SAP Labs India, a subsidiary of SAP AG of Germany, has
embarked on diversification to develop state-of-the-art software. SAP Labs India said a
number of products were due to be launched very soon. SAP Labs, located in ITPL
-Bangalore, serves the entire South Asia-Pacific region and is one of the five such labs
of the company.
SAP will shortly introduce a Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) product that will allow companies to build an effective history of each
customer relationship. CRM also enables users to couple customer-focused business
solutions like marketing, sales and service with traditional functions like finance,
logistics and manufacturing.
Dr. Udo Urbanek Co-Director, mentioned that amongst the new
products due to be launched, the most prominent is the localization of R3 packages. SAP
Labs have developed and released a "Country Version for India"
(CIN) an add-on
component for SAP R3. The CIN component addresses tax requirements like excise,
modvat,
sales tax, TDS and octroi. Indian version of R3 takes into account among other points like
taxation laws and HR requirements and this is already in use at more than 30 customer
sites.
In its Internet initiative, the company has developed
market-specific "portals" for different markets, which will be launched later
this year. The company plans to develop a lot of middleware to deliver these services to
users over the Internet.
Another product is SAP Employee Self Service (ESS) which
enables employees to view, create and maintain data through a web-based technology and
interactive voice response functionality. An employee can access information such as tax
deductions from salary, payroll and leave.
Also being introduced is the 'localization' software, which
gives country specific requirements such as the local legal and taxation structure.
Industry solutions for high-tech industries and oil and gas based industries are also
launched.
In the past four years SAP has invested heavily in its
operations in the Asia-Pacific region and are having plans of becoming the second largest
R&D facility in the world.