SAP And Swift To Drive Simplicity And Insight In Corporate Banking

SAP And Swift To Drive Simplicity And Insight In Corporate Banking

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) today announced plans to help alleviate the complexity and cost incurred by companies worldwide in managing a multitude of separate communication channels for each bank relationship. SAP and SWIFT have joined forces to introduce the SAP® Integration Package for SWIFT—a standardized software solution that will be designed to link SAP ERP solutions directly to SWIFTNet, the IP-based messaging platform connecting nearly 8,000 financial institutions in 206 countries and territories. The announcement was made at Sibos, the world’s premier financial services event, being held in Sydney, Australia, October 9 – 13.

With average costs per year for proprietary bank interfaces exceeding 25,000 euros per year per connection and companies maintaining upwards of 10 banking relationships, the burden on the IT budget can be immense. Additionally, companies often lack seamless integration with their banks via straight-through processing and must import bank statements for multiple banks separately. The results are productivity losses, increased exception handling and lack of cash flow transparency.

Furthermore, organizations feel increased compliance pressures and face impending regulatory changes, especially in the European corporate banking landscape. SAP aims to address these challenges by introducing SAP® Integration Package for SWIFT. The pre-configured software from SAP will be designed to help companies lower cost of ownership (TCO), improve cash flow transparency and reap greater working-capital efficiencies. Starting in January 2007, first customers will be able to pilot the software, running on SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. See related press release, titled “SAP Eases Pan-European Payments for Customers.”

Read the complete Press Release