It is hard to imagine a Porsche shopper complaining to the dealer: “I’m confused, should I buy the 911, Cayman, Boxster, or Cayenne?” Yet, many SAP CRM customers feel confused by the various telesales options available in Interaction Center (IC), specifically for IC WebClient. The older IC WinClient application is rather straightforward, with only two options: create the order directly in CRM via the embedded CRM sales order, or create the order in the back-end R/3 system via a Remote Function Call (RFC) using the Action Box tool.

In comparison, IC WebClient offers five sales entry options — each with a different set of strengths and limitations. We’ll explain each of the various options and offer some guidelines to help you choose the right sales order entry option. You’ll see that it can be as fun and easy as choosing a new sports car.

Front-End Sales Order Options

Let’s start first by looking at the options for creating orders directly in the front-end CRM system. Afterwards, you can replicate orders to the back-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for fulfillment — picking and packing, delivery, invoicing, and billing.

CRM Sales Order

Beginning with SAP CRM 4.0, SAP integrated the standard CRM sales order screen into IC WebClient (Figure 1). The CRM sales order user interface (UI) is geared toward Business-to- Business (B2B) sales scenarios. The screen contains many line items that allow the user to add products to the order without scrolling. To save screen space, only the most important header and item information is displayed on the main screen. Details such as pricing and product proposals are not displayed on the main screen, but you can access them by navigating to separate pages. In general, the large number of line items and the detailed pricing options make the standard CRM sales order ideal for organizations doing B2B sales.

Figure 1

Designed for B2B scenarios, the CRM sales order contains more line items and more fields on the screen than the sales ticket

Sales Ticket

In SAP CRM 2005, SAP introduced a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) sales option in IC WebClient called the sales ticket (Figure 2). Whereas the standard CRM sales order screen is designed with the professional buyer in mind — who might be buying dozens (or hundreds) of items at once — the sales ticket is optimized for a B2C scenario and contains fewer line items because consumers usually only buy a few items at a time. In addition, all the necessary information is always available on the main screen of the sales ticket, reducing the need for the agent to navigate to other screens. This saves time and keeps the IC agent from losing sight of the item list.

Figure 2

Designed for B2C use, the sales ticket contains fewer line items and fewer fields on the screen than the CRM sales order

Another difference between the sales ticket and the CRM sales order is that the sales ticket screen is less detailed (i.e., contains fewer fields) by default. However, the enhancement concept of IC WebClient enables you to add, remove, or replace fields on a project basis via custom coding without modification. In SAP CRM 2006s, currently in limited release, such adjustment layouts are supported by a graphical editor called the UI Config Tool.

PCUI Sales Order

Some companies chose to integrate the People-Centric User Interface (PCUI) sales order into their interaction centers. The PCUI concept was introduced with SAP CRM 3.1 to provide a set of standard, consistent pattern-based screens that you could access via a Web browser from SAP Enterprise Portal (Figure 3). Technically it is possible to embed PCUI screens — such as the PCUI sales order — into IC WebClient (without the Portal) via the Transaction Launcher tool.

Figure 3

Sales order in PCUI screen

However, integration between PCUI screens and IC is not standard, so additional work is necessary to pass parameters back and forth (e.g., to add the newly created PCUI sales order to the activity clipboard of the Interaction Record in IC). Additionally, support for PCUI in CRM is discontinued after SAP CRM 2005. Unless you have a compelling need to use the PCUI option, you should avoid this approach because of the difficulty in passing parameters back and forth between IC and PCUI via the Transaction Launcher/Action Box.

With any of the above techniques, sales orders are created directly in the front-end CRM system. Pricing — including variant pricing for variant configuration — is done using Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC), the standard pricing tool for all of CRM. Similarly, you can perform Available-to-Promise (ATP) checks using either Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO), or a direct RFC call to the back-end ERP system. After you create orders in SAP CRM, you can replicate them automatically via CRM Middleware from CRM to the back-end ERP system for processing and fulfillment.

Order Entry Options in Your Back-End System

Now let’s look at the options for creating sales orders in the back-end ERP system directly from the front-end CRM system via IC. Organizations might want to consider creating orders in ERP rather than CRM for a number of reasons. Here are a few examples:

• The organization already uses R/3 or SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) for sales, and is considering adding CRM in a phased approach, perhaps starting with some Marketing functionality. Here it probably makes sense to leave the sales processing in ERP, at least for the short term.
• The organization already uses R/3 or ECC for sales, and has a significant investment in custom code and configuration, including pricing conditions, custom fields, user exits, and user statuses. In this case, there may be no compelling reason to undertake the substantial rework necessary to migrate the existing ERP functionality to CRM and IPC. This is especially the case if the organization lacks the in-house skills, such as Java expertise, necessary to maintain the IPC environment.
• The organization already uses R/3 or ECC for sales, and the users are comfortable with the current screens and don’t have time now for retraining. Here it could also make sense to leave the sales processing in ERP for the short term.

R/3 Sales Orders

Since the first release of SAP CRM, you could integrate the back-end R/3 sales order (i.e., the VA01/VA02 transaction) into IC. To accomplish this, you have two standard options available:

• Transaction Launcher (via Internet Transaction Server [ITS]) for IC WebClient, as shown in Figure 4
• Action Box (via RFC) for IC WinClient

Figure 4

R/3 sales order (via Transaction Launcher)

Despite its name, the R/3 sales order is not limited to older R/3 systems — you also can use it with newer ERP back-end systems, such as ECC 5.0 and 6.0. The integration with IC requires at least R/3 4.6, but supports all higher R/3 and ERP back ends.

The advantage of the R/3 sales order approach is that customers can reuse their back- end sales order configurations, screen layouts, pricing conditions (including variant pricing and configuration), and other custom processes. The downside of this approach is that it does not provide integration with SAP CRM Marketing product-proposal functionality. The CRM system is not aware of which products are added to the back-end R/3 or ERP sales order, so it cannot propose related CRM Marketing-based up-sell or cross-sell offers.

The system saves R/3 sales orders to the Interaction Record’s Activity Clipboard, so they are available for display in IC automatically. You can also display the R/3 sales order history as a custom view in the Fact Sheet on a project basis. If you want to display the R/3 sales orders in CRM outside of IC — such as in Mobile Sales or Internet Sales (non-R/3 or non- ERP Edition) — you must replicate the R/3 order data into CRM via CRM Middleware.

ERP Sales Order

As of SAP CRM 2005, you can use the ERP sales order to create sales orders in ERP via the IC WebClient. The ERP sales order is an actual IC WebClient screen with the standard SAP CRM look and feel. See Figure 5 for an example of the ERP sales order screen.

Figure 5

The ERP sales order screen (via API)

The main advantage of this approach is that the ERP sales order logic is integrated with the CRM Marketing product-proposal functionality in one UI. Users can access back-end ERP order processing capabilities, while using CRM Marketing-based product proposals, such as accessories and up- sell, cross-sell, and down-sell proposals.

This option requires ECC 6.0 on the back end, so if you are running R/3, R/3 Enterprise, or ECC 5.0, you would first need to upgrade to ECC 6.0. It is also worth noting that SAP continues to develop the ERP sales order Application Programming Interface (API) — currently it does not provide support for a number of advanced features, such as variant configuration and variant pricing.

Final Thoughts

Table 1 contains a matrix to help determine which of the recommended sales order processing options provides the best fit for your company. You should base the decision on a detailed analysis of both the required sales processes and data. It may also be appropriate to consider the skills and familiarity of employees with their current sales-order interface.

For example, say you maintain extensive pricing conditions in ERP (without any variant pricing) and want to leverage CRM Marketing-based product proposals. However, your agents are very comfortable with the ERP sales order. In this case, you should consider the CRM-based ERP sales order API rather than the CRM sales order or sales ticket. If variant configuration is also required, then you should use the R/3 sales order to call transaction VA01 directly via Transaction Launcher.

John Burton

John Burton is a director of product management at SAP and is responsible for the SAP CRM Interaction Center (including ERMS) and social CRM topic areas. John has 13 years of experience at SAP and has been involved with SAP CRM and the Interaction Center since 1999. He is also the author of Maximizing Your SAP CRM Interaction Center, available at the SAPinsider Store. John is an alumnus of the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University. John can be found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/sapjohnburton.

You may contact the author at john.burton@sap.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.

Henning Duerholt

Henning Dürholt worked as an SAP R/3 SD and SAP CRM trainer and consultant for eight years before joining the SAP CRM Product Management in 2005. Focusing on the Interaction Center, he works on the integration of Interaction Center with back-end processes such as Logistics and SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) as well as on the communication integration of SAP CRM processes.

You may contact the author at henning.duerholt@sap.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.