Database Reference
In-Depth Information
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Assignment Manager for apportioning and sharing critical information such as leads, cus-
tomers, and service requests across members of an enterprise
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Rule-based data synchronization for the coordination of a mobile force
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A workflow manager for workforce collaboration in reacting to business events
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An assignment engine to automate the assigning of resources to asset of planned activities
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Call scripting to support call center agents in their interactions with customers
The SAP CRM strategy is to integrate all business operations in an overall system for planning, con-
trolling, optimizing, and monitoring all customer-related activities of a given business. SAP CRM
has included hundreds of best-business practices or scenarios that can help an enterprise to restruc-
ture its processes. These scenarios provide logical models for the optimization of the specific business
processes and can be modeled around primary and support business activities. SAP guides an enter-
prise to automatically integrate all primary and support functions of logistics like customer orders,
production, procurement, packaging, delivery, service, and accounting. Companies can simply print
out the relevant data models and analyze the most critical processes quickly and efficiently. The cus-
tomizing features of SAP CRM can then help in implementing the required changes.
7.3.2 Changeability of SAP-Driven Enterprises
SAP-driven enterprises are fundamentally enabled for managing changes in the operations of
the business. There changes could be driven by external market conditions or they could also be
planned and generated internally. You have already seen many aspects of this in the beginning
of this chapter. In this section, we highlight two characteristics of SAP-driven enterprises that
achieve a measure of BPR simply by implementing SAP in the first place.
7.3.2.1 Real-Time SAP Operations Make Processes Transparent
SAP transactions are immediately updated into the concerned functional areas, be they inventory,
party ledgers, accounting, and so on. SAP re-engineers the business immediately to eliminate all
wait times and minimize time period required for communication between various functions.
And all of these postings are done simultaneously so that a consistent view is always available for
any transactions—there is no lag between material, management, or financial accounting of any
transactions. All this adds up to tremendous transparency and visibility in the functioning of the
SAP system and hence the organization.
With traditional systems, which were not integrated and had batch-oriented processing cycles,
a consistent picture was available only for a short period of time near the close of a month or a
year. It also permitted different functions certain latitude in exercising a manner of ownership and
degree of authority even to the detriment of the overall functioning of the company's operations.
By effecting all transaction in real time, SAP also enables the organization to minimize reaction
time to changing situations in the market and take immediate corrective action. This automati-
cally also makes the organization more efficient, which is discussed in the following subsection.
7.3.2.2 Integrated SAP Operations Eliminate Hand-Offs
The integration of all organization functions and processes engendered by SAP eliminates vari-
ous kinds of hand-offs between departments, wherein tasks and copies of related documents
