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McLaren Group Runs Faster With SAP

Wednesday 16 May 2012, 3:50PM

By Botica Butler Raudon Partners

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The McLaren Group, known for its Grand Prix racing team and iconic Formula 1 cars, will integrate its growing portfolio of businesses using solutions from SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) as its technology backbone. McLaren selected SAP for enterprise applications that improve efficiency across all lines of business, combined with an innovative vision that promises to amplify that value via mobile devices, the cloud and in-memory technology. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

SAP has a long-standing relationship with various parts of the McLaren Group. This latest deal marks a new stage in their relationship aimed at transforming the IT infrastructure of the entire McLaren Group. McLaren is a midsize company, quickly growing across multiple business centers and regions. As the company expands its investment into diverse markets, including applied technology, electronic systems and high-end hospitality, it needed a technology engine that was integrated, scalable and delivered maximum performance.
      
McLaren chose SAP to help create a holistic approach, enabling the company to gain better visibility and leverage best practices more easily across the business divisions. With the SAP HANA® platform and mobile apps, the company will be able to empower everyone — from tire changers to executives — with the real-time information needed to keep ahead of competitors. The McLaren Group is looking forward to a fast time-to-value using SAP® Rapid Deployment solutions, pre-configured software and implementation services.

“The McLaren Group is a rapidly growing business and has unique demands for our software implementation,” said Ron Dennis, executive chairman, The McLaren Group. “These are exciting times for our business, and as we look to the future, we’re pleased to be able to partner with a company like SAP that shares our values – passion, commitment and the willingness to make sacrifices in order to be the absolute best. The growth and longevity of our brand are dependent on our having a varied portfolio, supported by a strong business plan, implemented by the best people – with input from the best partners.”

The McLaren Group’s core activity is Formula 1 racing, a data-intensive sport that demands technical agility and continuous, rapid invention. And McLaren has perfected telemetry systems, which use data generated by race car sensors, so much so that it is the official electronics system for all Formula 1 teams as well IndyCar and NASCAR series. SAP HANA will help turbo-charge both the speed and depth of McLaren’s telemetry technology allowing the teams to look at much larger data sets and ask more complex questions. This real-time analysis of car sensor data can be run against both historical data and predictive models, helping the team to make immediate proactive corrections, avoid costly, dangerous incidents and win the race. With instant analysis of what is happening to the car while the race is on, the driver and engineers can work together to ensure a winning result.

“At McLaren we’re accustomed to handling ‘big data,’” continued Dennis. “On every lap of every Grand Prix, practice or test session, our Formula 1 cars generate vast quantities of performance data. Our ability to process that data and act on it rapidly is crucial to creating the kind of prescriptive intelligence that enables us to transform the outcome of races. And that need resonates through every other facet of our business.”

As McLaren diversifies its business, its electronic systems — including telemetry, modeling and real-time simulations — are being used widely in other areas, such as to help Olympic athletes hone their performance and in rapid transit systems in the U.S. to optimise traffic flow. The company plans to use SAP innovations to augment the competitive advantage it provides across these various areas.

“Transforming information into intelligence in real time is a cornerstone for McLaren’s winning formula – and increasingly critical for the future of every company,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO, SAP AG.” With SAP HANA, mobile and the complete SAP portfolio underpinning its business, McLaren can now bring increased intelligence across the full spectrum of its business operations. SAP will be able to help McLaren better anticipate, accelerate and differentiate its business — keeping them very much in the driver’s seat. In short, working together, SAP will help McLaren run like never before.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE® NOW
With SAPPHIRE® NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organisations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organisations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 190,000 customers (includes customers from the acquisition of SuccessFactors) to operate profitably, adapt continuously and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.