Electronic market draws big clients

By ADAM GIFFORD

BRISBANE - Software giant SAP and telecommunications company Telstra have launched an electronic marketplace for New Zealand, Australia and South Asia.

Companies involved in the mySAP.com Marketplace to provide services online include Qantas, American Express, National Australia Bank (owner of the BNZ), Citibank and transport company TNT.

Corporate Express, Harris Technology, Blackwoods and BOC Gases have signed up to sell their products and services, and operations and maintenance company Transfield and building materials supplier CSR say they will use the portal for their buying needs.

A live demonstration of the system at the Sapphire user conference in Brisbane yesterday showed how the marketplace links companies' back-end systems, allowing transactions like buying materials and stationery or booking travel to be done quickly in accordance with whatever business rules or buying discounts are arranged between the parties.

Multiple entry of data is eliminated, along with vast quantities of paperwork.

Under a strategic alliance, SAP provides the applications to drive the system and Telstra provides infrastructure and connectivity.

SAP Asia Pacific president and chief executive Les Hayman said much of the early thinking about internet portals was they would be a way for buyers to get goods at lower prices, but buyers could not be the only beneficiaries.

One of the biggest barriers to moving business to the internet was not the technology but shifting the mindset, he said.

"This is about relationships, it's about collaboration, it's about being able to create mutual benefits for all players."

The mySAP.com Marketplace is based on open technologies, with SAP committed to ensuring that systems made by competitors can interface with it.

It is also based on open membership, with companies in direct competition to its foundation members welcome to join.

The mySAP.com range of products, which are solutions sold on a per use basis independent of the core SAP R/3 system, is accounting for an increasing larger share of SAP's sales.

Mr Hayman said that in the past year SAP's revenues in Asia Pacific had risen 55 per cent from $US214 million to $US331 million, with just under half coming from sales of mySAP.com licences to existing customers.

Sales had been fuelled by a fragile recovery in the Asian economy.

* Adam Gifford attended Sapphire 2000 as a guest of SAP.