The front office of any business has a CRM system as its backbone and the goal of any good CRM system is to provide a centralised view on all customer-centric business processes. Hence it would be logical to assume that this requirement can be best served by a single central CRM system. However, there might be situations when it might make sense to add another CRM system(s) in parallel to the existing system and all these CRM systems interact with a single ERP backend. Such an implementation is called as ‘Multiple CRM’ and this can be implemented with SAP CRM.
There could be several technological or organisational circumstances that could compel a business to go in for a Multiple CRM implementation, some of them being –
- Organisational separation – a company might have several independent business units which do not require a consolidated view on master data & transactional data across all the units.
- Different geographic regions - business units separated by geography might have a requirement for their independent CRM systems.
- Certain business units alone could require new/different/additional CRM functionality.
- Implementation of a new CRM release version without “de-commissioning” the existing system.
- Addition of a CRM-on-Demand system to the existing CRM system.
The above graphic depicts a possible way of configuring a Multiple CRM implementation in which multiple CRM clients in a single CRM box exchange data with a single ERP client. It is also possible to configure multiple CRM installations with a single ERP client.
A standard implementation of the Multiple CRM scenario facilitates the exchange of the following business objects between one of the CRM systems and the ERP system –
- Organisational data.
- Business Partner data (CUSTOMER_MAIN, CUSTOMER_REL).
- Products (MATERIAL).
- Business Partner Hierarchy.
- Product Hierarchy.
The system requirements for the standard Multiple CRM scenario are –
- SAP CRM 5.2 or higher – this will be the new CRM system added in which the MCRM settings shall be done.
- BASIS PI 2004.1_470 SP 10 of ERP or higher.
- SAP ERP 4.7 or higher.
Further detailed information regarding Multiple CRM scenario is available in Note # 1143540. SAP strongly recommends customers to get in touch with SAP Consulting prior to implementation of a Multiple CRM scenario.
Note – The CRM systems in a Multiple CRM scenario are independent i.e. no master data or transactional data is transferred directly between the two CRM systems. However, if required, this functionality can be implemented on a project basis by making use of the XIF adapter.
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