revamp its risk and remediation processes for better compliance, and selected the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Access Control application to conduct SOD analysis. The application helps give Valero continuous access control compliance across the enterprise. Since implementation in 2004, it has reduced Valero's audit observations by 70 percent annually until the company achieved zero audit observations in 2008. By automating controls, Valero has reduced the annual cost of a manual control from $1,200 to $200.
"The SAP BusinessObjects Access Control application has been a huge benefit to us," said William Weber, manager SAP, Valero. "The driving force for access control compliance started in 2004 with Sarbanes-Oxley. KPMG, our auditor, validated the need for us to comply with the legislation's requirements as soon as possible, so we did. The application has allowed us to validate our system of good controls and reduce our total cost of compliance. It also enables Valero to have complete identification of relevant risks based on things like existing business processes, regulations, policies and procedures."
BearingPoint Revamps Access Controls, Lowers Risks and Overhead A global provider of management and technology consulting services, BearingPoint is another organization that is successfully using the SAP BusinessObjects Access Control application. In need of a better way to handle SOD analysis around compliance initiatives like Sarbanes-Oxley, BearingPoint selected the application to replace the inefficient, manual processes it relied on. The company also needed to reduce the high level of administrative effort and involvement around managing controls.
"With the SAP BusinessObjects Access Control application, BearingPoint now has real-time insight into controls," said Serkan Caliskan, manager, BearingPoint. "We have approximately 3,000 users of the application spread out over 14 different countries, and it enables us to conduct real-time analysis and remediation to discover any potential regulatory violations and provide solutions for them. Perhaps most importantly, it has helped us reduce administrative overhead and associated costs for IT and Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives."
SAP Increases Cooperation with Partner Community to Deliver More Value to GRC Customers To help its customers have the clarity and confidence required to manage risk effectively throughout their business processes and IT environments, SAP is cooperating closely with key partners on integrated GRC offerings. Through these offerings, customers can increase visibility across risk and compliance initiatives, promote cost efficiencies and help manage risk across the enterprise. Specific partners include ArcSight, Greenlight Technologies, Novell, Open Text and SenSage.
"We have seen strong momentum in the market for our GRC solutions, as evidenced by unique customer success stories and the new collaborations happening in our partner network," said Narina Sippy, senior vice president and general manager, GRC Solutions, SAP BusinessObjects Division. "Together with our ecosystem, we are bringing value to our customers to help them better leverage their existing IT investments, manage risk and deliver increased performance. As a result, they will be better prepared to tackle the latest challenges and regulations that come hand in hand with competing in today's global economies."
About SAP SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 92,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.
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