Overview of SAP CRM module

Introduction
In today's highly competitive business environment, the focus of top companies is increasing on
its most valuable assets customers. Thus, the companies require a suitable software solution to
cater to its customers which is user-friendly, easily customizable, fully integrated, and can be
implemented flexibly.
Customer Relationship Management is a business strategy for optimizing customer interactions.
It helps in understanding your customers, their needs and requirements.
SAP Business Suite is a suite of business applications that enable your company to handle total
value chain across the business and its partners.
SAP CRM is a part of SAP business suite. It can implement customized business processes,
integrate to other SAP and non-SAP systems, help achieve CRM strategies.
SAP CRM can help an organization to stay connected to customers. This way organization can
achieve customer expectations with the types of services and products that he or she actually
needs.
It also helps to achieve 'Single face to customer', which means the customer get regular & actual
information independent of channel through which the he or she is contacting your company.

SAP CRM Overview

As a part of SAP Business Suite, SAP provides solutions which are flexible and open, and which
support applications, databases, hardware platforms, & operating systems from most of the major
vendors.

Following SAP solutions are the constituents of SAP Business Suite:

SAP CRM Customer Relationship Management

SAP PLM Product Lifecycle Management

SAP SCM Supply Chain Management

SAP SRM Supplier Relationship Management

SAP ERP Enterprise Resource Planning

SAP Business Suite is based on SAP NetWeaver .NetWeaver provides the development and
runtime environment for SAP applications and is used for the custom development and
integration with other applications and systems.

SAP CRM is embedded in the business environment of the SAP Business Suite.

Features of SAP CRM

It is a part of SAP Business Suite to manage customer relationship.

It supports all customer-focused business areas such as marketing, sales and service.
It is implemented for different customer interaction channels, such as Interaction Centre,
Internet, and mobileclients (hand-held devices like laptop, mobile, etc.).
CRM Analytics, a component of SAP CRM, enables your organization to gather all
relevant information about various key factors such as a customer and analyze this
knowledgebase to incorporate insights into operational processes and strategic decisionmaking.

SAP CRM Marketing

SAP CRM has provided extensive marketing functionalities

It automates the marketing planning, campaign execution, & measurement of the
marketing effort.
SAP CRM unites the following key functions related to marketing on a user-friendly and
configurable interface:
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Marketing Planning,
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Campaign Management,
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Lead Management,
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E-Marketing,
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Market Analytics,
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Customer Segmentation.

SAP CRM Sales

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SAP CRM is developed for handling customer contact anytime, anywhere.

The companies can choose one or more of these SAP CRM Sales implementation:
Telesales,
Enterprise Sales,
E-Selling and
Field Sales.
SAP CRM sales support the sales force of your business to be time efficient & effective

in working.

It provides information which leads an insight into action, & maintains focus on

productive activity.
Thus, SAP CRM Sales helps the sales force of your business to secure customers, and
then to develop and maintain beneficial relationship with them.

SAP CRM also provides aspect of sales forecasting and analytics that helps your business

to collect historical & predictive information.

It includes territory and account management which can be used to optimize & increase

the effectiveness of your sales organization.

It also includes Opportunity and pipeline management processes which provide

maximum visibility in to the potential sales, sales processes, & methodologies which can lead
to standardization of the company-specific best practices.
It also provides seamless order to cash processes that enable your sales organization to

manage the customer demands most effectively.

Thus, SAP CRM Sales have a lot of features like dedicated interactions, seamless integration,
insightful information, always accessible, and is user-friendly.

SAP CRM Service

All aspects related to the processing of the service order supported by SAP CRM service

starts with responding to customer's initial inquiry till the confirmation & billing of the
service provided to the customer.
SAP CRM service also provides your organization with quotation creation & processing,
creation of service order and assignment to field service representative.

SAP CRM Channels

SAP CRM provides implementations for different channels within your business such as
Internet, telephony, field sales, and partners which leads to the optimization of your customer
interactions. For all the different channels supported, SAP CRM provides your employee with an
intuitive and user-friendly interface to carry out their daily work.
SAP CRM enables customers to implement different customer-specific requirements and
industry-specific processes. For interaction with these implementations customers have different
interaction channels offered by SAP CRM:

Back-office: This is Role based web access. For each relevant task in the service, sales

and marketing it represents the single point of entry. All relevant systems are assigned to a
Business Role which is assigned to employees. Thus, an employee can get all the relevant
systems into a single UI.
Field Service or Offline-User: SAP CRM offers several field applications for field

service representatives which they can access anywhere, anytime. These applications are
developed for handheld devices.
Interaction Center: SAP CRM provides the customer care employees with an interface

which is comprehensively integrated with different communication channels like phone and
E-mails. Also, it includes various features with which the employee can use while in
communication with the customer for making note or working on the transaction itself.
WebChannel Management: with this SAP CRM enables E-service, E-commerce, and E-

marketing platform. These platforms are to provide personalized, reliable and convenient
service to the target customers 24x7x365. This enables end customers to access & research
data and with that as per requirement purchase services or products anytime, anywhere.
PCM Partner Channel Management: This interface is provided to support
collaboration with resellers, dealers, agents etc. It combines the Web Channel Management
with regular CRM to provide a complete solution for partner management.

Overview of SAP CRM Architecture

The SAP CRM solution incorporates the CRM components along with the SAP ERP, SAP SCM
and SAP BI components. SAP CRM contains a central CRM system with access through various
channels and a connection to other systems.

Following are the fully-integrated connections offered as SAP CRM Solution:

SAP CRM System which provides corresponding software components of SAP CRM

solution as a central CRM server.

SAP ERP System which provides all the ERP functionalities can be integrated with SAP

CRM system as a back-end system. The data exchange between these connected systems can
be configured and implemented with the help of CRM Middleware.
SAP BI provides functionalities for detailed statistical and analysis functions. It can be

integrated with the SAP CRM in order to use its features for the SAP CRM reporting and
analysis function.
For demand planning solution and global Available-to-Promise (ATP) check SAP CRM
system can be integrated with the SAP SCM system. For example:
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For a Sales Order entered through any of the implemented UIs, check on delivery
needs to be performed.
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For this, Available-to-Promise (ATP) checks are implemented on connected SAP
SCM system.
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At runtime CRM system connects to SAP SCM to verify if it is possible to deliver

items requested on time.

SAP NetWeaver Portal provides integrated access to all systems.

Channel Architecture

The SAP CRM channels architecture includes:

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Internet applications:
Internet Sales
Internet Customer Self-Service
Internet Pricing Configurator

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Mobile applications:
Mobile Sales
Mobile Service
Interaction center

Internet Applications
The Internet software components of SAP CRM solution are J2EE technology based
(which is open, non-SAP platform). These are provided as a ready-to-run solution with
the shipped, standard template. Also, these applications can be further adjusted in order
to meet customer-specific requirements. For these Internet applications, necessary CRM
data needs to be maintained and set up with in the CRM system.
SAP CRM solutions offers Internet Sales software component which presents published
catalogs to the end user who can use them to configure and purchase the product.
It also offers Internet Self-Service software component where end users can request for a
particular service.

 The Internet Pricing & Configurator (IPC) component is another J2EE based web
application for product configuration and pricing data.

Interaction Centre

The Interaction Centre is provided with tools and features required while in

communication with the end customer.

Various communication channels are supported by the Interaction Centre such as fax, e-

mail, telephone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Interaction Centre is linked with the CRM WebClient and thus an employee in contact

with the customer can make notes, trigger e-mails, create activities, and work upon the
business transactions like service order, etc.
Interaction Centre connects to different communication channels using a Communication

Management System, which can be SAP Business Communication Manager (BCM) or a third
party product.
In order to strengthen IC WebClient multichannel options in the Interaction Centre,
Integrated Communication Interface (ICI) is used.

Mobile Applications

SAP CRM Mobile Sales and Mobile Service components help a company's mobile field

sales and service representatives.

Depending upon the area of responsibility, users have access to all the relevant data in

their device.
These devices connect briefly to the central CRM servers for the synchronization of the

data. This data transfer occurs through the SAP CRM Middleware.
SAP Mobile Application Studio can be used in order to customize these mobile
applications.

Introduction to CRM WebClient User

Interface
SAP CRM User Interface started with SAPGUI, and its growth has resulted in SAP CRM Web
Client User Interface. CRM Web Client user interface is an enhanced version of the IC Web
Client UI. Also, it is business role based UI; therefore, the content which will be visible to the
user logged-in depends upon the business roles assigned to the user. This results in a simpler UI
for the user, who will be able to access and process only those tasks which are relevant for him

or her. With this, the Sales representative who is not concerned with the marketing process will
only be able to access and work the Sales related process as per the authorizations assigned.

CRM Web Client UI is component based software, which presents the CRM UI to the user in LShape. It contains Header in the top row and Navigation Bar on the left side, this constitutes the
L-Shape. The remaining space on the CRM Web UI page is called Work Area. The Header area
contains predefined system link like Log Off hyperlink.

Following are the components of the Header area:

1.

System Links

2.

Saved Searches

3.

Work Area Title

4.

History

The position of the Header Area is fixed and cannot be changed. Navigation Bar contains links to
various applications that are assigned to the logged-in user. The content of the Work Area gets
updated with user action on the links available in Header area, Navigation bar or within the work
area itself. The views are displayed in the CRM Web UI as Assignment Blocks. There are
separate pages offered as implementation of the SAP CRM Web UI:

Home page

Worklist page

Calendar

E-Mail inbox

Work Center

Advanced Search Page

Overview Page

Assignment blocks
User can navigate between these pages using the links available in navigation bar, work centre or
hyperlinks available in the search pages, applications or business transactions.

As soon as a user logs in, he or she will be able to see the Home page.
Further navigation to other pages or specific application can be accomplished with the
navigation links in the Navigation Bar or in the work center.
For example, user can access the below Work Centre for Account Management from the
link available in the navigation bar:

User can navigate to the below Account search using the link in the work center or using
the Account Search link available in the second level of navigation bar: