Capgemini and Microsoft have announced ERP+, a strategic initiative that is expected to maximise their customers’ return on investment from their existing SAP installations.

As part of the partnership, Capgemini also unveiled new services that are aimed at helping customers drive productivity improvement and cost reduction by leveraging the interoperability between their Microsoft and SAP investments.

According to Microsoft, the ERP+ enables companies to combine the power of SAP and Microsoft Office and SharePoint technologies, Windows phone and Microsoft Application Platform products to increase employee access to SAP data from the desktop and mobility devices; improve worker productivity by reducing data re-entry and easily automating unstructured business processes; and reduce IT costs by enabling reuse of existing Microsoft software licenses and reduced user training costs.

Under this agreement, Capgemini and Microsoft will jointly invest in marketing, demand generation and asset development to meet the needs of joint customers in a range of industries worldwide.

In addition, Capgemini will establish Microsoft and SAP interoperability Centre of Excellence; train 1,000 Capgemini architects on interoperability of the Microsoft and SAP environments; and establish an accessible SAP + Microsoft interoperability environment. It will also develop a suite of SharePoint- and Windows Mobile platform-based accelerators to help automate industry-specific scenarios.

Simon Witts, corporate vice president of the enterprise and partner group at Microsoft, said: “SAP customers are already using Windows and Microsoft SQL Server to maximise reliability and minimise total cost of ownership (TCO) on over 50% of new installations. We are extremely excited to partner with Capgemini to help as many of these customers maximise employee productivity, extend SAP utilisation, and further reduce TCO via SharePoint and Microsoft’s mobility solutions.”