WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 —As hundreds of electric utility companies in the United States submit their grants and receive public funding to update their infrastructure under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), they’ll be expected to deliver a more efficient, reliable and transparent electrical grid. SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced a portfolio of solutions designed to help utilities meet these new requirements, gain better visibility into their operations and ultimately deliver more freedom, flexibility and cost savings to their customers. The announcement was made at the SAP for Utilities Conference North America, being held in Washington, D.C., September 16-18.

The SAP portfolio of solutions comprises six new software applications. These solutions are designed to be quickly implemented and address pressing business needs in a rapidly changing utility industry. They include:

• Management and reporting for ARRA is a point-and-click data visualization tool designed to transform otherwise complex data into comprehensive business intelligence dashboards. The tool’s preconfigured capabilities help utilities achieve faster return on investment, realize a lower total cost of ownership and rapidly respond to ARRA reporting requirements.
• Utility business analytics provide a single view of all key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics and measures to significantly enhance decision-making, especially for strategic projects like Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and energy efficiency. The tool allows utility executives to secure that adjustments made to projects and programs are based on accurate, easy-to-understand data.
• Utility enterprise asset management (EAM) enables a utility to increase the production availability and revenue of its assets, reducing supplier management inefficiencies and helping utilities to meet human resource and financial targets. The tool enables a utility to excel among three dimensions of EAM: effectiveness, efficiency and strategy.
• With an interactive dashboard that gives utilities a clear understanding of all of the costs associated with delivering energy to customers, SAP helps customers to realize a cost-to-serve view on their business processes. The tool predicts savings for a series of hypothetical scenarios, such as eliminating paper billing and all of its associated costs.
• SAP also helps utilities establish and prioritize corporate strategies and execute them effectively at an operational level to manage costs, budgets and rates. This solution is designed to help utilities make critical decisions about setting rates and determining the feasibility of expanding service into new markets.
• SAP(R) AMI Integration for Utilities software provides a highly transparent, timely, automated execution of meter data-enabled processes. The utility can then improve customer service through increased responsiveness and tailored energy products, drive market standardization for AMI integration to other SAP solutions and lower the total cost of ownership.

 “The U. S. transition to a smarter electrical grid will be largely driven by a change in the underlying IT infrastructure, including critical software systems,” said Maureen Coveney, SAP industry principal for Utilities. “We’re responding by offering solutions that help utilities through this transition while becoming more efficient and more transparent, allowing them to clearly illustrate how these publicly funded IT investments will ultimately benefit the consumer.”

For more than 20 years, SAP has offered the utility industry’s most lauded and recognized customer information system, enterprise resource planning and enterprise asset management applications. Deployed in more than 1,100 utilities worldwide, SAP solutions serve as the enterprise backbone, ensuring utility business processes work seamlessly and efficiently, even across lines of business, and enabling utilities to manage performance to goals.

About SAP

SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 89,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol “SAP.” For more information, visit www.sap.com