Combine solutions to deliver increased policy controls, financial accountability for shared clients
Palo Alto, CA — March 18, 2004 — SAP AG and Visa International today said that they intend to deliver new levels of value, financial control and operational efficiency to the business market through the integration of Visa transactions into corporate information systems.
Visa and SAP said they would enable corporations and their employees to manage payments for business expenditures and automatically integrate related transaction data into enterprise systems by utilizing SAP's integration and application platform NetWeaver and Visa's data services.
The clients are expected to realize improved operational effectiveness, greater financial control and reduced integration costs of payment data into their core financial management systems with the combined solution, according to the companies.
The companies have initiated efforts to integrate SAP NetWeaver and the Visa Commercial Format (VCF), a standard data set containing spending data from all Visa Commercial payment products, to provide new levels of data delivery to corporations that use Visa with SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The providers said the transparent delivery and open technology of SAP NetWeaver would give shared clients better utilization of spending data without significant integration investments.
"Helping Visa member financial institutions in the United States 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 help in deliver that value by further streamlining the payment and data integration functionality of Visa's suite of commercial payment solutions."
Travel and expense administration is considered to be the second-highest corporate expense behind payroll and benefits. SAP and Visa commented that with the integration of their products from banks, airlines, hotels and other merchants, the data would flow directly to the clients' ERP systems.
