SAP, Open Text expand global reseller agreement to include employee file management capabilities

Issued by Global Research Partners for Open Text

Johannesburg, 24 Jun 2010

Open Text Corporation, the pre-eminent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, today announced continued expansion of its strategic relationship with SAP to include employee file management capabilities. Under the expanded agreement, SAP will resell Open Text's solution for employee information management under the name the SAP Employee File Management application by Open Text.

SAP has had great success reselling a number of Open Text solutions for document access, archiving and invoice management, among others, and the companies announced in February of this year an expansion of the agreement that enables SAP to resell Open Text Digital Asset Management.

Today's announcement allows SAP to resell a robust Open Text solution that lets companies create complete digital records of all personnel-related documents natively integrated with the SAP ERP Human Capital Management solution for "out-of-the-box" productivity from day one.

Transforms human resources by shifting focus to strategic activities

Human resources (HR) organisations are under constant pressure to process high volumes of employee requests accurately and in compliance with complex requirements for data retention and security.

At the same time, companies use a wide variety of HR and related forms to fill out employee records over the life cycle of a worker's engagement with a company. The HR department is expected to produce, maintain and retrieve these employee documents at a moment's notice, whether electronic or paper records.

With this solution, companies can create a complete digital record of all these documents and organise them for instant search and accessing. All paper and electronic documents related to employees, retirees, contractors and job applicants, as well as master data from SAP ERP HCM, can be pulled from digital employee files that enable HR staff to perform administrative activities more quickly and easily.

"SAP Employee File Management can help transform the HR department from one that is primarily administrative into one that is primarily strategic," commented Tom Roberts, global vice-president, Software Solution Partners, SAP. "Instead of spending the majority of their time on labour-intensive administrative tasks, HR staff are freed up to focus more of their time and effort on recruitment, skills development and serving as a more productive resource for the operational areas they support. By joining forces with Open Text, we are bringing new capabilities to our customers that can help deliver significant, sustained return on investment.

Enables self-service, shared-services models

SAP Employee File Management supports a wide range of self-service scenarios that free HR staff from time-intensive, routine inquiries from both colleagues and management. The application also makes it easier to comply with service level agreements in shared-service environments by assisting HR staff to find everything they need quickly and helping staff to process service requests faster and more efficiently.

HR staff accesses SAP Employee File Management functions from the GUI or the Business Client, while other staff can access files for which they are authorised via employee self-service and manager self-service portals, based on SAP NetWeaver in the SAP ERP HCM solution. Using a guest access feature, each employee can easily access his or her online employee file via the Web, and managers can see their employees' files. Employees can see only the contents of their own files and have limited access based on their legal right to see the documents.

Other key features and capabilities of SAP Employee File Management include:

* Paper and digital file consolidation scanning and image capture functions help eliminate paper files, allowing organisations to collect, digitise and centralise all employee HR documents.
* Search intuitive folder structures and thumbnails help users find documents quickly and jump directly from digital document records into SAP ERP HCM transactions.
* Process automation integrated workflow supports comprehensive review and approval processes and routine, document-related inquiries.
* Document retention management and archival staff can more securely archive employee documents in accordance with legal regulations such as BDSG in Germany, the Data Protection Act 1998 in the United Kingdom or Chapter 357-22.

"This latest agreement is the direct result of the strong, 20-year relationship between Open Text and SAP," added Patrick Barnert, vice-president of SAP Solutions, Open Text. "Through this relationship, we have jointly helped thousands of enterprise customers significantly increase the return on their investment in SAP solutions and manage growing volumes of content. Now we are joining forces to help companies transform their HR operations to better support the needs of a global workforce."

For further information, please contact Rob Shaw: tel +27 83 626 3811, fax +27 86 646 4178, e-mail rshaw@opentext.com.

Open Text

Open Text, an enterprise software company and leader in enterprise content management, helps organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Open Text brings two decades of expertise supporting 50 million users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts to help organisations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness.

In southern Africa, Open Text's business partners are Accenture, Business Connexion, Datacentrix, IA Systems and SAP Africa; and, its customer base includes organisations from across both the private and public sectors such as Alexander Forbes, Anglo Platinum, BMW, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Distell, Engen, Exxaro Resources, Mittal Steel, Office of the President, Provincial Government of the Western Cape, SABMiller, Sasol, Telkom SA and Toyota.

For more information on Open Text, go to: http://www.opentext.com.

Safe harbour statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

This news release may contain forward-looking statements relating to the success of any of the company's strategic initiatives, the company's growth and profitability prospects, the benefits of the company's products to be realised by customers, the company's position in the market and future opportunities therein, the deployment of Open Text ECM Suite and our other products by customers, and future performance of Open Text Corporation. Forward-looking statements may also include, without limitation, any statement relating to future events, conditions or circumstances. Forward-looking statements in this release are not promises or guarantees and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. The risks and uncertainties that may affect forward-looking statements include, among others, the failure to develop new products, risks involved in fluctuations in currency exchange rates, delays in purchasing decisions of customers, the completion and integration of acquisitions, the possibility of technical, logistical or planning issues in connection with deployments, the continuous commitment of the Company's customers, demand for the Company's products and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2009. You should not place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which are based on management's beliefs and opinions at the time the statements are made, and the company does not undertake any obligations to update forward-looking statements should circumstances or management's beliefs or opinions change.

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