SAP AG Press Release

SAP AG today announced that Dow Corning Corporation, a leading manufacturer of silicon-based technology and innovation solutions for more than 25,000 customers in dozens of industries worldwide, has adopted SAP(R) Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) and SAP NetWeaver(R) as the foundation to unify its customer-facing business processes on a single, integrated SAP application platform. SAP and Cognizant have supported Dow Corning’s transformation from a product-focused supplier into a customer- focused “solutions” company that collaborates with customers to solve business problems, seize new opportunities and find faster, better ways to achieve business goals.

Using SAP CRM, SAP NetWeaver(R) Portal, SAP Net Weaver(R) Business Intelligence and Web-enabled mobile selling scenarios, Dow Corning is transforming its business network to more effectively work across company boundaries with customers. Leveraging its SAP platform based on enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA), Dow Corning is improving customer intimacy and loyalty levels by integrating and improving cross-channel communications, sales and service to deliver more results-focused, personalized customer interaction. Dow Corning understands that delivering outstanding customer service experience requires a complex mix of integrated end-to-end business processes.

“The SAP Net Weaver platform helped us reframe CRM within Dow Corning so that our commercial teams can get to relevant information and tasks to support our customers across a variety of systems with simplified, “one-click” access,” said Chip Reeves, director of Marketing and Sales Process, Dow Corning. “Flexibility from the SAP Net Weaver platform and Web services in an SOA environment is enabling us to innovate selling processes that are easy to use.”

“We wanted a CRM solution that would not only help us provide our customers with a choice of how they interacted with our company, but also make it easier for our employees to use the system and more efficiently respond to customer needs,” said Bill Pritchett, business process engineer, Dow Corning. “With SAP applications we get the best of all worlds-we’ve improved our business visibility, upped our number of customer self-service options and streamlined ease-of-use for our employees.”

Previously, Dow Corning sales and service reps experienced difficulty navigating between the company’s stand-alone Siebel system and other existing applications because the systems required entirely different interfaces. Leveraging integrated SAP applications on a consolidated technology platform, sales users now can log directly into a portal to access data such as new lead information and expense reporting with personalized screens. For mobile sales users, Dow Corning established a simplified system of qualifying leads. Sales representatives receive e-mail messages on their mobile devices with hyperlinks to a simple Web page, where they can quickly qualify leads by entering just a few fields.

“Companies continue to turn to SAP to help fuel their long-term business transformation goals,” said Bob Stutz, senior vice president and general manager, CRM Global Strategy and Product, SAP AG. “With SAP, companies can successfully create a customer-centric enterprise-orchestrating all business processes around customers to help improve customer intimacy, service and loyalty, while streamlining operations in order to optimize results for the company.”

Cognizant carried out the implementation in partnership with Dow Corning. The software successfully went live in 10 months.