Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) has bestowed SAP with the 2012 North American Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement Award. After carrying out a thorough analysis of the contact center systems market, SAP (News - Alert) was honored for the all-inclusive functionality delivered by SAP Business Communications Management software. SAP has now incorporated the contact center and communications functionality with its conventional business software.

SAP Business Communications Management has been locally incorporated with the SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, and the SAP BusinessByDesign offering, eliminating the need for additional hardware and software. SAP enterprise software customers can therefore experience benefits straight away by implementing SAP Business Communications Management.

In a statement, Nancy Jamison, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said, "SAP Business Communications Management provides SAP customers with maximum interoperability and enables employees inside and outside the contact center with the same features. Value is therefore provided to customers through end-to-end communication, collaboration, and business process automation, all without the complexity of different vendors' systems."

According to Jamison, customers experience decreased overall expenses of ownership with the pre-incorporated SAP Business Communications Management, which gets rid of the intricacies and expenditure of assisting, sustaining, and incorporating diverse communications systems with contact center and business application software.

Compared to other competitive offerings, SAP Business Communications Management customers utilizing SAP CRM can experience savings of nearly 25 to 30 percent in a period of three to five years. Customers with bigger and more disseminated contact centers stand to save even more. While there is no difference in product license expenses for smaller centers, the licenses are available at viable prices for bigger, more intricate configurations.

Jamison said, "Due to its all-software and all-IP-based product nature, SAP Business Communications Management is strongest in virtual contact center environments where contact center agents are physically distributed to multiple sites or regions, but are managed, monitored, and reported as one operation. This provides SAP customers with flexibility in designing or adding onto their contact center operations."