SAP and Recognition Systems to Deliver IntegratedMarketing Campaign Management With mySAP.com;...

WALLDORF, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 6, 1999--

SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), the leading provider of inter-enterprise software solutions, today announced a development partnership with Recognition Systems Group plc to provide marketing planning and campaign management functionality as part of

The joint development efforts provide world-class planning and campaign-management solutions by integrating Recognition Systems' flagship campaign management product Protagona with mySAP.com to provide marketing staffs with highly sophisticated segmentation tools that enrich the planning, execution, monitoring and analysis of marketing campaigns. Integrated marketing planning and campaign management from SAP and Recognition Systems is being implemented today by media giant Bertelsmann AG.

mySAP.com enables companies to build more productive and intimate relationships with customers and to monitor, track and leverage every customer interaction across all points of customer contact. Integrated planning and campaign management enables organizations to proactively plan and interact with their customers for more accurate and effective marketing execution, ensuring that organizations sell and support the right products for the right customers through the most efficient channels while increasing an organization's overall profitability, productivity and customer satisfaction.

Bertelsmann (http://www.bertelsmann.com), the world's fourth-largest media company with more than 64,000 employees and operations in 53 countries, is planning to implement the integrated SAP-Recognition Systems planning and campaign management solution at Doubleday Direct Inc. (a Bertelsmann company) and Bertelsmann book club operations worldwide to provide enhanced customer service to approximately 25 million members. With the new integrated campaign management solution, Bertelsmann plans to combine campaign planning and fulfillment processes from SAP with Protagona's highly advanced customer segmentation analysis tools to enable the coordination of complex and irregularly occurring catalog mailings, which are common to such club operations. The project is a campaign management to fulfillment solution, named CCIT, that will directly steer operational business fulfillment processes using campaign activities such as telesales, telemarketing and personalized product offers via e-mail messages and Web pages. Syskoplan GmbH, a software integrator and SAP development partner in CRM, is a key designer of the overall CCIT project and is managing the implementation. The first club is planned for early deployment in December 1999, with worldwide rollout to occur throughout 2000.

"Our goal is to increase member revenue and lifetime value by creating a greater sense of community while reducing operational costs in service, marketing and logistics," said Dr. Robert Marek, CCIT project manager for Bertelsmann. "The integration of Protagona with the SAP(TM) customer relationship management offering will support marketing activities of `traditional' commitment-type clubs while expanding our business across new delivery mechanisms and channels. The resulting solution will create a common life-cycle customer view across all channels, leading to improved service levels and better productivity."

"The integration of these products is the key to personalizing an experience for each customer," said Dr. Manfred Wassel, CEO of Syskoplan. "Detailed customer transactional data provides the basis for making decisions about marketing at the individual level. An integrated solution enables marketers to understand the data, make strategic marketing decisions, and take action on the results."

Bertelsmann AG (http://www.bertelsmann.com) provides information, education and entertainment in business areas such as book publishers and clubs; music labels and clubs; professional information; magazines and newspapers; television, film and radio; print and media services; online services; and multimedia. Bertelsmann companies include Random House (New York and London), Der Club (Rheda), BCA (London), France Loisirs (Paris, 50 percent), Circulo de Lectores (Barcelona), Doubleday Direct (New York), Springer Verlag (Berlin and Heidelberg, 86.5 percent), BMG Music (New York), BMG Ariola (Munich), BMG Direct (New York), RTL Television (Cologne, 89 percent), UFA Film & TV Produktion (Potsdam-Babelsberg), UFA Sports (Hamburg), Gruner + Jahr (74.9 percent), Prisma Presse (Paris, 74.9 percent), AOL CompuServe Europe (Hamburg and London, 50 percent), barnesandnoble.com (New York, 40 percent), BOL International (Baar), and Pixelpark (Berlin, 60 percent).

The integration of marketing planning and campaign management functionality as part of the mySAP.com customer relationship management solution empowers organizations to perform "closed-loop" marketing and sales campaigns via all customer interaction channels based on common information culled from throughout the enterprise. Organizations can track the planned and actual costs and revenues related to their marketing activities through comprehensive SAP front-office and business backbone integration. The integration of Protagona provides organizations with the opportunity to perform highly sophisticated customer segmentation, integrated modeling and target group selection using statistical methods, neural networks -- digital systems designed to mirror human thought processes in data analysis -- and message personalization based on real-time access to customer data held in SAP Business Information Warehouse(TM) (SAP BW(TM)).

"Effective marketing is more important than ever as global companies seek to impact differentiated and targeted markets, which are continuously evolving," said Peter Zencke, executive board member, SAP AG. "Enhancing mySAP.com to include integrated marketing planning and campaign management enables companies to leverage their collective customer knowledge and serve their customers better than ever."

"Throughout the world, visionary marketers are looking to connect their efforts to the operational touch points of the enterprise," said Bryan Black, CEO of Recognition Systems Group. "The integration of Protagona with mySAP.com provides a world-class solution for creating and managing the most compelling experience for each customer and connects enterprises to the most critical points of influence on customer behavior, such as call centers and the Web."

The marketing campaign management offering of mySAP.com supports a multitude of customer relationship management organizational roles, including these:

-- Marketing analyst. Analysts can measure campaign effectiveness by

tracking the planned and actual costs and revenues of a campaign.

This allows marketing organizations to perform true cost/benefit

analyses of their marketing activities, justifying current and

future expenditures and strategic plans and allowing them to

further fine-tune strategic and tactical plans.

-- Retention manager. With the advanced target group modeling and

segmentation tools, retention managers can develop customer

retention campaigns based on cutting-edge CRM metrics in

mySAP.com.

-- Product and brand manager. Product managers can manage their

product or brand strategies through proactive planning of their

products and services marketing mix, events, resources and more.

Advanced targeting tools allow managers to easily target new

prospects or existing customers for product growth possibilities.

Complete Customer Relationship Management Through mySAP.com

With mySAP.com, SAP offers a CRM solution that provides customizable and industry-specific capabilities for interacting with customers based on flexible, but tightly coupled, front- and back-office applications and services. mySAP.com is delivered through role-based portals and encompasses integrated and industry-specific customer relationship management functionality, a relationship intelligence layer, pervasive and mobile solutions and a scalable, proven infrastructure. Overall, this offering benefits users with higher customer retention and loyalty, increased customer profitability, a more effective and efficient use of resources, and more satisfying customer relationships.

SAP solutions offer built-in integration, enabling companies to better accomplish their business goals. SAP is working with complementary software providers like Recognition Systems and others to ensure seamless integration across SAP and non-SAP offerings while extending and enhancing mySAP.com CRM offerings to help companies optimize sales, marketing and service efforts.

Availability

The campaign management solution from SAP and Recognition Systems is being piloted by selected customers today and is scheduled for availability in the second quarter of 2000.

About Recognition Systems Group

Recognition Systems Group plc, headquartered in Birmingham, England, with U.S. headquarters in Chicago, is quoted on the London Stock Exchange. The company's Web site is located at http://www.protagona.com. The company provides technology solutions that enable marketers to create and manage unique customer experiences through touch points such as the Web, call centers and direct mail.

About Syskoplan

Syskoplan GmbH is a software integrator and long-time SAP development partner currently involved in customer relationship management development. Syskoplan lines of business include Customer Relationship Management (Sales, Marketing, Service), E-Commerce, Business Intelligence and IT-Management. The company is located in Germany, Ireland and the United States. The company's Web site is located at http://www.syskoplan.com.

About SAP

As the market leader of inter-enterprise software solutions, SAP is leveraging its strength in industry-focused business software and the world's largest enterprise software customer base to deliver mySAP.com. mySAP.com provides an open collaborative business environment of personalized solutions on demand. This enables companies of all sizes and industries to fully engage their employees, customers and partners to capitalize upon the new Internet economy.

mySAP.com allows people to harness the power of the Internet to work smarter, better and faster by optimizing supply chains, managing strategic relationships, reducing time to market, sharing virtual information, and increasing productivity and shareholder value.

SAP is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." The SAP World Wide Web site can be found at http://www.sap.com.

SAP, mySAP.com, SAP Business Information Warehouse, SAP BW and all SAP product and service names herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. (c) Copyright 1999, SAP AG