Database Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1 SAP: Company and its CRM Product
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions with a sales of more than
$14 billion. With more than 75,000+ employees who operate in more than 34 countries, SAP
has more than 25,000 customers with more than 100,000 installations of SAP across the world.
And, worldwide, more than 15 million users in 120+ countries work on SAP systems. Through
SAP
™
Business Suite, people in enterprises across the globe are improving relationships
with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies
throughout their supply chains. The unique core processes of various industries, ranging from
Aerospace to Utilities, are effectively supported by SAP's portfolio of 23 industry solutions.
hroughout this topic, we will sometimes refer to SAP as a company as well its products by the
same term
SAP
. This should not lead to any confusion because we believe that, at any point, the
context would make it clear as to which meaning is intended.
The phenomenal success of SAP comes from the fact that SAP systems are comprehensive but
at the same time configurable to the specific needs of any company. Companies prefer off-the-shelf
packages like SAP CRM because they are flexible and can be configured to satisfy most require-
ments of any company in any industry. SAP CRM can be deployed on various hardware platforms
providing the same comprehensive and integrated functionality and flexibility for addressing indi-
vidual company's requirements. SAP CRM implements a process-oriented view of the extended
enterprise.
There is a substantial difference between the concept of Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) and Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM
Systems). CRM is a concept of much broader scope than the CRM Systems that
implement a subset of the tenets of CRM. The reason for maintaining this distinc-
tion becomes clear when we consider latest extensions to the traditional CRM like Big Data
Analytics and Social CRM (see Chapter 14, Section 14.10 “Big Data Analytics” and Section
14.11 “Social CRM via Social Networks”). In the next section, we take an overview of the
concept of CRM, whereas Chapter 2 “Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System”
looks at the basic characteristics of CRM Systems of which SAP CRM is a prime example.
Notwithstanding all this, in the next few chapters, we first familiarize ourselves with the
background and significance of CRM before we introduce SAP CRM in Chapter 5. Figure
1.1 presents the underlying Customer Relationship Framework for the whole topic.
1.2 Concept of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a customer-centric business strategy that
encompasses all business models, processes, methodologies, and techniques for closing the gap
between an organization's current and potential performance in acquisition, growth, and
retention of valuable customers for mutual benefit.
In an era where the advantages based only on product features and add-on services are short-
ened to a
click of a customer
(see Chapter 2, Section 2.6 “Customer-Triggered Company”), the key
to success is to forge long-term, profitable relationships with valuable customers. This involves two
major aspects: customer centricity and customer responsiveness. CRM aims to identify the cus-
tomers that are most profitable to the company and optimizes relationships with those customers.
