Banner Pharmacaps, Belden, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Tasty Baking Company are among manufacturers reporting optimised cash flow, savings and better risk management, using SAP's Best-Run Now systems. The news, arriving as no coincidence just as new Best-Run Now offerings become available, cam out at SAP's Sapphire 2009 event in Orlando yesterday.
Roger Gordon, president and CEO of Banner Pharmacaps, which produces encapsulated pharmaceutical and nutritional products, said: "The Best-Run Now packages will enable us to staff up quickly, sense and respond to sudden market changes, and provide a higher degree of supply chain visibility with our retail and supplier customers."
His company went for the SAP Resource and Portfolio Management application and its so-called talent visualisation solution.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola Enterprises' business information services director Kemal Cetin explained: "One of our strategic priorities is to increase the value of our existing brands and to expand our product portfolio. SAP NetWeaver BW [Business Warehouse] Accelerator gives us clear and quicker visibility into our performance and the insight we need."
For him, it's all about supporting growth and expansion plans, managing projects across the business and analysing large volumes of data faster – and again, the solutions are all part of Best-Run Now.
In fact, one is left wondering what precisely isn't part of Best-Run Now? And that's the point: it's a problem-solving, rather than SAP product-selling initiative – the deal being to help customers sort through the software, services and financing they need.
For those who thought that manufacturing enterprise software companies like SAP had always been doing that – certainly the good ones – so did I. But these are difficult times and any initiative is better than none.
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