Balancing Today's Needs With Future Imperatives

More than ever, in today's challenging business environment, best-run companies are staying focused on their most valuable assets – their customers. Companies seek to retain their best customers and maximize the effectiveness of every customer interaction – whether it's sales, service, or marketing.

Unlike other CRM software, the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application, part of the SAP Business Suite, not only helps you address your short-term imperatives – to reduce cost and increase your decision-making ability – but can also help your company achieve differentiated capabilities in order to compete effectively over the long term

SAP has helped best-run companies in more than 25 industries to achieve excellence in all aspects of customer relationship management. Learn more:

·      Find out why Forrester considers SAP a leader in CRM.

·      Get a complete picture of SAP CRM capabilities.

With SAP CRM, marketers gain the essential business insights needed to make intelligent decisions, sharpen their focus on customers to drive demand and increase customer retention, and better manage marketing resources to do more with less. Key SAP CRM marketing capabilities include: ·         Marketing resource and brand management ·         Campaign management ·         Segmentation and list management ·         Real-time offer management ·         Loyalty management ·         E-marketing Key Marketing Benefits of SAP Customer Relationship Management SAP CRM enables you to: ·         Align marketing resources to support organizational objectives ·         Understand the returns on your marketing spend ·         Accelerate marketing processes with increased visibility and control ·         Drive customer demand with targeted marketing messages ·         Identify and retain high-value customers with customer loyalty programs ·         Establish a standard, streamlined marketing process with a central marketing platform

SAP Customer Relationship Management

Industry-Specific Processes

SAP CRM was developed with industry-leading companies to address the unique needs of all major industries. Unlike competitive offerings simply branded as "industry specific," SAP CRM addresses your complete, end-to-end requirements.

Examples of industry-specific processes include:

·         Automotive – Organizations gain support for key sales and service processes.

·         Chemicals – SAP CRM provides comprehensive support for key sales and marketing processes.

·         Consumer products – SAP enables customer-centric business process for all consumer product companies, including key support for trade promotion management. Consumer products companies in various industry segments can also benefit from extensive support for marketing and sales and service processes.

·         Retail – such as grocery companies gain support for key processes such as category management and multichannel retailing.

·         Telecommunications – SAP offers support in processes like sales and service fulfillment, dealer management and customer service.

·         Professional services – Professional service providers gain support for client and opportunity management.

·         Public sector – Organizations in the public sector can manage all citizen-driven and tax administration tasks, using various access channels, including processes such as tax and revenue management, social services and social security, and public security, as well as processes to manage government programs.

·         High tech – With SAP CRM, semiconductor manufacturers and high tech OEMs gain support for channel management; quotation, contract, and order management; and customer service management.

·         Industrial machinery and components – SAP CRM supports industrial machinery and components business processes, including sales and marketing and aftermarket sales and service.

·         Media – SAP CRM supports key business processes for newspaper and magazine publishers, including account and contract management, campaign management, advertising sales, subscription sales, and customer service.

·         Utilities – SAP CRM supports business processes for sales, marketing, and service.

·         Oil and gas – With SAP CRM, oil and gas companies can manage their downstream marketing and retailing processes.

·         Wholesale distribution – SAP CRM supports strategic planning processes, including critical marketing planning activities

Features & Functions of Your CRM System: Marketing Software

SAP CRM provides a central marketing platform that enables organizations to analyze, plan, develop, and execute all marketing activities through all customer interaction points. This integrated application empowers marketers with complete business insights – enabling you to make intelligent business decisions and to drive end-to-end marketing processes.

SAP CRM supports critical marketing processes, including:

·         Marketing resource and brand management

o    Manage and optimize the use of marketing resources including budgets, people, time, and assets.

o    Align all activities and resources around strategic marketing goals.

o    Gain visibility and control into your marketing processes.

o    Accurately manage the marketing budgets and costs.

o    Increase brand awareness with proper usage and consistency across enterprise and third-party agencies.

o    Facilitate collaboration among team members and coordinate marketing activities across the enterprise.

·         Segment and list management

o    Manage enterprise customer and prospect data without the need for IT support.

o    Define accurate segments with a consolidated view of all relevant enterprise customer data.

o    Gain insights into customer segments with data visualization features.

o    Easily perform segmentation using an interactive, drag-and-drop interface.

·         Campaign management

o    Make relevant and personalized real-time offers through inbound marketing channels.

o    Execute marketing activities through all inbound and outbound interaction channels: direct mail, e-mail, phone, web, fax, and SMS.

o    Build customer relationships with dialog marketing that builds on previous interactions to make the follow up interactions more relevant and personalized.

o    Leverage online marketing channels to plan, develop, and execute e-mail marketing campaigns.

·         Loyalty management

o    Create specific loyalty programs by defining customer tier levels, points management, and partner management capabilities.

o    Define loyalty rewards program rules, conditions, and offers using the flexible CRM rules builder.

o    Drive loyalty program membership with membership-handling capabilities; robust point management, tier management, and card-handling capabilities across multiple channels.

o    Process points accruals and redemptions with the scalable loyalty-processing engine.

·         Trade promotion management

o    Optimize allocated trade funds to best generate sales volumes and to maximize brand awareness.

o    Centrally plan and align all trade activities with the SAP Trade Promotion application.

o    Accurately develop sale volume forecasts and financial accruals with downstream performance data.

o    Close the loop on trade claim payments and deductions.

o    Automate trade settlements and redemption processes with integration to financials, close the loop on trade activities, and track plan and actual figures.

o    Gain insight into trade promotional effectiveness at multiple planning levels: product, category, account, and segments.

·         Lead management

o    Maintain a single source of all enterprise lead information.

o    Automated the entire lead life-cycle process from lead generation, prioritization, distribution, and follow-up processes.

o    Extend your lead management process to partner organizations to increase conversion rates.

·         Marketing analytics

o    Understand the effectiveness of marketing activities.

o    Convert reports and data into actionable insights.

o    Evaluate effectiveness of various marketing activities, channels, and tactics

o    Use advanced analytical algorithms to cluster, classify, and segment customer base.

o    Predict customer behaviors, anticipate their needs, and create more relevant, targeted messages.

Features & Functions of Your CRM System: Sales Software

SAP CRM helps sales professionals become more efficient and effective, providing the knowledge needed to turn insight into action and acquire, grow, and retain profitable relationships. The application helps organizations plan, execute, and analyze sales operations throughout the sales cycle, find new ways to accelerate buying decisions, uncover new areas of revenue potential, and implement new methods to improve sales productivity.

SAP CRM supports your key sales processes, including:

·      Sales planning and forecasting

o    Enhance performance with coordinated planning and execution of sales activities across all channels.

o    Provide a complete picture of projected revenue and anticipated sales volume over time.

o    Increase the accuracy of demand plans and sales forecasts.

·      Territory management

o    Optimize account coverage and distribution of sales resources across clearly defined territories.

o    Improve resource utilization with clear visibility into assignments and availability.

o    Place the right resources in the right locations at the right time to optimize team performance.

·      Accounts and contacts management

o    Provide a single, comprehensive view of all information necessary to manage your sales accounts.

o    Capture, monitor, and track all critical information about prospects, customers, and partners.

o    Access key contacts, critical relationships, detailed customer profiles, and the status of all recent interactions at anytime and from any location.

·      Activity management

o    Focus the collective energy of your sales team on actions proven to promote profitable business.

o    Foster efficient team collaboration with better transparency and coordination of sales activities.

o    Manage customer visits, account profiles, and activity-driven sales processes.

o    Seamlessly synchronize your e-mail, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks with leading groupware solutions.

·      Opportunity management

o    Track, qualify, and distribute leads to the most appropriate sales professionals.

o    Monitor the conversion of opportunities into revenue.

o    Identify stalled deals, monitor quota attainment, simulate strategies to push deals through the sales cycle faster, and scrutinize the quantity and quality of sales opportunities with pipeline performance management.

·      Quotation management and order capture

o    Guide sales professionals through the product configuration process to ensure that complex product and service recommendations fully meet customer requirements.

o    Ensure consistent, accurate, and up-to-date pricing – regardless of the sales channel.

o    Generate accurate quotes, capture customer orders, confirm product availability, and track orders through to the fulfillment process.

o    Integrate end-to-end business processes to optimize supply chain planning, synchronize billing activities, and ensure the efficient fulfillment of customer orders.

·      Sales contract management

o    Develop and manage long-term customer contracts, incorporate customer agreements into ongoing customer processes, and monitor the sales process from inquiry to completion.

o    Seamlessly integrate with back-end financial and accounts receivable processes to generate invoices, process payments, credit returns, and process claims.

·      Sales performance management

o    Increase revenue and profitability by strategically employing incentive compensation to align the goals of individual sales professionals with those of the organization.

o    Develop, implement, and manage compensation plans to retain and motivate your sales professionals to succeed – allowing them to track performance and simulate potential compensation of deals in the pipeline.

·      Sales analytics

o    Monitor the overall health of your business by creating accurate forecasts, proactively monitoring pipeline performance, effectively managing budgets, and properly allocating resources to meet revenue goals.

FEATURES & FUNCTIONS: LEVERAGING SERVICE SOFTWARE TO REDUCE COSTS

SAP CRM reduces your service costs while enhancing customer satisfaction by increasing efficiency and delivering consistent high-quality service.

The application supports the following key business processes:

·      Sales and marketing for service

o    Develop and execute targeted, installed-base marketing campaigns.

o    Generate and process service contract quotations, and service orders.

o    Conduct solution-based selling.

·      Service contract management

o    Manage service contracts, automatically verify entitlement, manage service-level agreements, and alert agents when a customer's contract is about to expire.

o    Support a variety of service contracts, including standard parts and labor contracts and usage-based contracts.

·      Customer service and support

o    Access information on service histories, contracts and service entitlements, service levels, installed base, and warranties through an easy-to-use interaction center screen.

·      Return and depot repair

o    Automate the entire return and depot repair process, including creating the return materials authorization (RMA), billing and shipping repaired products to customers, and issuing and tracking loaner units as necessary.

·      Field service management

o    Organize, plan, and dispatch service resources to meet service demands using Gantt charts, geo-maps, or a powerful optimization engine.

o    Execute and confirm service orders as well as manage van-stock spare parts with mobile devices.

·      Warranty and claim management

o    Manage the entire warranty and claims process, from return merchandise authorization (RMA) to receipt and inspection.

o    Coordinate with third-party logistics providers to ensure timely customer credits and avoid unnecessary goodwill allowances.

·      Installation and maintenance

o    Track customers' installed base of products and their configuration with graphical hierarchical representation.

o    Predict impact of new product installation for fast and accurate service.

o    Minimize downtime with planned maintenance service.

·      Parts logistics and finance

o    Manage parts inventory and parts procurement with native integration to SAP ERP logistics capabilities.

o    Streamline invoicing, revenue recognition, and cost allocation with native integration to SAP ERP financial capabilities.

·      Service analytics

o    Identify problems and trends, and take corrective action if needed.

o    Gain additional insights by leveraging solutions from SAP BusinessObjects.

·      E-service

o    Provide a secure, personalized portal for customer support and service over the Web.

o    Enable customers to troubleshoot their product issues, create service requests, register products and warranties, and track orders.

·      Channel service

o    Manage and assign external resources to customer services orders.

o    Enable third-party technicians to receive, execute, and confirm service orders.

·      IT service management

o    Streamline IT helpdesk operations with ITIL-compliant solution for incident, problems, request for change, and so on.

o    Provide transparency and increase customer satisfaction with service-level management, knowledge articles, and analytics.

o    Ensure alignment between IT operations and business priorities through native integration between SAP CRM and SAP ERP.

Features & Functions of SAP CRM

Partner Channel Management

SAP CRM provides a Web-based application to manage partner relationships and enable channel partners to sell more effectively. Personalized portals help brand owners manage their partner relationships, collaborate with channel partners, and optimize channel operations. Plus, you can provide channel partners with portal-based access to all the information they need to market to, sell to, and interact with end customers.

With SAP CRM, you can optimize your partner channel management processes including:

·      Partner management

o    Manage channel partner relationships throughout the entire partner life cycle.

o    Recruit new partners, plan and forecast channel sales and revenues, segment your partner base for more effective partner programs and management, manage partner compensation plans, and track partner training and certifications.

·      Channel marketing

o    Motivate partners to sell your products and services rather than competitive offerings.

o    Provide relevant information to partners, maintain consistent branding, engage in joint marketing campaigns with partners, and manage channel marketing funds and partner incentives.

o    Use functionality to manage content, catalogs, collateral, campaigns, and leads – as well as personalization features and a partner locator – to drive demand for your products through channel partners.

·      Channel sales

o    Give your partners and direct sales force the same knowledge, tools, and expert advice.

o    Gain insight into demand across all selling channels to effectively forecast future business.

o    Enable a full range of channel sales processes, including account and contact management, activity management, opportunity management, deal registration, and pipeline forecasting.

·      Partner order management

o    Optimize partner ordering processes and include partners in collaborative selling across organizational boundaries.

o    Enable a complete set of channel order management processes including quote and order management, interactive selling and configuration, pricing and contracts, and point of sale (POS) and channel inventory management.

o    Empower end customers to order products and services across your demand network and support distributed, order-management scenarios.

·      Channel service

o    Ensure consistent and timely service to end customers by providing your partners with the tools and expertise to manage problem resolution and ongoing service relationships.

o    Enable a range of channel service business processes, including knowledge management, service resource planning, service order management, live partner support, warranty management, and complaints and returns management.

·      Partner and channel analytics

o    Get a broad range of standard reports and analyses to determine partner coverage and gaps, partner and channel performance, revenue and sales statistics, the return on your partner investments, your gross margins with partners, and partner utilization.

o    Provide channel partners with reports and analyses relevant to their business.

Interaction Center

SAP CRM helps organizations set up an interaction center that serves as a strategic delivery channel for service, sales, and marketing efforts to maximize customer loyalty, reduce costs, and boost revenue. Organizations can give agents the tools to seamlessly handle inbound or outbound transactions and can give managers role-based access to SAP or third-party administration, maintenance, and reporting analytics to ensure the interaction center operates efficiently.

SAP CRM enables key business processes, including:

·         Marketing

o    Seamlessly coordinate all interaction center efforts, including call lists, agent scripts, promotions, and additional channels, and coordinate them with broader marketing activities to ensure a focus on qualified prospects.

o    Provide agents with all the information they need to deliver relevant information to prospects.

·         Sales

o    Help agents drive more qualified leads into the pipeline, capitalize on cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and process quotes, contracts, orders and status information.

·         Customer service

o    Enable interaction center agents to handle large volumes of incoming e-mail in a direct or automated fashion, as well as communicate by phone or chat sessions.

o    Allow agents to research and diagnose problems, handle complaints, confirm contract entitlements, address customer concerns, assist with returned materials, answer technical questions, make exchanges, and even schedule field services.

·         Shared service center

o    Deploy company-wide HR help desks that streamline employee access to information and enable HR professionals to provide consistent, personalized services.

o    Implement IT service desks to carry out IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) compliant incidents, service requests, problems, changes, and knowledge management.

o    Run an accounting interaction center to provide a help desk for financial accounting related issues.

·         Interaction center operations and administration

o    Manage a multichannel interaction center with a role-based interface that enforces business rules and arms agents with scripts, alerts and messages, and knowledge management features, which speeds customer service.

o    Give managers powerful tools for administering the interaction center.

·         Multichannel communication

o    Integrate multichannel communications solutions, including SAP Business Communications Management and third-party solutions, with your interaction center. These support both inbound and outbound interactions via voice, text messaging, Web contacts, and e-mail.

·         Interaction center analytics

o    Measure, predict, plan, and optimize your interaction centers by analyzing customer interactions, business

Web Channel

SAP CRM provides a Web channel application that enables you to turn the Internet into a profitable sales, marketing, and service channel for consumers and businesses. With SAP CRM, you can empower your customers with a personalized Web experience and convenient self-services. Plus, the application delivers a fully integrated Web channel platform, helping you strengthen sales and service operations while reducing transaction costs and customer service calls.

SAP CRM enables a complete range of Web channel processes, including:

·         E-marketing

o    Support demand generation and customer loyalty processes via the Internet.

o    Personalize your customers' Web experiences with the most relevant and convenient online interactions and information.

o    Generate additional revenue through a Web-based channel via comprehensive support for catalog management, content management, campaign execution, customer segmentation, personalization, and a store locator.

·         E-commerce

o    Run business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) selling processes on the Internet.

o    Enable a full range of online selling processes, including quote and order management, pricing and contracts, interactive selling and configuration, web auctions, and selling via partners.

o    Streamline sales and fulfillment operations with an end-to-end order-to-cash process.

·         E-service

o    Offer your customers an intuitive channel to perform service tasks, from requesting a service visit to logging a complaint or registering a product.

o    Enable customers to perform service-related tasks such as checking order status, obtaining order tracking information, managing accounts and payments, and researching and resolving product problems.

o    Service complex products that require sophisticated maintenance.

·         Web channel analytics

o    Gain insight into, analyze, and act on e-business trends.

o    Measure and optimize the success of your Web shop and online content.

o    Perform analysis across the breadth of marketing, sales, and service from a Web perspective, and track and use Web behavior to target customers and drive future marketing activities.

Flexible Implementation Options for SAP's Customers

SAP gives you an easy way to leverage your existing SAP software and IT investments to build a Web presence. You can implement these functionalities with your existing SAP ERP application for an entry-level solution to quickly turn the Web into a profitable sales and interaction channel. The application supports end-to-end, order-to-cash processes with easy-to-use, interactive selling and self-services – and provides an easy upgrade path to the complete SAP CRM application.

In addition, customizable Web shop templates for different industries and business models, including B2C and B2B models, can speed the enablement of your Web channel.

In addition, SAP solutions and applications support a wide range of business processes related to customer relationship management, including category management, multichannel retailing, price management, price optimization, and sales order management.

DIFFERENTIATE YOUR COMPANY WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE

One of the most effective ways for a business in any industry to achieve a competitive advantage is by offering its customers superior service. But how can businesses provide today's customers with the speedy, reliable, and consistent customer service – delivered though multiple contact channels – that they demand?

SAP Business Communications Management software can help by enabling you to fully leveraging the expertise of the staff within your organization to fulfill customer expectations.

Deliver a Great Customer Experience Through Multiple Contact Channels

SAP Business Communications Management provides an advanced, all-IP communication solution for multichannel contact centers and contact-intensive, multisite organizations. It replaces traditional communications systems hardware with a software-based IP telephony solution that can help make your staff's interactions with customers and partners more effective.

Intelligent routing ensures that customers reach the right people within your organization – people with the skills to best address the customers' needs. Plus, unified queuing, prioritizing, and routing of all contacts, no matter their format – telephone, e-mail, fax, voicemail, text messaging, and the Web – ensures that your users have a smooth, consistent experience.

With SAP Business Communications Management, you can:

·      Manage your organizational resources across functions and locations and better leverage organizational know-how

·      Give your customers a smooth, consistent experience across all avenues of contact, including voice, e-mail, chat, text messaging, and fax

·      Reduce your total cost of ownership

Integrate Communications with Your Business Processes

SAP Business Communications Management allows you to integrate communications technologies and business systems, helping you to create communication-enabled business processes that enhance your marketing, sales, and service activities.

By better leveraging the expertise throughout your organization and monitoring your customer-facing operations in real time, you can significantly improve your internal performance across multiple locations and communications channels.

For additional value, SAP Business Communications Management is preconfigured to integrate with the interaction center functionality of the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application. For example, a company can use the data in SAP CRM to identify a specific customer and route the customer's incoming contacts to the right employee – all without requiring any up-front complex or time-consuming integration work.

REAL-TIME OFFER MANAGEMENT

The SAP Real-Time Offer Management software is an advanced analytical real-time decision engine that enables you to optimize any decision-making process, such as for cross-sell and up-sell offers, retention, service-level adherence, and lifetime value boosting. The software takes into account all relevant information, including up-to-the-moment interaction information, to help you to take the most appropriate next action to enhance customer relationships on all customer interaction channels.

SAP Real-Time Offer Management supports the following processes, including:

·         Offer management

o    Centrally create and manage offers across all interaction channels.

o    Easily define offer targets, eligibility rules, and policies.

o    Simulate and test offer effectiveness before putting it into production.

o    Create and deploy offers without IT dependence.

·         Real-time decision making

o    Make intelligent real-time recommendations for cross sell, up sell, retention, and next-best actions.

o    Take into account all relevant customer information, including session information and other factors such as agent skills and an offer's value, to make the optimal recommendations.

o    Leverage advanced optimization and arbitration real-time analytics accompanied with personalized decision support.

·         Self-learning

o    Automatically adapt offering prioritization to shifting market trends, customer tastes, and seasonality effects.

o    Learn from every customer interaction to anticipate future customer demands.

o    Experiment and automatically learn from responses to recommend offers with highest likelihood of being accepted.

·         Offer analytics

o    Gain insights into offer effectiveness by understanding how and why offers are performing.

o    Review your agents' effectiveness in promoting offers and their conversion rates.

o    Gain a more thorough understanding of your customer segments by seeing their reactions to various offers.

o    Leverage the insights to build more effective and targeted offers.

In addition, SAP solutions and applications support a wide range of business processes related to customer relationship management, including category management, multichannel retailing, price management, price optimization, and sales order management.

Features & Functions: Trade Promotion Management

The SAP Trade Promotion Management application empowers account and trade managers to improve control and visibility of the entire trade promotion process. The integrated end-to-end solution enables managers to accurately plan, increase brand presence, and maximize profitability with trade activities.

SAP Trade Promotion Management provides an integrated enterprise solution for these key areas:

·         Trade funds management

o    Manage the use of trade funds and optimize trade promotion activities.

o    Close the loop on funding and settlement processes by integrating trade funds to trade claims.

o    Accurately manage trade expenses to planned fund amounts.

o    Centrally manage and monitor all trade funds, budget tracking, allocation setting, and utilization.

·         Account planning

o    Develop account volume and execution plans that are aligned with headquarters' plans and objectives.

o    Gain insights into all relevant marketing and promotional activities through the marketing calendar.

o    Develop the best account plans with promotion simulation analysis.

o    Automate the approval process from the headquarters out to the field and to the customer.

o    Manage promotion planning to indirect customers.

·         Trade promotions

o    Develop and execute effective trade promotions to drive sales volumes and brand awareness.

o    Increase planning efficiencies with promotional templates, promotional guidelines, and agreements.

o    Avoid stock outs by integrating the trade promotion planning process with the demand planning process.

·         Sales execution

o    Facilitate promotion sell-in efforts with historical data and insights.

o    Efficiently capture all orders and collateral requests, and feed the information into the demand planning process.

o    Manage field activities with activity management tools to plan customer visits and to perform surveys.

o    Improve your in-store merchandising execution via follow-up store visits and analyzing in-store competition.

·         Trade claims management

o    Efficiently manage disputes according to agreed contracts.

o    Centrally manage all claims with visibility into funds, promotion planning, and validation data.

o    Accurately manage all deductions and payments, including charge-backs, write-offs, and period-end rebates.

o    Validate retail promotion performance to ensure only valid claims are paid.

o    Link claims to associated funds and promotions at payment for accurate accounting.

·         Trade promotion analytics

o    Make mid-course adjustments to trade plans based on on-going trade execution results.

o    Gain insight into trade promotional effectiveness at multiple levels including brand, product, category, account, and segments.

o    Understand total trade promotional spending and resulting volume, profitability, and ROI.

o    Increase planning and forecasting accuracy with historical performance data and access to financial and demand planning data.