As mySAP CRM installations become more stable, many companies are focusing on how better to take advantage of their investment in CRM software and data. One way to do this is to leverage SAP NetWeaver BI’s analytical power to help make better decisions in relation to CRM business practices, such as marketing sales customer interactions and Web site design. mySAP CRM Analytics is the collection of SAP NetWeaver (mostly SAP NetWeaver BI) tools that help make the most of a mySAP CRM installation. These tools include data mining and other mathematics-based analytical applications, Analysis Process Designer (APD), and delivered applications developed with Visual Composer 7.0. These tool sets can help analysts uncover new business opportunities, improve how to target customers, and in general process information more efficiently.

As you can see in Figure 1, mySAP CRM provides data to SAP NetWeaver BI, which processes the data and returns the analyses to mySAP CRM. This return of data from SAP NetWeaver BI to mySAP CRM is prevalent in many areas. It could be a simple feed of a target group generated by manual data analysis, or it could be the output of complex data mining algorithms based on millions of sales orders.

Figure 1

Integration points between SAP NetWeaver BI and mySAP CRM

I will give an overview of the extraction mechanism from mySAP CRM, briefly discuss mySAP CRM business processes, and then describe the available analytical tools.

Extractors in mySAP CRM Analytics bring together data and then transfer it into SAP NetWeaver BI for analysis. A newer method is to use SAP cross applications (xApps), applications that can process information from several systems at the same time. With xApps, you can bring CRM and SAP NetWeaver BI data together dynamically at runtime. These applications are in a limited way predelivered as portal content, or you can develop them via Visual Composer without using coding. xApps developed in Visual Composer eliminates the need in some cases to physically move the data.

mySAP CRM Extraction Mechanism

Many SAP CRM business processes require real-time or near-real-time data transfer into or from other systems. For example, when you create a sales order in mySAP CRM, at the same time it must exist in mySAP ERP Central Component (ECC, previously R/3). Imagine you are a global company with distribution centers worldwide. In this scenario, before you can assign an order a promised ship date, mySAP CRM must communicate with Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO) within SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) to get global Available-to-Promise (ATP) information.

Business documents (BDocs) that package the data as it flows between systems handle the communication. The dedicated software for each type of system with which CRM communicates is called an adapter (e.g., BW Adapter). This is true for much of the data that flows from mySAP CRM to SAP NetWeaver BI. Data also can flow out of mySAP CRM to SAP NetWeaver BI using other more standard feeds to the service application programming interface of BI (SAPI). This process is the same as it would be in SAP R/3 or ECC.

A simplified version of the BW Adapter interface appears in Figure 2. CRM delivers an extraction mechanism to feed data into SAP NetWeaver BI from all CRM application areas. In many cases, the system stages this data to SAP NetWeaver BI (the delta queue) with exactly the data it saved in the mySAP CRM transaction at the time it processed it.

Figure 2

Most CRM DataSources use the same generic extraction process, although a few use a BW Adapter to provide transaction data

Data Mining Workbench and APD

A few years ago, the mySAP CRM team at SAP led the initiative for the development of mySAP CRM-specific tools inside SAP NetWeaver BI. These tools were Data Mining Workbench and APD.

Data Mining Workbench is a tool that builds customer-defined data mining models that leverage SAP-provided mathematical algorithms to analyze and discover information (trends and relationships) in mass quantities of data. Access Data Mining Workbench via transaction RSDMWB in SAP NetWeaver BI to create data mining models. Table 1 shows one use for each data mining algorithm. These applications just scratch the surface when it comes to SAP NetWeaver BI data mining that you can use to support CRM.

Data mining provides an object to store the settings needed to run the algorithms (a data mining model) on specific sets of data. In many cases, execution requires preprocessing of the data from many sources to collect the data that the model needs to run. Therefore, actual execution of the models takes place using APD.

APD manipulates data from various sources using predefined and custom transformations in support of a desired analysis task. The transformations can include executing the data mining tasks in Table 1 and many others. In addition, you can save the interim manipulations and the final result for future use.

If this sounds a lot like the purpose of extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) in SAP NetWeaver BI, it should. When you use APD, for the most part you are using data that the SAP NetWeaver BI ETL process cleansed and loaded. Persistently stored output options include SAP NetWeaver BI master data, BI DataStore (previously ODS) objects, CRM business partner attributes, CRM target groups, and CRM product proposals. Some of these cases might involve data mining. For example, data mining application association analysis generates cross-selling product proposals such as “If consumers buy a Behemoth burger, then offer Jumbo fries.”

Extraction is the primary way data gets to SAP NetWeaver BI from mySAP CRM. You can use many SAP-delivered targets and queries to analyze the data. After some analysis, you can use APD as one way of leveraging SAP NetWeaver BI to push the data back to mySAP CRM. Another way is to use mySAP CRM Segment Builder to pull together target groups (discussed later).

Available CRM Analytics

In the sections that follow, I will explain the delivered tool sets specifically designed to support many but not all of the subareas of mySAP CRM, including customer, product, sales, service, marketing, and channel analytics. In many cases, the SAP-provided analysis content involves standard-delivered SAP NetWeaver BI content queries that delivered content providers and dependent ETL objects support. In other cases, SAP provides more complex analytical applications. Although you can define an analytical application as a simple SAP NetWeaver BI query, in this context I want to define it as a set of queries, specialized programs, or other tools packaged together that analyze a specific business issue. In some areas of mySAP CRM, these analytical applications are more prevalent than in others. Analytical applications developed with SAP NetWeaver’s Visual Composer are a recent phenomenon; I’ll discuss these at the end.

Customer Analytics

Customer analytics gives you insight about customers’ buying behavior and satisfaction, as well as their loyalty and churn (turnover) behavior. Furthermore, you can use customer analytics to determine a customer’s value to your company. mySAP CRM and SAP NetWeaver BI work together to provide analysis tools and reports (queries) targeted at analyzing your customers. Analytics can help answer questions such as:

• Who are my customers?
  
  
• On average, for how long do we retain a specific customer?
  
  
• What is our turnover of customers from period to period?

Some of the content in customer analytics contains simple queries that list customers and their information. Other content is much more sophisticated. For example, one section of customer analytics leverages stored results from Data Mining Workbench to look at the migration of customers from one grouping to another over time. An example of this migration analysis content includes reports and charts showing ABC analysis over time. In a simplified example, this content would answer the question: How successful was our recent promotion in turning B customers into A customers?

An example of an SAP-provided analytical application called customer lifetime value analysis (CLTV) brings together information from many sources to determine how much the average customer spends over his lifetime as your customer. This lifetime is divided into customer-specific/industry-related lifetime periods (e.g., 12 months/period for the automotive industry). It also produces reports that show profit/loss and how many customers churn during any specific lifetime period.

Customer analytics would not be complete without discussing Survey Suite, a tool you can use to survey your business partners. You could have a marketing campaign with a link to Trade Promotion Management (TPM) using Survey Suite and customer segmentation. With Survey Suite, you design custom surveys (without using coding), link them to an email campaign, and then send the survey results to SAP NetWeaver BI for analysis. For example, a computer distributor could send a promotion to customers who plan on buying more than 1,000 computers within the next three months.

Product Analytics

Product analytics provides you with the processes for cross-selling and competitor analyses. They offer valuable information about the interdependencies between your products and competitors’ products.

Although it may seem that you would need a simple set of business content to support product analytics, the volume of information and the complexity of relationships among product purchases create analysis complexity. To solve these complex issues, you need data mining. You apply the association analysis data-mining model to sales data to generate product relationships (associations). In my closed-loop SAP NetWeaver BI to mySAP CRM scenario, the system sends the data mining results back to mySAP CRM as product proposals.

Sales and Service Analytics

Sales and Service analytics provides reports to monitor, control, and measure sales and service activities. In these areas, SAP NetWeaver BI supports mySAP CRM with delivered SAP NetWeaver BI content in the form of InfoProviders, queries, and ETL components for each subarea in Sales and Service.

Delivered DataSources from mySAP CRM feed the InfoCubes and DataStore objects with linked queries. As with other areas of mySAP CRM, Sales and Service uses an SAP NetWeaver BI application called Integrated Planning, or the older Business Planning and Simulation (BPS), in addition to simple queries. I will discuss planning in the “Marketing Analytics” section, but the concepts also apply in Sales planning.

Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics provides information to help you create and optimize marketing campaigns. In this area, SAP NetWeaver BI, mySAP CRM, and ECC have a lot of intricate content, not just basic InfoCube or DataStore objects. Compared to a simple set of SAP NetWeaver BI queries, this content is much more involved. Two examples are recency, frequency, monetary (RFM), and CLTV, which I discuss below. Additionally, the new SAP NetWeaver tool called Visual Composer supports some marketing content (see below).

Many marketing campaigns lack measurements of success (e.g., cost for the campaign, revenue generated by the campaign and the proportion of targeted versus responding customers). With mySAP CRM, SAP NetWeaver BI, and ECC, you can perform scientific success analysis. Table 2 provides an overview of the steps involved in marketing analytics.

In addition to capturing cost, SAP NetWeaver BI supplies many other analytical tools to support marketing. These include decision trees, clustering, scoring, and ABC analysis to help you create target groups. Additionally, SAP NetWeaver BI offers RFM analysis. This specialized analysis tool internally uses APD to provide the following information about customer purchases:

• How recently they occurred (R)
  
  
• How frequently they occur (F)
  
  
• How much profit (monetary value) they generate (M)

The RFM model is a common way to determine a value for purchased mailing lists. Although it may not work for all industries, it can add an additional classification that might differentiate customers. The result of the RFM model is a rating level for each customer in each category. For example, the RFM rating for your most recent, frequent big spenders could be 5, 5, 5, where 5 is the highest rating for each R, F, and M category.

You select the rating scale for the RFM model to create grouping codes for your customers. You do not need the same scale for each category. For example, you could have 4 as the highest rating for R segments, but 3 as the highest rating for F segments, and 2 as the highest rating for M segments, so some of your customers would be in the 4, 3, 2 group. After some experimentation, including results of some previous campaigns, you can determine if one group is more likely to buy than another on your next similar campaign.

mySAP CRM Segment Builder is another tool you can use with Marketing Analytics. Segment Builder allows you to create marketing target groups. Using a drag-and-drop graphical user interface (GUI), you can drag attributes such as “region” and “hobbies” with the desired values into a target group for a marketing campaign. For example, you could target boat owners who live in California. The data to support this selection process can come from the business partner data in mySAP CRM or from SAP NetWeaver BI. This is significant because it means that without knowing it, a marketing person can access queries and InfoProviders indirectly in SAP NetWeaver BI.

Planning is another marketing analytics tool you can use with mySAP CRM and SAP NetWeaver BI. Even if you cannot apply this concept with your marketing team right away, most companies use Sales or Service planning. This section applies almost entirely to these areas and others in mySAP CRM, such as call center planning or opportunity planning.

To maintain data, this process involves SAP NetWeaver BI databases called real-time InfoCubes as the storage container, Microsoft Excel or Web-based input screens, and planning functions (similar to macros in Excel). SAP NetWeaver BI planning can eliminate planning based on exchanging Excel-based spreadsheets. Planning in mySAP CRM is really planning in SAP NetWeaver BI with or without tight integration. (Tight integration involves embedding SAP NetWeaver BI planning screens inside mySAP CRM transactions.)

Planning in SAP NetWeaver BI is in transition from a great tool to a fantastic one. The SAP BPS tool set is what you need for integrating planning input screens seamlessly into some important CRM transactions (Opportunities and Marketing, for example). SAP offers a new planning tool, SAP NetWeaver BI Integrated Planning, with SAP NetWeaver 2004s. The advantage of this tool over SEM-BPS or BW-BPS is that it is much more tightly integrated with existing SAP NetWeaver BI front-end tools, including BEx Analyzer, Web Application Designer (Web AD), and BEx Query Designer. The disadvantage is that this is so new that seamless integration (embedded screens) with mySAP CRM is not yet possible.

BW-BPS provides tight integration in Marketing Planner. Not only do you have the ability to nest BPS planning inside mySAP CRM; the system also automatically creates master data for the new campaign in SAP NetWeaver BI and saves the campaign in mySAP CRM.

A special version of Marketing planning involves trade promotions planning to determine the increased sales (uplift) when you offer “buy 2, get 1 free.” This is called TPM in mySAP CRM. The type of planning enables you to assign uplift volume (which you can transfer to APO) and generate condition records (for discounts) that you can use in mySAP CRM Sales or in ECC. The conditions tag the invoice/order to a promotion, then the system transfers that tag to CO-PA and into SAP NetWeaver BI. You analyze this information to determine the effectiveness of the promotion.

Channel Analytics

Channel analytics provides information about how you sold an item. Which channel did you use — Interaction Center (IC), Internet, a partner, or direct sales? Channel analytics answers the questions “How effective was this channel?” and “What can you do to make it more effective?” For example, you can create a useful channel analytics report that shows sales broken down by channel to see how much of your business comes over the Web as opposed to direct person-to person (field) sales.

While you might expect SAP NetWeaver BI content to support the question “Which channel had more sales?” SAP systems such as E-Commerce and IC provide much more specific SAP NetWeaver BI channel analytics content. For example, SAP E-Commerce provides content that not only tells you how many hits a given Web page received, but also how many people put product X into their Web shopping basket and did not purchase it. IC provides queries about the number of calls each operator processed and the sales each operator made. This is a critical connection, as the number of calls per day might be one factor for success, while calls without sales might be unimportant.

Visual Composer Analytics

Visual Composer 7.0 is now an official component of SAP NetWeaver. It is an application development tool where technically minded power users can quickly develop and deploy Web-based applications, including xApps, without the need for manual coding. Visual Composer’s best feature is that its applications can source and link data from different sources, including mySAP CRM, mySAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver BI, and non-SAP systems.

Figure 3 shows Visual Composer’s Storyboard where power users design applications. It is a Java-based application with a minimal amount of software to install at the client level.

Figure 3

Storyboard in Visual Composer

The Storyboard in Figure 3 generates Web output such as those in Figures 4 and 5. Designers can use sources of data from SAP CRM, ECC, SAP NetWeaver BI or many legacy systems exposed to the portal using industry-standard interfaces.

Figure 4

Visual Composer displays sales by country in a pie graph

Figure 5

Visual Composer shows a bar graph comparing open and incoming orders by region

You can integrate Visual Composer into your campaign management tool set. SAP provides an integrated cockpit created in Visual Composer combining Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) to set the status of a campaign in CRM with Campaign Analytics coming from SAP NetWeaver BI. With this cockpit, you can analyze long-term trends and then act on those trends in the same Web-based GUI. For instance, the data might persuade you to cancel a sales campaign. Visual Composer may be the future of analytics.

Ned Falk

Ned Falk is a senior education consultant at SAP. In prior positions, he implemented many ERP solutions, including SAP R/3. While at SAP, he initially focused on logistics. Now he focuses on SAP HANA, SAP BW (formerly SAP NetWeaver BW), SAP CRM, and the integration of SAP BW and SAP BusinessObjects tools. You can meet him in person when he teaches SAP HANA, SAP BW, or SAP CRM classes from the Atlanta SAP office, or in a virtual training class over the web. If you need an SAP education plan for SAP HANA, SAP BW, BusinessObjects, or SAP CRM, you may contact Ned via email.

You may contact the author at ned.falk@sap.com.

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