Business reaps the benefits from adopting performance-driven IT architecture

Using the same approach, a media company achieved benefits of $3.5 million at a cost of $650,000, and a theme park showed a 600 per cent return on investment over five years.

These success stories were reported by independent consultants speaking at the Middle East leg of the '2005 Best of SAP World Tour' that covered Saudi Arabia and the UAE among 38 countries and 110 cities.

The organisations concerned had converted to SAP's Netweaver - an open integration platform that enables users to integrate all their IT functions in response to business demand for growth, productivity, customer intimacy, and people empowerment.

Instead of scrapping or replacing existing systems, the technology provides 'snap on' solutions to leverage maximum benefit from past IT investment.

Netweaver is at the heart of enterprise services architecture (ESA), and SAP's world tour aims to strengthen relationship with clients using the software while promoting adoption of ESA.

Dr Klaus Dahlke, representing SAP's Global ERP Initiative, told World Tour audiences in Dubai and Al Khobar how the new business/IT architecture was able to achieve a wide range of benefits in efficiency, performance, and profitability for a wide spectrum of businesses.

"The trend reflects the growing focus on IT as a weapon to secure competitive business advantage," he said.

"Instead of focusing on internal efficiencies, the best-run organisations are changing to outward-looking interaction with customers and suppliers to meet market demands for flexibility, speed, and innovation."

Since launching the ESA release of mySAP ERP in June last year, the number of international users has grown to more than 2,000, the vast majority of whom cite 'high business value' as their motivation to adopt the system.