Deloitte Expands SAP Partnership

Deloitte Consulting expanded its alliance with SAP AG to jointly deliver mySAP CRM solutions for Fortune 1000 and enterprise companies. Deloitte Consulting adds SAP to its list of other CRM vendors that it services including E.piphany, PeopleSoft, and Siebel. Regarding why Deloitte Consulting waited on offering services for mySAP despite an existing relationship with SAP's ERP solutions, Gerry Cunningham, principal with Deloitte Consulting, says "We wanted to see an interest by clients for SAP's CRM services and we're seeing that in a number of manufacturing products." Steve Pratt, Deloitte Consulting's Global CRM Leader, echoed these sentiments: "This is a natural for us. Our CRM practice has established a leadership position by using common sense and experience to help build our clients' successes. With the strength of their product set, we expect SAP will be an increasingly large player in the CRM space and we look to help them expand. For the past decade Deloitte Consulting has worked alongside SAP to combine their strong technical offering with our deep business and industry knowledge, and package expertise. Deloitte Consulting is ideally positioned to extend this relationship to CRM." The news comes moments before Deloitte Consulting's name change deadline of midnight Thursday night. Later this year Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu aims to establish a new identity for its consulting firm, which has been negatively affected by the Enron missteps. "The consulting firm will separate from the tax and audit firm, because we were affected by the post-Enron marketplace perception and we are looking to maintain our position," Cunningham says. Deloitte Consulting encourages anyone to make suggestions for the new company name on its Web site (www.dc.com). More than 3,700 entries have been submitted so far. The new name should represent "straight talk and practical solutions," the company stated.