SAP is on Track to Elevate CRM. But are Customers Ready?
At SAP’s 5th annual Influencer Summit in Boston yesterday, the business software provider announced the launch of its next evolution CRM solution. With new capabilities, such as trade promotions management, business communications management, and pipeline performance management, SAP says the new release will give users easier access to information and the speed to go to market faster.
The release is significant in that the product was co-developed with the company’s customers and partners with a focus to solve real business problems. “It’s been a journey,” said Bill Wohl, vice president of global CRM at SAP.
That’s because, as Bob Stutz, senior vice president CRM global strategy and development, at SAP, explained, until a couple years ago, “Buying SAP CRM was like buying a dump truck full of Legos, dumping it into your front yard, and then needing an army of consultants to put it together.”
Stutz, who came to SAP in 2005 from Siebel, said he was disappointed when he first went through the company’s CRM product. And the customer feedback was brutal. Many told him, “It’s hard to use—it has a lot of good deep functionality—but very difficult to use.” That’s when he set out on a journey to work with the company and its customers to create a dynamic and easy-to-use solution.
However, SAP’s CRM journey may be delayed a couple years. Users who I spoke to at the conference told me that their enterprises were still deploying CRM from the 2005 release. A customer from DuPont even said his company’s deployments won’t be completed for a couple more years.
At Siemens Ag, the company has 500 different customer-facing systems and even though SAP’s SOA architecture will help to decrease the complexity by providing a uniform way to link all of the company’s legacy systems, the customer said it will take years to get the entire culture and processes to the point necessary to be able to effectively run on one system. “We’re very siloed,” he said.
SAP’s on the right track to elevate CRM beyond traditional task automation to user-driven end-to-end business processes with the goal of improving customer loyalty and bringing intelligence into all customer interactions. The company’s customers, however, need to catch up fast if they want to create a customer-centric culture. My advice: Begin with a strong strategy, and communicate clearly, relentlessly and consistently, bringing in employees throughout the process. SAP is poised to help with the rest.
Did you enjoy this content? Sign up for our FREE weekly e-newsletter by clicking here!
