SAP CRM

The SAP CRM applications have been initially an integrated on-premises customer relationship management (CRM) software manufactured by SAP SE which targeted business software requirements for marketing, sales and service of midsize and large organizations in all industries and sectors. The first SAP CRM release 2.0 has been made generally available in November 2000. The current release 7.0 is being updated with quarterly enhancement packs (EHPs) since 2012.

In 2007 SAP started to develop a cloud based CRM which has been renamed from Sales on Demand to SAP Cloud for Customer in 2013.[1] Since 2018 SAP has consolidated all of its cloud based marketing, sales, service and commerce applications as SAP C/4HANA suite.

Overview

After the acquisition of Hybris[2] in 2013, SAP has gradually realigned their CRM strategy mainly to take on the market leader Salesforce.com which is a cloud-based software. In a bid to be more competitive and future focused, SAP has been shifting towards cloud based CRM applications since 2011 rather than traditional on-premises software.[3] Still SAP CRM is being used by thousands of companies and there are according to SAP no plans to sunset the product.[4]

SAP has consolidated its CRM applications under the terms "Customer Engagement and Commerce" (CEC)[5] and since 2018 under "Customer Experience" (CX). SAP offers a variety of (partially acquired) applications:

  1. Customer Profile Management
    • SAP Customer Data Cloud (acquired and formerly known as Gigya)
  2. Marketing
    • SAP Marketing Cloud (formerly known as SAP Hybris Marketing)
    • SAP CRM Marketing (On Premises)
  3. Commerce
    • SAP Commerce Cloud (acquired and formerly known as Hybris Commerce)
  4. Sales
    • SAP Sales Cloud (formerly known as Cloud for Sales or C4C)
    • Callidus Cloud CPQ (acquired)
    • SAP CRM Sales (On Premises)
  5. Service
    • SAP Service Cloud (formerly known as Cloud for Service or C4S)
    • SAP Customer Engagement Center (formerly known as Hybris Service Engagement Center)
    • Core Systems (acquired)
    • SAP CRM Service (On Premises)
    • SAP CRM Interaction Center (On Premises)
  6. Billing
    • SAP Subscription Billing (formerly known as Hybris Revenue Cloud)
    • SAP Billing and Revenue Management (On Premises and formerly known as SAP BRIM or Hybris Billing)

History

SAP started working on CRM related capabilities in the early 1990s as embedded CRM modules of the SAP R/3 ERP. The "Sales and Distribution" (SD) module of SAP R/3 ERP covered functionalities for:

  • Customer management and Product catalog (MM).
  • Pre-sales actions for inquiry, activities and quotation management.
  • Sales order and delivery management
  • Pricing, tax and billing including credit management

SAP offered its first stand-alone CRM software in 2000. The initial release of "SAP CRM" 2.0 had been pushed by the acquisition of the German salesforce automation specialist Kiefer & Veittinger with its "Mobile Sales" application.[6]

In parallel to the new focus for stand-alone SAP CRM, SAP continued to invest in the embedded CRM scenarios as part of its ERP software in 2005. This allowed SAP in 2007 to copy the CRM codeline from the newly developed cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign and to create the independent "Cloud for Sales" and "Cloud for Service" applications (also known as "Cloud for Customer"). Another example for this copy and paste approach was the decision to move the SAP CRM codelines for service and sales into the S/4HANA ERP which allowed SAP to offer the new "S/4HANA for Customer Management" option.

Major milestones of the SAP CRM development:

  • SAP R/3 Sales and Distribution (SD) was initially released as part of R/3 Enterprise Edition 1.0 A in 1992
  • SAP CRM 2000 (2.0) initially released in 2000
  • SAP CRM 2006 (5.0) released in 2005
  • SAP CRM 2007 (6.0) released in 2007
  • SAP CRM 2008 (7.0) released in 2009 as Part of SAP Business Suite 7.0
  • SAP Business ByDesign Cloud ERP including CRM initially released in 2007
  • SAP Cloud for Customer initially released in 2011
  • Hybris acquisition in 2013 and afterwards renaming of its CRM portfolio to SAP Hybris Customer Engagement and Commerce in 2014
  • CallidusCloud (CPQ, Sales Enablement) and Coresystems (Field Service) acquisition in 2018
  • Introduction of SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management in 2018 which added the SAP CRM 7.0 service and sales capabilities to S/4HANA ERP core
  • SAP C/4HANA Customer Experience announced 2018

See also

References
  1. "Technical comparison between S4CRM and C4C". SAP Community. 2018-03-30.
  2. "SAP Hybris". www.hybris.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-03. Retrieved 2016-07-31.
  3. "SAP gives CRM another shot with new cloud-based suite". 2018-04-22. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  4. "What's New in SAP CRM 7.0 for 2018". 2014-09-22. Retrieved 2016-07-31.
  5. "SAP Moves Beyond CRM With Customer Engagement and Commerce". 2014-09-22. Retrieved 2016-07-31.
  6. Neumann, Clas; Srinivasan, Jayaram (2014-09-22). "Mergers and Acquisitions". Managing Innovation from the Land of Ideas and Talent. pp. 225–234. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.456.4494. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-89283-0_8. ISBN 978-3-540-89282-3.
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