CA picks SAP for ERP rollout

IDG News Service - Computer Associates International Inc. has selected SAP AG as its vendor for a new enterprise resource planning system to replace a collection of homegrown accounting systems. Services firm Accenture Ltd. will assist with the implementation, CA said today.
Islandia, N.Y.-based CA said earlier this year that it would invest $5 million to $10 million on a new, industry-standard ERP and accounting package. The move comes in the wake of an accounting scandal that wiped out CA's top management ranks and led to reparations that included a $225 million payout to compensate victims of the fraud.
CA's new management team, including Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke, listed replacing the ERP system as one of the steps CA would take to tighten its financial controls to prevent future violations. It is also intended to help the company meet requirements laid out in the deferred prosecution agreement it reached with the U.S. Department of Justice.
CA said it will begin its ERP project immediately, focusing on four key areas: financials, business intelligence, customer relationship management and e-procurement and sourcing.
CA CIO Kevin Kern declined to comment on what other vendors CA considered. SAP was selected because of the depth of its offerings and the ease of integrating them, he said. The deal represents a high-profile win for SAP, which has lately reported stronger sales growth than have its most significant rivals, PeopleSoft Inc. and Oracle Corp.
CA was already a PeopleSoft customer.
"I traded off best-of-breed products to have the tight integration of one company like SAP," Kern said.
CA has a few packaged systems, including PeopleSoft human resources software and a marketing system from Aprimo Inc. Those systems will stay intact while CA focuses initially on other areas, including financials, where it will replace its Masterpiece accounting software, Kern said. CA had no SAP software installed previously.
Up to 15,000 CA employees will eventually have access to some features of the SAP systems being installed, Kern said. Eighty employees at CA are working on the SAP project, along with a team from Accenture.
Kern said a timeline for the overhaul is still being devised, but several pilot projects are already running. CA's IT and business teams are working together on the system design and will rely heavily on SAP and Accenture for best practices recommendations, he said.
"I am looking at it, with the management team, as a transformation, which is well above and beyond just ERP," Kern said.