SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Visa International today announced that they intend to deliver new levels of value, financial control and operational efficiency to the business market through the seamless integration of Visa transactions into corporate information systems.
By utilizing SAP NetWeaver(TM) -- a leading integration and application platform -- and Visa's enhanced data services, Visa and SAP will enable corporations and their employees to manage payments for business expenditures, automatically integrate related transaction data into enterprise systems and increase the speed and lower the cost of expense administration. These clients are expected to realize improved operational effectiveness, greater financial control and reduced integration costs of payment data into their core financial management systems.
The companies have initiated efforts to integrate SAP NetWeaver and the Visa Commercial Format (VCF), a standard data set containing enhanced spending data from all Visa Commercial payment products, to provide unprecedented levels of data delivery to corporations that use Visa with SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The transparent delivery and open technology of SAP NetWeaver will give shared clients better utilization of spending data without significant integration investments resulting in process improvements and lower operational costs on a variety of business processes.
"Visa's new relationship with SAP brings together two industry leaders to deliver innovation and cost-effective solutions to our shared corporate customers worldwide," said Aliza Knox, senior vice president, Visa International. "The combination of our technologies and product offerings will help clients fully integrate payment data into their business systems at minimal cost by utilizing existing infrastructure and optimizing technology investments."
"Our new relationship with Visa represents a valuable opportunity for our shared clients to continue to release valuable IT resources from operational costs so they can be used for projects that enable change and drive innovation," said Shai Agassi, member of the executive board, SAP AG. "By utilizing SAP NetWeaver to seamlessly link transaction data directly from Visa commercial payment products to SAP ERP systems, customers will contain costs, reduce risk, drive down administrative expense and show a rapid return on technology investments."
"Helping Visa member financial institutions in the U.S. deliver greater value to their corporate and commercial banking clients remains a primary focus of Visa Commercial Solutions," said Mike Dreyer, senior vice president, Visa USA. "Visa's relationship with SAP will significantly help in delivering that value through further streamlining the payment and data integration functionality of Visa's suite of commercial payment solutions."
T&E administration is considered to be the second-highest corporate expense behind payroll and benefits. With the integration of SAP NetWeaver and Visa Commercial data from banks, airlines, hotels and other merchants, the data will flow directly to the clients' ERP systems. SAP NetWeaver will enable continued secure automated delivery and integration of Visa -- provided data to clients' back-office systems and expense reporting software helping them to monitor volume and compliance, identify trends and patterns and view detailed spend data and analytics.
Employees will be more productive by automatically receiving expense data, thus reducing data entry and processing times. Companies will gain better tracking and understanding of corporate spending, an improved supplier negotiation position, better policy controls -- as well as stricter accountability of financial tracking and auditing functions.