BUSINESS AT SAP

Mission and Strategy

Trends and Orientation

In the face of continuous, accelerated change in the business environment, executives must find ways to contend with shifting pressures to ensure sustained competitiveness and profitable growth. These rapid changes are driven by key transformational forces, such as global economic uncertainty, hypercompetition, a rising consumer power, and the quest for sustainability. Recently, the pervasive effect of these pressures on the global business environment has demonstrated that businesses have become more interconnected than ever before. Business models are evolving from linear value chains to collaborative networks with the customer at the center. Within the context of these business networks, each business focuses on what it does best while working closely with other companies to improve the overall customer experience. The business network is a new source of competitive advantage for companies because it increases and speeds innovation – not only between companies, but also with the end-customer – and allows risks to be managed and shared with partners and suppliers.

The sharing of risks, knowledge, and processes is typical of collaborative relationships in a business network, and it benefits all of the collaborators. However, many companies are reluctant to adopt this approach because their strategic planning is isolated from their business operations. Technology solutions can help them close the gap between strategy and execution by linking decision-making systems to integrated, end-to-end processes that can be easily extended to business partners.

Mission

It is part of our mission to help customers resolve such difficulties and thereby enable them to achieve profitable, sustainable growth. To succeed, we wish to build from our established leading position in the business software market and accelerate business and IT innovation for firms and industries. In striving for this goal, we are also contributing to global economic development on a grand scale.

We offer solutions that help companies of all sizes close the gap between strategy and execution. They include the SAP Business Suite family of business applications, SAP NetWeaver, the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio, SAP’s offerings for small businesses and midsize companies, and solutions to help customers realize their sustainability goals. Our portfolio of SAP software and services can help customers attain the visibility, efficiency, and flexibility that enables them to respond to changes in the business environment with more agility and effect and capture the full benefits of business networks.

At the heart of our strategy stands customer value. We intend to widen the market we address with more attractive offerings for our customers including, for example, new data analysis and decision support solutions for business users, and software solutions scaled to small businesses and midsize companies.

Strategy for Growth

Our traditional core customer base includes many large global enterprises as well as midsize companies. Such global companies use the SAP Business Suite applications, SAP Business All-in-One solutions, or SAP Business One to automate their business transactions, enabling better management and governance. In our traditional core business, we seek to win a greater share of our customers’ wallet. We also aim to win new customers, for instance companies that have been using custom software.

Our portfolios of solutions for 25 industries are a crucial factor in our success. In 2008, we focused on strategic industries with exceptional growth potential, including, for example, banking, retail, communications, and the public sector.

Delivering solutions for business users – process owners and decision makers – is a central element of our strategy for growth. In 2008, we concluded the acquisition of Business Objects and expanded our core solutions to address what we identify as the three key needs of decision makers in business. First, they need to make decisions more effectively based on a broader array of structured and unstructured data from sources both inside and outside the enterprise. Second, business users need better tools and applications to support collaborative decision-making. Third, business users seek to build competitive advantage by creating and managing business networks with partners, suppliers, and customers. Our products focus on these needs to help individuals, teams, and companies better collaborate through business networks.