SAP across the line 1st in ASICS contract race

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 27 August 2009 16:11

IT Industry - Deals

SAP has beaten off a number of competitors, including IBM, to secure a contract with sporting footwear and apparel manufacturer, ASICS, to deploy its business intelligence (BI) software as part of a program in the Japanese company’s Australian arm to increase business efficiency. 
 

Under the contract, SAP’s channel and services partner, Fujitsu’s Supply Chain Consulting, will work with ASICS to implement Business Intelligence (SAP BI 7.0), Xcelsius Enterprise, Crystal Reports 2008 and BusinessObjects Edge software.

ASICS managing director, Arata Ikeda, said today the growth of ASICS had made information management and presentation more important, and the company had realised it needed to become more analytical as a business. “We recognised the need to invest and strengthen our internal systems, to enable us to explore and analyse new markets effectively. We want to establish a business platform that will not only keep pace with our organisational growth but also provide access to information and insights that will enable us to executive effectively against an aggressive five year business plan.”

Ikeda said the Australian arm of the ASICS business has demonstrated “exemplary performance over the last five years,” and he added “we have achieved 15 per cent year on year compound growth here and our market share in Australia currently sits at 25.5 per cent.”

ASICS has also recently implemented SAP Solution Manager with Supply Chain Consulting, Ikeda said, and with 50 users currently in Australia and 1,500 worldwide, the company required a solution that would help it manage its expanding SAP systems environment.
 
According to Ikeda, the company reviewed a number of solutions, including IBM's Lotus Notes, before selecting SAP Solution Manager.
 
Ikeda also said that the new SAP BusinessObjects software will “engage the business users at ASICS, initially to be used by the senior management team and sales managers and then to be rolled out to all other departments in the organisation, including finance and operations.

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