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SAP Continues Market Leadership and Expands Portfolio of Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions


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Unified GRC Solutions from SAP Help Customers Address Accountability at Line of Business and Boardroom Level

Robust New Product Capabilities and Significant Customer Momentum Increase GRC Market Footprint for SAP

ORLANDO, Fla. - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced new versions of products across its market-leading portfolio of SAP® solutions for governance, risk and compliance. As the leading provider of unified GRC solutions, SAP enables organizations to drive an integrated corporate strategy that synchronizes the management of enterprise risks, business controls and global trade compliance. The new product features will help customers accelerate resolution of security authorization issues without manual intervention, integrate risk and strategy management capabilities, assist in the central monitoring of business controls across multiple regions and IT landscapes, and help customers automate support for new trade and safety regulations. This announcement was made at the GRC 2008 conference, being held in Orlando, Florida, March 10 – 13.

Today SAP also said the GRC business unit has expanded its market footprint and seen strong adoption across regions and industries. Companies including Unilever and Veolia Environnement are among the leading global organizations that are deploying unified GRC solutions from SAP. By providing a unified, cross-enterprise approach to GRC, SAP helps customers deliver corporate accountability at both the line-of-business and boardroom level.

“Executives today are under pressure to manage risk more intelligently,” said Lee Dittmar, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “It is impossible to do this efficiently and effectively without the right information technology. Working together with SAP, we are demonstrating how information technology can and should enable our clients to better understand, monitor and mitigate risk. SAP’s GRC strategy is consistent with a move away from stand-alone ‘tools’ toward an integrated, architected approach to meet enterprise needs. Our combined efforts are helping to bring business and technology leaders closer together, so that they can better align their business and IT priorities – while working to maintain and raise their standards of corporate accountability.”

“In the face of an increasingly complex compliance environment, SAP recognizes that achieving corporate accountability while also reducing the cost of compliance is an essential business imperative,” said Miles Everson, US Governance, Risk & Compliance leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Our collaboration with SAP, and the advancement of their unified technology platform, furthers our vision of sensible integration of governance, risk and compliance activities to increase effectiveness while reducing complexity and cost.”

SAP Introduces Significant New Capabilities Across its GRC Portfolio
Building on its unified approach to GRC, SAP is releasing new versions of the SAP® GRC Access Control, SAP® GRC Process Control and SAP® GRC Global Trade Services applications. In addition, the SAP® GRC Risk Management application is now integrated with the SAP® Strategy Management application, part of the company’s enterprise performance management solutions.

SAP GRC Access Control: “Management by Exception” Capabilities Intelligently and Automatically Resolve Authorization Issues

SAP GRC Access Control helps companies maintain compliance by validating that employee security authorizations match their roles and duties. The new version helps customers stay compliant, intelligently manage employee authorizations across mixed IT environments, allow for authorized exceptions and accelerate resolution of any violations – all while reducing costs. Innovative new features in SAP GRC Access Control take customers to the next level of compliance by:

* Automatically detecting conflicting roles and security authorizations. If overlapping roles are detected, managers are automatically notified of any security risks and initiate workflows to accelerate resolution without manual intervention. SAP continues to innovate with new “manage by exception” capabilities.
* Scheduling regular, automatic reviews of all employees across the company to confirm job duties and evaluate whether existing system access matches proper security authorizations. The automatic review process will allow companies to more proactively guard against fraudulent transactions and data security breaches.
* Centrally managing and controlling user access to various applications including SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft with new compliant provisioning capabilities. Simplifying access prevention and accelerating provisioning in mixed IT landscapes helps reduce the cost of compliance, audit and access management.

SAP GRC Process Control: Consistent Controls Across Mixed IT Environments

SAP GRC Process Control helps companies ensure compliance by centrally monitoring controls across multiple business processes – within SAP or non-SAP environments. The new release makes SAP a leader in combining manual control testing with automated continuous control monitoring in a single application, which allows comprehensive control management and helps customers cost-effectively comply with financial reporting regulations. The new version also enables customers to:

* Automatically monitor compliance with more than 200 controls in both SAP and non-SAP systems, such as PeopleSoft and Oracle Applications.
* Detect control exceptions and prioritize corrective action with a global “heat map.” The “heat map” provides a color-coded status by geographical region.
* Improve user adoption with a completely redesigned user interface featuring new “work centers,” which make the application features more intuitive to the way specialists and business users naturally work.

SAP GRC Risk Management: Combined Risk with Strategy Management to Better Govern and Advance Business Performance

Today SAP announced that SAP GRC Risk Management is now integrated with SAP Strategy Management, part of the company’s enterprise performance management portfolio. By linking strategy with risk management, executives can plan and execute corporate strategy with an in-depth understanding of the underlying risks. This integration will help companies to create a more “risk-intelligent” enterprise, allowing them to govern their overall business more effectively.

Since its introduction in the spring of 2007, SAP GRC Risk Management boasts a growing roster of customers, showing strong momentum for the solution. (See May 14, 2007 press release, titled “New Enterprise Risk Management Application from SAP Helps Companies Balance Business Opportunities with Risk Exposures.”)

“We’re very excited about the innovative product enhancements and vision SAP has delivered, and expect that both our customers and our own organization will benefit,” said Norman Comstock, managing director, UHY Advisors TX, LLC. “SAP GRC Risk Management has allowed our company to identify and quantify our operational and strategic risks, increasing transparency throughout the organization. As a result, we’ve been able more closely and accountably manage our business.”

SAP GRC Global Trade Services: Streamlining Cross-Border Trade

SAP has expanded the capabilities of SAP GRC Global Trade Services to streamline cross-border trade and accelerate compliance with new trade and environmental safety regulations. Key enhancements to SAP GRC Global Trade Services include:

* New integration between SAP GRC Global Trade Services and the SAP® Environmental, Health, and Safety application help customers automatically identify any hazardous materials and ensure compliance with regulatory agencies. After materials are identified, the solution automatically triggers the alerts and documentation needed to comply with agencies, including European Union-based Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH).
* Expanded certifications to manage country-specific customs processes. With significantly more country-specific certifications than other global trade management solution providers, SAP is uniquely positioned to help customers to navigate and expand trade relations.

“Having already tested the new enhancements in SAP GRC Global Trade Services, Heraeus is looking forward to the new features that will help us successfully manage country-specific regulations,” said Dr. Müller-Schäfer, compliance manager, GTS and Customs at Heraeus, a global manufacturer and trader of precious metals and special materials. “We are a globally active precious metal and technology group. To keep our global trade business moving efficiently and compliantly, we need to clearly communicate any declarations to German customs. SAP solutions for GRC have been critical in helping us run our international trade smoothly and accountably, and the new features will help us continue and expand this success.”

“We continue to see unprecedented market adoption of our GRC solutions, with customers across all major industries and regions using our solution set as the foundation of a unified, cross-enterprise GRC strategy,” said Narina Sippy, SVP and GM, Governance, Risk and Compliance, SAP. “The rich, robust product capabilities we’re delivering today further strengthen our ability to help our customers – whether in the boardroom or at the line-of-business level – to take a holistic view of their enterprise risks and controls in order to establish transparency and accountability, drive corporate strategy and performance, and boost shareholder value.”

Availability
All SAP solutions for GRC are available to customers by end of March 2008.



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