MassMutual Goes Live on Integrated Technology Platform from SAP

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.- As continuing evidence that large insurance companies are leveraging industry-specific solutions from the world’s leading business software company, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) has implemented SAP® for Insurance solutions, which include the SAP® Incentive and Commission Management for Insurance application. MassMutual aims to consolidate its compensation workflows on a unified business process platform for accurately and efficiently distributing compensation payments to its sales channels.

After a smooth implementation with SAP Consulting, MassMutual went live on SAP solutions in March. MassMutual completed this step of its overall transformation and delivered “the smoothest go-live ever,” according to CIO Michael Foley. Having a distribution management system on a single platform helps the insurer meet future distribution servicing needs and manage complex relations. Tapping into one source of data in a clean format, users can perform analytics, easily share data and effectively manage relationships. The value of a single compensation calculation engine across the organization will be leveraged to calculate all forms of compensation that are due to MassMutual partners.

“This is really a great step forward toward our commitment to modernize the business infrastructure at MassMutual,” said Mike Fanning, senior vice president and chief operating officer, MassMutual U.S. Insurance Group, and president, MMLISI.

“The distribution of compensation has evolved, but our infrastructure remained the same,” said Kinam Kim, VP Information Systems Organization, MassMutual. “An integrated technology platform from SAP has allowed MassMutual to migrate all our systems to provide a single view of our distribution data.”

As an existing SAP customer, MassMutual decided to further leverage the business value of SAP software’s flexible architecture and insurance industry-specific functionality.

“Global market changes in the insurance industry are creating the need for adaptable and flexible architectures to remain in step with changing customer and partner demands and pressures from competition,” said Jonathan Bobalik, director, Industry Business Unit Insurance, SAP Americas. “MassMutual is taking an innovative path to overcome such challenges by aligning business objectives with technology across its enterprise, enabling the company to more adeptly respond to changing business needs, improve productivity and reduce costs.”

MassMutual has been an SAP customer since 2000. The company went live in late 2001 with SAP® ERP human resource, financial and business warehouse functionality. Since then, the insurer has continued to implement functionality in the employee/manager self-service, business planning and simulation, treasury/cash management, project systems, supplier relationship management and exchange infrastructure space. Global rollout has included financial and business warehouse implementations in international subsidiary operations in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan and in OppenheimerFunds and Babson Capital Management asset management subsidiaries.

“One of the main reasons SAP was selected back in 2000 was the company’s willingness to partner with us as it entered the U.S. insurance market,” said Edward Wilczynski, Jr., vice president, Enterprise Business Systems, MassMutual. “This partnership remains one of our keys to success.”