mySAP CRM 2005, scheduled for release in late 2005, includes enhancements in key marketing, sales, service, and partner areas. This release also contains significant changes in industry-specific business scenarios, analytics for increased decision support, and an improved user interface for productivity. I will introduce you to some of the key enhancements in mySAP CRM 2005 and explain how to approach an upgrade, depending on your current release of mySAP CRM.

Enhancements in Marketing

mySAP CRM offers a number of marketing functionalities from campaign planning and execution to lead management and ROI analytics. mySAP CRM 2005 provides new features designed to optimize your marketing processes. Examples include:

Marketing resource management. This approach to marketing avoids duplicate efforts and wasted resources. New marketing resource management features include scenario planning and digital asset management. Scenario planning helps marketing departments make better decisions about the deployment of their budgets. With scenario planning capabilities, you can build alternative marketing scenarios, perform what-if analyses to compare scenarios, and determine the best marketing program to execute. With digital asset management, companies can keep track of their marketing-related digital content, including images, video, and audio. A portal delivers the digital content to your company as well as to external marketing business partners.

Rule-based lead distribution. The new rule-based lead distribution tool sends leads to the appropriate people for follow-up qualification. The system automatically routes new leads through a number of predefined rules. The channel management solution of mySAP CRM fully integrates rule-based lead distribution to streamline the process of routing leads to channel partners.

Other enhancements in marketing include:

• High-speed segmentation capabilities with the TREX search and classification engine, a standard part of SAP NetWeaver
  
  
• Enhanced graphical user interface for Segment Builder to allow you to model target groups
  
  
• Automatic lead creation via email campaign response, including surveys
  
  
• New features for handling and routing bounced emails associated with campaigns
  
  
• Introduction of Coupon Management, a closed-loop process including redemption rate prediction and success monitoring of discounts you provide to your customers

Enhancements in Sales

You can use the sales functionality in mySAP CRM to empower your inside and field sales force to effectively plan and forecast sales and to drive revenue. Highlights in mySAP CRM 2005 include:

Visit planning. Sales representatives tend to make regular visits to customers in a predefined sequence, such as visiting a certain group of customers on specific days of the week. mySAP CRM 2005 offers a new visit-planning tool that maintains different groupings of customers in a logical way. For example, your visit plan can include items such as the sequence of visits as well as the typical start time and duration of the visit. After you maintain your visit plans, sales representatives can use the automated activity-scheduling tool to select visit plans and schedule them into their calendars.

SAP Field Sales: online support for RIM Blackberry. Handheld devices continue to grow in popularity as sales representatives look for convenient ways to access information. With SAP Field Sales, sales professionals can have anytime, anywhere access to customer information via RIM BlackBerry. This new application provides real-time access to sales processes including activities, opportunities, quotations, orders, and contracts.

Other enhancements in sales include:

• Enhanced available-to-promise (ATP) processing, which allows greater control and sourcing options to order management professionals
  
  
• Improved navigation for applying discounts to sales documents from the document overview screen
  
  
• Commodity pricing based on stock market quotations designed for the oil and gas industry
  
  
• New groupware integration scenario that allows you to transfer account-relevant emails from groupware products into mySAP CRM
  
  
• Improved payment card processing that supports multiple credit cards in a sales document

Enhancements in Service

Service organizations can be a profitable line of business rather than just a cost center. From installed base management and entitlements to preventative maintenance and field service execution, the service functionality in mySAP CRM provides service organizations the tools they need for success. Some of the new service features in mySAP CRM 2005 include:

Usage-based billing. Usage-based billing permits you to bill customers based on their use of products and services. Many different industries use this business process, including high-tech original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), service providers, industrial machinery and components organizations, and financial services companies.

Service agreements. mySAP CRM 2005 allows you to define master service agreements for reference when you create service contracts and service orders. You can use service agreements for stored central terms and conditions that you use consistently with a group of service contracts or orders. For example, you could define a master service agreement for the head office of a company. When you create a service contract for a branch of the head office, you can copy the master service agreement to ensure consistent service offerings, pricing, discounts, and terms.

Other enhancements in service include:

• Complaints and returns management integration with Field Service for better offline capability
  
  
• Enhanced warranty claims management with integration to mySAP ERP Financials and Logistics for closed-loop processing
  
  
• Ability to trigger a mySAP ERP quality notification from a mySAP CRM service complaint, to enable proactive quality control measures
  
  
• Comprehensive installed base fact sheet to provide a better overview of installed objects with hyperlinks to relevant data
  
  
• Enhanced serial number integration for confirmations and complaints

Enhancements in Interaction Center

You can use the mySAP CRM Interaction Center for many traditional call center activities including telemarketing, telesales, and customer service. It can also function as an IT help desk or an employee interaction center. The mySAP CRM Interaction Center helps you distribute information to call center agents to increase productivity. Highlights include:

Lead processing in the Interaction Center Web Client. mySAP CRM 2005 provides new lead processing screens that support a streamlined telemarketing process (Figure 1). With this tool, call center agents instantly see information such as the priority and origin of a lead as well as prospect information. To aid the lead qualification process, the system can offer a survey to the agents that guides them through a series of questions they can review with a prospect, which leads to an accurate lead qualification rating. Based on the qualification status, the system triggers workflows to transfer the lead to the relevant salesperson for follow-up processing.

Figure 1

Process sales leads in the Interaction Center WebClient click here to view a larger version of this image

Simplified business to consumer (B2C) sales order entry in the Interaction Center Web Client. Companies operating in a B2C environment can take advantage of the new simplified sales order entry screens designed for minimum data entry and quick response time. Intended for a lean sales order process, agents enter minimal information such as the product and quantity. To ensure high performance (even with complex ATP logic) the system executes an ATP check in the background so that the call center agent can continue to work. The system also carries out product proposals that are available to the agent via a link for related cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Other enhancements in the mySAP CRM Interaction Center include:

• Complaint and returns handling scenarios via the Interaction Center Web Client
  
  
• Email response management to enhance call center productivity with features such as auto-response and routing capabilities
  
  
• New call list management functionality that assists call center managers to monitor and reassign calls
  
  
• New tools to help you configure screens in the Interaction Center Web Client
  
  
• Enhanced analytical capabilities for improved call center decision support

Enhancements in E-Commerce

E-Commerce allows you to market, sell, and provide service to customers via the Web. Through e-marketing, you can offer a user-friendly Web site with flexible product catalog management and campaign processing. Through e-selling, you can enable your Web shop for sales order entry and order status tracking integrated with your mySAP ERP system. Through e-service, you can provide access to your company’s solution database and frequently asked questions (FAQs), as well as offer the ability to log a service request. Examples include:

Campaign codes in E-Commerce. mySAP CRM 2005 supports B2C campaigns that provide specific campaign codes for your customers to enter in your Web shop to trigger special pricing for given products (Figure 2). In this scenario, a marketing professional plans the campaign in the mySAP CRM marketing application, selects the relevant target group, and then selects how to execute the campaign (e.g., via an email blast or mailer).

Figure 2

B2C Web shop that showcases campaign code support with product recommendations click here to view a larger version of this image

Complaints and returns. With mySAP CRM 2005, SAP offers extended complaints and returns management. SAP designed these enhancements for companies with a sophisticated complaints and returns process requiring the ability, for example, to create a complaint based on multiple predecessor documents such as an invoice, order, or delivery. It also allows you to create a return for a recall (product service letter) or facilitate the return of used parts, including entitlement processing. SAP has also enhanced follow-up processing with streamlined support of approvals for returned goods and invoice correction.

Other enhancements in E-Commerce include:

• Improved product search capabilities in the Web shop
  
  
• Addition of payment card support in the business-to-business (B2B) e-selling scenario
  
  
• Introduction of frameless B2C design
  
  
• Tighter integration with the order management process including support of free goods and delivery priorities
  
  
• B2C checkout offered with Selling via eBay scenario for streamlined processing

Enhancements in Channel Management

You may rely on channel partners (resellers, wholesalers, and distributors) in some markets to sell your products and services. In this case, you need a channel partner program to help you select and retain the appropriate partners. You must empower your partners with the resources they need to effectively market and sell your products and services. mySAP CRM channel management helps you create and sustain your strategy. Here are a few enhancements available with mySAP CRM 2005:

Partner qualifications and certifications. A clear picture of the knowledge areas, product-related qualifications, and certifications of channel partners and their employees helps you to manage an effective partner network. mySAP CRM 2005 allows you to define and capture channel partner qualifications via qualification catalogs. With this information, you can better manage target-training activities for your partner network. In addition, you can also use qualification information when you carry out rule-based dispatching of business documents such as leads so that you select the best channel partner. mySAP CRM 2005 also contains a self-service component that channel partners can use to maintain and request qualifications and certifications.

Interactive Forms. Lead processing based on Adobe Interactive Forms provides channel partners with the option to follow up on leads without logging into your portal. If you work with smaller channel partners or have a new channel partner, you may not want to provide a full-feature partner portal. In these environments, Interactive Forms is an alternate approach for passing business documents to channel partners and for tracking responses. Interactive Forms generates lead-based PDF files for you to distribute to external partners via email. External partners, via the Interactive Form, can accept and follow up on the lead or decline the lead, which in turn updates the lead in your mySAP CRM system.

Other enhancements in channel management include:

• Collaborative campaign management that provides channel partners with up-to-date information about relevant campaigns
  
  
• Rules-based lead and opportunity distribution to streamline the process of routing business transactions to channel partners
  
  
• Enhanced partner lifecycle management to maintain channel partner responsibilities
  
  
• Additional analytics including sales funnel, sales pipeline, and pre-sales effort analysis to help analyze and improve the partner sales channel
  
  
• Enhanced partner task and activity management

Industry-Specific Enhancements

Customer-facing processes differ more by industry than any other business process. The definition of a customer in one industry can be very different from the definition of a customer in another. In the consumer products industry, for example, the customer is often the retailer where the goods are sold. In the pharmaceutical industry, customers are often physicians and health care providers. In addition to providing core customer relationship management functionality across areas such as marketing, sales, and service, SAP delivers industry-specific end-to-end business scenarios designed to get your implementation up and running more quickly and in your industry language. Below are examples of five industry-specific enhancements.

High tech: channel sales management. In the high-tech semiconductor business, OEMs design and sell their components via the design registration process. This business also involves the heavy use of channel partners that distribute and sell the various components. SAP designed the high-tech channel sales management solution in SAP CRM 4.0 to support this business and provide functionality to support requirements such as quote and debit authorizations, point-of-sales management, debit claims management, price protection for channel partners, and channel inventory management. With mySAP CRM 2005, SAP delivers a number of new features to enhance this scenario.

Enhancements include:

• Bill-up and resale return within debit claims management
  
  
• Distributor-to-distributor transfers within channel inventory management
  
  
• Reverse sell-in and sell-through (including reverse sales) within resale tracking
  
  
• Reverse inventory reconciliation within channel inventory management
  
  
• Contract work list within quoting, agreement negotiation, and debit authorizations

Public sector: grantor management. In the public sector, it is very common for federal, state, and local organizations to provide financial assistance for a variety of programs through grants to constituents and businesses. These businesses span many areas including agriculture, commerce, education, health and human services, labor, and environmental protection. Government organizations strive to provide a common face for grant assistance programs and develop an organized, customer-oriented grant payment process. At the same time, they also need to ensure efficient use of human and fiscal resources. With mySAP CRM 2005, SAP debuts the new public sector grantor management business scenario.

Highlights of the solution include:

• Flexible definition of grantor programs and their characteristics
  
  
• Integration of grantor programs with funded programs in public sector management functionality
  
  
• Multichannel application process for constituents via the Web or phone
  
  
• Rule-based assessment of applications triggering a budget encumbrance
  
  
• Business intelligence for monitoring and auditing purposes

Consumer products: trade promotion management. Trade promotion management is a key business process for consumer products companies. It is the main vehicle used to promote products to retail outlets. Manufacturers boost sales of their goods via promotion types such as off-invoice discounts, bill-backs, and performance-based agreements including end-of-aisle displays. SAP CRM 4.0 introduced the consumer products trade promotion management business scenario. The solution includes promotion evaluation and analysis; headquarter strategic sales and promotion planning; field planning; customer sell-in and negotiation; and retail execution and validation. SAP provides several new features for this scenario in mySAP CRM 2005.

Enhancements include:

• Integration of trade promotion management with mySAP CRM rebate functionality
  
  
• Multiple promotion assignment
  
  
• Trigger manual rebate settlement
  
  
• Integration of net-price list results in volumes and trade spend planning
  
  
• Marketing target group as planning customer

Media: intellectual property management. Media companies must manage vast amounts of intellectual property (IP) that they own and control. Keeping track of contracts and processing royalties are just two of the tasks that media companies look to streamline as they do business. The SAP CRM 4.0 solution for intellectual property management offered a range of functions for the media and entertainment industry including rights acquisition and the creation of the IP; development of new media products; sales of rights and licenses; and the management of incoming and outgoing royalties. With mySAP CRM 2005, SAP delivers a number of new features to enhance this scenario.

Enhancements include:

• Distribution in license acquisition
  
  
• Reversals for outgoing royalties

David Glessner

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