Jul 30, 2021
•10 minute read
SAP CRM
SAP CRM: Managing Customer Relationships Across the Enterprise Lifecycle
SAP CRM encompasses the tools, strategies and processes that SAP customers use to manage interactions across sales, marketing and customer service. As mainstream maintenance for legacy SAP CRM 7.0 has ended or is approaching its deadline, organizations face an urgent decision: migrate to SAP S/4HANA Customer Management, SAP Sales Cloud or the broader SAP Customer Experience portfolio. With the 2027 SAP maintenance deadline accelerating transformation timelines, understanding the current SAP CRM landscape is essential for IT leaders, functional consultants and business stakeholders navigating modernization. Explore resources below for current strategies, migration paths and implementation guidance.
What Is SAP CRM?
SAP CRM is SAP’s customer relationship management platform, covering the full lifecycle of customer engagement across sales, service, marketing and interaction center functions. The legacy SAP CRM 7.0 system is being superseded by a modern portfolio that includes SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud and SAP S/4HANA Customer Management. These next-generation solutions eliminate middleware by embedding CRM capabilities directly into SAP S/4HANA, delivering real-time analytics via SAP HANA and a unified customer data view. The SAP Customer Evolution Program provides a structured migration path for organizations transitioning from legacy SAP CRM to cloud and S/4HANA-native architectures.
What Use Cases Are Referenced?
CRM Modernization Under the 2027 Maintenance Deadline
With mainstream maintenance for SAP CRM 7.0 ending, organizations are evaluating migration paths to SAP S/4HANA Customer Management or SAP Sales and Service Cloud. The SAP Customer Evolution Program offers a structured, low-risk transition approach, helping companies preserve existing business logic while gaining cloud-native capabilities, AI-driven insights and reduced integration complexity.
Bosch Service Cloud Migration via the Customer Evolution Program
Bosch leveraged the SAP CX Customer Evolution Program to transition legacy SAP CRM service processes to SAP Service Cloud, improving customer service delivery and operational consistency. The structured migration approach minimized disruption while enabling the organization to adopt modern AI-assisted case management and service level workflows at enterprise scale.
Transportation Provider S/4HANA CRM Brownfield Migration
A large transportation provider successfully migrated from SAP CRM to SAP S/4HANA using a brownfield strategy, preserving key business logic and custom CRM workflows. The transition delivered a 25% reduction in middleware and integration costs, while embedded analytics gave business users access to real-time insights from consolidated customer and operational data.
What SAPinsider Research Supports This Topic?
SAPinsider: Future-Proofing Business with Seamless CRM Modernization
This SAPinsider analysis examines how the 2027 SAP maintenance deadline is driving CRM modernization decisions, and how the SAP Customer Evolution Program supports low-risk migration to next-generation customer engagement platforms for organizations of all sizes and readiness levels.
SAPinsider RISE with SAP Benchmark Report 2025
The SAPinsider RISE with SAP 2025 benchmark report found that cloud ERP adoption is accelerating as the 2027 deadline approaches, with smaller organizations twice as likely to be live on SAP Cloud ERP Private. CRM modernization is a key workstream for organizations planning their S/4HANA migration and front-office transformation.
Commit to a GREATER Customer ExperienceFor 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.
Elevating Customer Experience with SAP C/4HANA for Consumer Goods and RetailThe 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
Sep 1, 2020
•12 minute read
Launching Platforms for Personalized, Behavioral, Customer-Centric Engagement in Banking and InsuranceLearn 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.
Apr 15, 2020
•9 minute read
Adapting for Success in the Outcome EconomyThe high-tech industry has developed a strong affinity for the mantra the “outcome economy” in response to the shift toward selling outcomes rather than quantities. SAP customers are challenged with finding ways to drive every dollar to more impactful innovation versus spending money on the traditional aspects of running IT. This article outlines the steps companies need to take upon entering the outcome economy. You will learn:
- How high-tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is focused on delivering measurable results that are important to its customers
- How SAP provides the business backbone for companies such as HPE to seek strategic outcomes versus sales-based benchmarks
- Recommendations on the best way for SAP customers to “tear off the bandage” as they shift from selling a physical good to a service, as well as what new metrics and processes are required
Feb 19, 2020
•6 minute read
7 Tips for a Successful CRM or CXM InitiativeThe older your company is, the tougher your CRM or CXM project might be – but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you are like most older organizations, you have all kinds of “home-grown” ways of doing things. You’ve cobbled together a patchwork of data sources and reports. You’ve customized things over the […]
Mar 19, 2019
•8 minute read
Customer Engagement & Commerce: Case study: Lessons learned from a global SAP CRM Interaction Center and resource planning application implementation at Applied MaterialsLearn how Applied Materials implemented SAP CRM Interaction Center and resource planning application (RPA) globally and rolled out a mobile app to dispatch 3,000 customer engineers internationally to create, track, and accept service orders. Click this link to view the slides from this session — CEC2017_vanOpdorp_Casestudylessonslearnedfromaglobal. Peter van Opdorp If you have comments about this […]
Mar 11, 2019
•1 minute read
In a “Customer-First” World, Don’t Let Sales Get Lost in the ShuffleThe market has undergone a major shift when it comes to CRM platforms. Organizations are focusing on the customer experience. Platforms like SAP C/4HANA claim to modernize the “sales-only” focus of previous generations of CRM, and instead take a more holistic system approach with a focus squarely on the customer. But as you consider your […]
Feb 25, 2019
•6 minute read
Beyond the Buzz: Everything You Need to Know About SAP C/4HANA as the Intelligent Customer Experience Management Team Kicks Off 2019 Research AgendaYou’ve heard the buzz about SAP C/4HANA — but how are your peers implementing and using this suite of solutions in the real world? The SAPinsider Intelligent Customer Experience Management (CXM) team will uncover just that in the coming weeks, as we launch the first of a series of upcoming surveys to our insider community, […]
Feb 7, 2019
•2 minute read
SAP CEO Bill McDermott Kicks Off SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 by Announcing SAP C/4HANASAP CEO Bill McDermott kicked off his SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 keynote discussing a simple, yet significant concept: The biggest problems the world faces also represent the biggest opportunities. Whether it’s feeding a growing population, managing a changing environment, or eliminating bias in the workforce, McDermott stated that these problems are best solved by businesses that […]
Jun 5, 2018
•3 minute read
Sealed Air Packages an Improved Customer Experience
As producers of packaging materials, Sealed Air – the inventors of Bubble Wrap – helps organizations deliver products to their customers. Recently, Sealed Air has been focusing much of its energy on delivering better service to its own customers, embarking on a project to realign its customer service processes to new demands. This change, driven by the desire to add value for the customer and put their needs first, needed a technology change to support it. Discover how SAP Hybris Commerce and SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer provided a foundation for optimized customer service and helped Sealed Air deliver greater value to their customers.
Mar 16, 2017
•8 minute read
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