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What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer relationship management (CRM) includes the practices and strategies that companies utilize throughout the customer lifecycle. Companies interact with customers in a variety of ways — sales, marketing, and customer service — with the intent to retain the relationship and increase sales growth opportunities.
Technology plays a critical role in CRM initiatives. Insights from data and analytics provide a myriad of opportunities to enhance customer relationships.
Key benefits of CRM systems include:
- Improved customer experience
- Increased customer retention
- Higher sales revenue
- Greater process efficiency
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders
What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer relationship management (CRM) includes the practices and strategies that companies utilize throughout the customer lifecycle. Companies interact with customers in a variety of ways — sales, marketing, and customer service — with the intent to retain the relationship and increase sales growth opportunities.
Technology plays a critical role in CRM initiatives. Insights from data and analytics provide a myriad of opportunities to enhance customer relationships.
Key benefits of CRM systems include:
- Improved customer experience
- Increased customer retention
- Higher sales revenue
- Greater process efficiency
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders
- Ensure your SAP CRM system has clean data and is updated. When sales opportunities arise, they are entered into SAP CRM, initiating the beginning of the sales cycle phase. Customers may be at different phases, such as learning about the company’s products or in the decision-making phase of selecting a vendor.
John Burton, Director of Product Management at SAP, and William Pritchett from Dow Corning Corporation, share their insights about SAP CRM sales stages and keeping records updated. “The value in the Sales Stage field is used to indicate the current phase in the buying cycle. This field can also be used to indicate automatic closure of opportunities that have not been updated within a specified period,” they write. Read the full article to learn how to keep SAP CRM opportunities clean.
- Integrate SAP CRM and SAP ERP projects successfully to assure data synchronization. When replicating data between SAP CRM and SAP ERP, there are several critical decisions and enhancements required to ensure optimal system performance post integration. Don’t underestimate time-tested techniques and strategies that lead to seamless integration.
Allen Roholt, SAP Consultant at ECENTA, answers questions about how to apply these proven techniques that drive enhanced user experience. Such user experience “encompasses comprehensive visibility into the data they interact with, as well as seamless transference of data between systems, allowing for sales and services processes to flow uninterrupted.” HYPERLINK “https://sapinsider.org/optimizing-sap-crm-and-sap-erp-integration-qa-on-improving-data-transfer-user-experience-and-customer-service/”Read the full article to learn more about customer engagement and commerce integration projects. the full article to learn more about customer engagement and commerce integration projects.
- Leverage the sales features that exist within SAP CRM. Adapting the standard sales functionality of SAP CRM could lead to missed opportunities that support the specific needs of key accounts.
Dr. Ahmed Hezzah, Senior Manager at Accenture, provides his insights on implementing a key account management solution for a global organization that leverages the sales features already available in SAP CRM. He answers “marketing and sales questions on implementing effective campaign execution and lead generation processes across marketing and sales within SAP CRM to identify and close more sales opportunities, enhance key account processes, and support lead qualification and routing processes.” Readthe full article to glean Dr. Hezzah’s strategies.
25 results
Finding the Power of the Right Customer PortalJul 3, 2025 — In today's competitive landscape, companies like Serrala enhance customer loyalty and operational efficiency by providing a user-friendly, automated customer portal that streamlines payments, reduces manual workloads, minimizes errors, and improves cash flow visibility.
3 minute read
Codeless AI in Salesforce TestingJan 28, 2025 — Salesforce CRM's popularity stems from its robust cloud-based features, making efficient testing essential for ensuring reliability, security, and seamless scalability of applications while addressing aspects like data integrity and user experience.
1 minute read
Delivered a delightful online B2B shopping experience using SAP Commerce Cloud for Digital Age CustomersDec 30, 2024 — Created an enhanced partner portal for distributors, dealers, contractors, and engineers to enable improved partner relationships and provide a consistent and user-friendly digital journey. The new website will be the one stop shop for all partner activities and easy to use with seamless integration to relevant systems.
3 minute read
How to Handle SAP CRM MigrationsNov 17, 2023 — Do you have SAP ECC and SAP CRM 7?
Are these two complimentary systems critical to your organization?
What is your plan to update both ECC and CRM 7 by 2027?
If you have both ECC and CRM7, you may be in the Utilities, Automotive or High-Tech vertical. Public Sector and IT and Professional Services companies often have both as well. No matter what vertical you are in, I know these tightly integrated systems are critical to your business. For your Sales and Service departments, for your tech teams out in the field, and most definitely your marketing department is making the most of the CRM7 engagement layer to up-sell to your customers.
Your SAP CRM7 is a CRITICAL system running important aspects of your business And now we have to upgrade it.
In this article, SAPinsider expert Ann Largent will walk you through the key considerations that must be made ahead of an SAP CRM transition, and what aspects of the business you can expect to be most impacted.
7 minute read
DataXstream Partners with Pearl Group for Transforming Sales Process ManagementJul 19, 2023 — DataXstream has partnered with Pearl Group, one of the Nordic region's leading providers of ERP, Insight, Cloud Services and advanced marketing and e-commerce solutions. The partnership is set to support organizations in modernizing and streamlining their sales process management across sales channels with DataXstream’s application, OMS+. In accordance with SAP’s digital transformation roadmap, both DataXstream and Pearl Group will deliver the best buying and selling experience to their customers. Both companies hold extensive expertise in SAP domain with over their accumulated experience of more than 20 years in SAP and omnichannel sales.
OMS+, is an SAP-endorsed application that is engineered to support and enhance multi-channel sales operations through automated processes, data consolidation, and an accessible user interface. It is available on the SAP Store as an Endorsed App, and is an approved solution developed specifically for SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and SAP ERP systems.
1 minute read
King Arthur Baking Company Enhances its Omnichannel Strategy with DataXstreams’s OMS+Jul 7, 2023 — King Arthur Baking Company, a 100% employee-owned ESOP and omnichannel seller of baking goods, has purchased DataXstream’s OMS+ solution to enable expansion into new markets and diversify their sales channels. DataXstream, an SAP solution specialist, primarily focuses on sales and distribution order management. Their product, OMS+, is an SAP-endorsed application that is engineered to support and enhance multi-channel sales operations through automated processes, data consolidation, and an accessible user interface. This purchase intends to facilitate King Arthur's business expansion into novel markets and additional sales channels as OMS+ optimizes multi-channel sales by automating processes, aggregating data, and offering an intuitive interface. The solution is specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with SAP, operating in real-time and utilizing SAP data.
2 minute read
Commit to a GREATER Customer ExperienceJul 30, 2021 — For all the talk about the importance of a great customer experience (CX), many companies are struggling to provide it. Only 26% of respondents to a survey conducted by SAPinsider said they are currently investing in CX initiatives and could confidently say that their organization has a dedicated CX budget.
This lack of commitment proves perilous for businesses as today’s customer expectations rapidly evolve across the buying landscape, including direct to consumer (D2C), business to business (B2B), or business to consumer (B2C).
Creating a great CX is not an initiative a company launches, but a commitment that resonates through every part of the organization.
In an ever-changing business landscape, companies need to examine their customer interactions with fresh eyes. This is especially true in light of the changes brought by COVID-19, which has accelerated buying trends and customer expectations.
Within both B2B and B2C, creating a satisfying CX means having an end-to-end perspective of the customer journey. “You need to understand the customer journey from presales to sales to post sales,” says Sree Gogineni, Chief Technology Architect at Capgemini.
Customers today, both B2B and B2C, are digital natives. They are used to being able to get the information they need to make decisions right away. They don’t want to make phone calls; they want to go online and self-serve.
Reshaping the CX is not an “all or nothing” approach of a portal or online offering. It’s about providing the right experience to customers in the channel they want to use. The online channels satisfy customers who might need a switch or panel — the type of one-off orders that the company didn’t even realize it was missing out on before.
Read this article and learn:
- How companies are making a total commitment to customer experience (CX);
- What it truly takes to understand the customer and the feedback management involved to deliver better CX;
- Why it is essential to move beyond a persona level to a one-on-one level in personalizing your CX approach;
- How the SAP Customer Experience portfolio helps companies deliver a unified digital CX.
10 minute read
Elevating Customer Experience with SAP C/4HANA for Consumer Goods and RetailSep 1, 2020 — The explosion of digital technologies and the new possibilities they have created has dramatically reshaped customer behaviors and expectations, and the pace of change is only increasing. Customer interactions are evolving rapidly, the number of communication channels has exploded, and customers expect to engage across them seamlessly. As today’s customers segment themselves into tribes that share common mindsets and goals rather than age, gender or socioeconomic factors, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and retailers are experimenting with creating new human-centric experiences to better engage their customers, create higher value for them, and thus achieve much faster growth and better ROI.
This article will help you understand:
- How customer behaviors and expectations have changed in the digital age and why CPG companies and retailers must change their business capabilities in order to stay relevant
- Implications those changes have on the front-office architecture design to enable intelligent customer experiences
- How SAP C/4HANA can help CPG companies and retailers effectively engage with customers and consumers on different digital touchpoints
- Why choosing a human-centric and agile approach is key to success when designing for change and innovation
12 minute read
Launching Platforms for Personalized, Behavioral, Customer-Centric Engagement in Banking and InsuranceApr 15, 2020 — Learn how Discovery Group recently partnered with SAP to extend its offerings to provide personalized, behavioral, customer-centric engagement, journeys, and outcomes for its members. On the insurance side of the business, Discovery Health created a unique program to incentivize healthy behavior through its Vitality brand, rewarding members for their healthy living choices. On the banking side, it introduced the “world’s first behavioral bank,” Discovery Bank, which offers clients personalized interest rates and banking offers based on an individual’s behavior, such as paying bills on time or saving money. This case study showcases how its possible to differentiate by applying accumulated data in new ways to improve experiences.
9 minute read