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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
Adapting for Success in the Outcome EconomyFeb 19, 2020 — The 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
6 minute read
7 Tips for a Successful CRM or CXM InitiativeMar 19, 2019 — The 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 […]
8 minute read
Customer Engagement & Commerce: Case study: Lessons learned from a global SAP CRM Interaction Center and resource planning application implementation at Applied MaterialsMar 11, 2019 — Learn 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 […]
1 minute read
In a “Customer-First” World, Don’t Let Sales Get Lost in the ShuffleFeb 25, 2019 — The 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 […]
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 AgendaFeb 7, 2019 — You’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, […]
2 minute read
SAP CEO Bill McDermott Kicks Off SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 by Announcing SAP C/4HANAJun 5, 2018 — SAP 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 […]
3 minute read
Sealed Air Packages an Improved Customer ExperienceMar 16, 2017 —
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.
8 minute read
SAP Customers of All Sizes Can Mine Digital InsightsMar 9, 2017 —
What if you could determine the ideal place and time to advertise to your customers that would have the greatest impact on your marketing efforts? In today’s digital economy, marketing campaigns can become even more targeted when leveraging SAP Digital Consumer Insight, SAP’s cloud-based platform that provides mobile data to track movement patterns of a specified group of consumers. Hear how the Chicago Zoological Society partnered up with Vistar Media to leverage SAP Digital Consumer Insight, used the solution to learn the habits of zoo-goers, and then used that data to better market events hosted by the Brookfield Zoo.
5 minute read
Optimizing SAP CRM and SAP ERP Integration: Q&A on Improving Data Transfer, User Experience, and Customer ServiceFeb 1, 2017 — Many customer engagement and commerce integration projects that involve CRM middleware for SAP CRM Sales, SAP CRM Service Manager, and SAP Hybris Billing solutions face a number of challenges including variations in the SAP CRM and SAP ERP data models. Every integration project needs to ensure that the data being replicated is always in sync and […]
30 minute read
Techniques to Optimize Marketing Lead Management and Key Account Management Processes within SAP CRMFeb 1, 2017 — In sales, key account managers often struggle when trying to manage their key accounts and end up adapting standard sales functionality of SAP CRM to efficiently support their very individual needs for navigation, authorization, and reporting of their key account hierarchy. By understanding those challenges and following a comprehensive step-by-step approach, you can implement a […]
19 minute read