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 mobile clients (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 decision-making.
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 userfriendly and configurable interface:
Marketing Planning,
Campaign Management,
Lead Management,
E-Marketing,
Market Analytics,
Customer Segmentation.
SAP CRM Sales
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 userfriendly.

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 userfriendly 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, Ecommerce, 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:
For a Sales Order entered through any of the implemented UIs, check on
delivery needs to be performed.
For this, Available-to-Promise (ATP) checks are implemented on connected
SAP SCM system.
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:

Internet applications:
Internet Sales
Internet Customer Self-Service
Internet Pricing Configurator
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-torun 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 L-Shape. 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:

System Links
Saved Searches
Work Area Title
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: