SunAmerica Inc. Moves Beyond Y2K with SAP Solutions: Insurance Leader Streamlines Reporting and Boosts Customer Service with Integrated Systems and Easy-to-Use Software.

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 1999--

SAP America, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE: ADR SAP), the world's leading provider of enterprise business solutions, today announced that SunAmerica Inc., a $52 billion financial services company specializing in retirement savings and investment products and services, is now productive using SAP solutions.

Ranked in the top two percent of all U.S. life insurance companies based on assets, SunAmerica has gained real-time functionality and streamlined enterprise-wide services through SAP(tm) solutions ranging from general ledger accounting and materials management, to travel and expense reporting through SAP Employee-Self-Service(tm) (SAP ESS(tm)).

SAP ESS empowers users to view, create, and maintain data at their desktops via web-based technology. To date, more than 1,200 SunAmerica employees are using SAP ESS and more than 400 people log onto SAP solutions daily to retrieve and analyze customer and financial data.

"We launched our systems integration strategy to prepare for Y2K issues, but compliance wasn't our sole concern," says Scott Robinson, senior vice president and controller at SunAmerica. "Sun also needed to realize increased efficiencies enterprise-wide, especially within the accounting areas and our customer service center. The company was drawing information from 18 different mainframe applications. Users would typically work through multiple screens and manually transfer data from one system to another before beginning any level of analysis. We needed to fully mechanize our general journal entry and implement a workflow system that would automatically move information from one queue to another. In addition, our customer service team needed improved access to information in order to provide optimum service to policy holders."

At the start of the project, SunAmerica evaluated a number of enterprise resource planning vendors based upon each company's ability to handle a set of challenges specific to the insurance industry, such as high-volume check disbursements and policy-related transactions, policy accounting and disbursements, and cycling suspense.

The insurance leader also considered each vendor's longevity, plans for software development, ease of upgrade to new software versions, ability to provide true 24x7 real-time processing, and the software's flexibility to change with the needs of a rapidly growing company.

This criteria narrowed the field of competition to two vendors and SunAmerica ultimately selected SAP, citing a higher projected return on investment, the company's strength in the technological marketplace, and the superior SAP solutions designed for financial services enterprises.

SunAmerica deployed the AcceleratedSAP(tm) methodology, a comprehensive SAP implementation roadmap to streamline R/3(R) projects, and completed the implementation ahead of schedule and within projected costs.

"The strong functionality of the SAP solutions, along with the user-friendly nature of the software, now makes data much more available to the casual user," says Terry Hirsch, SAP project lead at SunAmerica. "Our mainframe systems were built around archaic GUIs and navigation paths. As a result, casual users often didn't understand the scope of data available or how to extract that data for analysis. With R/3, it's fairly easy to get in there and dig. Since R/3 is integrated with standard desktop tools, users can run a query and transfer the data into Excel without going through the cumbersome process of downloading data from the mainframe into another desktop application."

SunAmerica's monthly close activities are also streamlined through R/3 by tying data directly to the company's financial ledger. "R/3 enables us to perform real-time updates," adds Hirsch. "Once we book an entry, it shows up immediately. In the past, we had to wait for nightly batch cycles to update the ledger. After making entries in the downloaded system, we would have to follow-up with a separate ledger entry to balance the books. The calculations once made by hand are now being made by the system - the end result is reporting that is much more concise and supportable."

"Ultimately, we've seen a strong increase in the productivity of our staff not only in accounting, or the bank reconciliation area, but in customer service," says Robinson. "For example, prior to implementing SAP systems, our service center had to do hard copy research to determine when checks were cut and to estimate the timeframe for delivery. Now, they're able to find a check payee in the system and access that information instantly. The time saved per transaction is considerable. A process that once took two hours, for example, might now be completed in two minutes. Our customer service team can virtually respond to the policy-holder immediately."

SunAmerica's plans for the future include an ongoing relationship with SAP. "Sun is a very dynamic company that is constantly changing its products and, as a result, must continually evaluate its systems," Robinson adds. "We'd like to completely overhaul our administrative systems using SAP software to take the entire technological infrastructure of the company into the 21st century. Specifically, we'd like to improve our purchasing areas and the approval process for purchase requisitions and orders. We also plan to eliminate our variable funds balancing interface by performing the function within SAP."

"There were many during the evaluation process that tried to convince us that SAP was too difficult to implement," says Hirsch. "Looking back, we're more certain than ever that SAP was the right choice for SunAmerica. SAP software proved to be a highly flexible system with rich functionality out-of-the-box."

About SAP Financial

Services(tm) SAP America helps banks, insurance companies, investment firms and other financial services institutions to achieve a better return on their information, by providing them with functionally rich, user-friendly tools for core operations, strategic enterprise, customer relationship, investment, human resources, treasury and business/cash management, and related reporting.

Armed with integrated solutions from SAP Financial Services, the institution can convert its enterprise data into targeted products, reduce time-to-market, enable a more customer-focused environment, profile risk/reward scenarios, streamline transaction processing, and increase productivity, with the goal of enhanced profitability.

About SAP

SAP, the world's largest enterprise software company, provides companies of all sizes with business solutions that deliver A Better Return on Information(SM). SAP products and services integrate an organization from financial and human resources to manufacturing and sales and distribution.

This integration enables companies to optimize supply chains, strengthen customer relationships, and make more accurate management decisions.

Founded in 1972, SAP today leverages a global network of people, processes and products to assure customer success. 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, R/3, SAP Employee-Self-Service, SAP ESS, AcceleratedSAP, SAP Financial Services, A Better Return on Information and all SAP product and service names referenced herein are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of SAP AG. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. (c)Copyright 1999, SAP AG.