- SAP Managed Tags
- Introduction
SAP has introduced Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 as part of its Product Portfolio Evolution in SAP CX. This new version offers modernization approach, more advance business capabilities compared to existing SAP Sales and Service Core V1 (also known SAP C4C).
This point of view write-up is to address basic key points regarding product understanding, consulting, business approach and solution design including Why is there a need for V2? What is it? What value does it add ? Adoption approach/consideration for V2.
- The Context – Why SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2
Given the challenges posed by macroeconomic disruptions, business model transitions and technology transformations it’s crucial to address these needs in Sales and Service LoB. By providing more intelligent insight to connect with customers, capture emerging trends, data driven guidance, scale operations faster and delivering greater profitability.
- There is need to deliver modern technology platform, which is more agile, robust, scalable etc.
- The current platform V1 is overstretched from cloud design standards.
- Common issues about existing platform are about Performance, inflexibility, landscape extensibility, UX design, Intelligent User experience.
- What is SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2
- Architecture and Benefits – Cloud Native Stack (CNS)
SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 is built on modernized platform to meet high-value demands of SAP Customer Experience (CX) journeys. It supports comprehensive processes such as “Problem to Resolution”, “Campaign to Cash” and “Commerce to Delivery” which ensures seamless customer interactions throughout the entire lifecycle.
Solution Feature Highlights:
- Flexible platform which provides agility and empower sales and service operations.
- Built on modern Cloud Native Stack (CNS) leveraging SAP BTP platform.
- Microservices Based Architecture
- SAP Business AI – to leverage Gen AI, ML
- Host on Hyperscaler
- Side-by-Side extensions, Low-Code/No-Code UI tools
- Improved Cloud Qualities and Advanced Business Capabilities
- Increased Performance, shorter time-to-market
The architecture of V2 is designed with a microservice, API and Event based approach, this modern approach leverages benefits of hyperscalers ensuring scalability, flexibility. Additionally, it complements the core solution with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), enabling creation of composable apps according to business needs.
Reference: SAP( https://saplearninghub.plateau.com/learning -Webinar: SAP Sales Cloud V2 with SAP Business AI – Consultant bootcamp)
Benefits: V2 offers numerous business benefits to scale operations faster, innovative user experience, provides embedded intelligence in making informed decisions and improved productivity, high performance, pre-built connectors to reduce implementation time and effort
- SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 feature overview:
- Guided Selling: Brings structured selling process powered by embedded insights
- Pipeline Management and Forecasting: View of pipeline health, more accurate forecast tracking & monitoring
- Customer Insight: Capture information of business partners, Timeline view, Tailor and Configure workspace according to need
- Productivity: Timeline based 360-degree view of customer process, Activity Management
- Intelligent Mobile Sales: Native mobile apps for sales engagements.
- Modern User Experience: better structured view, quick access.
Refer SAP Roadmap explorer (https://roadmaps.sap.com/) to get more insight on delivered features and upcoming roadmap plan for feature availability.
Reference: SAP ( https://saplearninghub.plateau.com/learning -Webinar: SAP Sales Cloud V2
- SAP Service Cloud Version 2 feature overview:
- Agent Desktop / Customer Hub: Improves efficiency, one click access to connected processes
- Case Management: Agile and guided step process along with Case Designer to configure case
- Advance Productivity and Performance: Email Management, Automate repetitive task with service intelligence and automated flows
- Global Search: Elastic search capabilities to execute complex queries extremely fast
- Service Intelligence: Embedded AI for case categorization, case summarization, machine translations
- Embedded Analytics: SAP Analytics cloud inclusion for instant operational visibility
- Service Cloud for Utilities add-on: Modern processes tailored for utilities
Refer SAP Roadmap explorer (https://roadmaps.sap.com/) to get more insight on delivered features and upcoming roadmap plan for feature availability.
Reference: SAP ( https://saplearninghub.plateau.com/learning -Webinar: SAP Service Cloud V2 )
- AI based Business Intelligence:
Sales and Service Cloud V2 solution includes various SAP Business AI embedded capabilities to provide better insight, automation and productivity optimization:
- Prediction (AI/ML): Analyze business data for score key metric, provide recommendations.
- Generative (Gen AI): In context of business data and business process flow
- Conversational (Chatbot): AI driven chatbot to answer request by using natural language processing.
There are various built-in features provided for e.g. in Sales Cloud (Lead and Opportunity scoring, Relationship Intelligence proposal for Contact, Product Recommendation, Visit insights), similarly in Service Cloud (Case Categorization, Email sentiment detection, Case summarization, Email recommendation).
Reference: SAP( https://saplearninghub.plateau.com/learning - Webinar: SAP Sales Cloud V2)
- Integration Technology:
For an end-to-end business process integration strategy, SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 can be seamlessly incorporated into broader SAP ecosystem using “Out-of-the-box” integration with predefined integration content. These integrations include :
- SAP BTP
- SAP Cloud Integration (CI)
- SAP Event Mesh, API
- UI & Data Mashups
Pre-packaged integration with other products in SAP CX suite:
- Integration with S/4 HANA Cloud / On-Premise
- Integration with SAP ECC6 (EHP8)
- Integration with CPQ
- Integration with SAP Emarsys
- Custom Developments:
To extend standard applications or build custom ones, SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 offers Low-Code/No-Code development tools. This tool includes:
- Key User Tools: Create extension fields, UI Adaptations, Custom Validation, and Determinations
- SAP Build: Side-by-Side Extensibility using Low Code/No Code App, Mashup, Prototyping, Multichannel support
- SAP BTP: Leverage features of BTP platform to decouple logic outside core for eg. CAPM (Cloud Application Programming Model), RAP(Restfull Application Programming), UI5 etc
- Microservices: Provided by SAP, Microsoft etc
- Possible adoption approach for V2:
With the introduction of this product, several questions arise regarding how to decide and plan approach on V2 adaptation. Enterprises need to analyze various scenarios based on their current state of CRM usage.
The first question to ask and understand is - Where are we?
- Currently using SAP On-premise or legacy CRM and planning to transition to SAP CX solutions
- Already on stable V1 environment with all rollouts completed for markets/region
- On V1 with pilot countries and plan for to onboard more market/countries
- On V1 with ECC as backend, where S/4 transition is planned.
- Integration setup of V1 with SAP /Non-SAP products
Way Forward…
- Understand existing scope with reference to below aspect, along with future business roadmap.
- Classify your existing functionalities into “must-have” and “nice-to-have” categories and then compare them with capabilities of V2 to determine fitment.
- As-is Customizations and it’s transition impact while moving from V1 to V2
- Data Migration support for transition of master and business documents
- Existing integration methodology and impact to it considering V2 framework.
Assess adaptability options…
Once there is clarity on various aspects mentioned above, it’s crucial to assess the adoption plan of V2. Here are couple of considerations:
- V2 Migration / Implementation Options: Complete/Partial/ Re-implementation
- Dual approach, to run V1 and V2 in parallel
- When planning tenant strategy for V2, consider factor such as geography, business units. SAP provides options to purchase SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 and SAP Service Cloud Version 2 either in same tenant or different tenant depend on needs
- Change Management plan with key stakeholders
- Evaluate various decision parameters including onboarding speed, functionality support, stability, performance, migration path, dependency with back-office systems, security, and cost.
- Planning Transition from core V1 to V2:
While planning transition journey from V1 to Sales and Service Cloud V2:
- SAP has introduced various assistant tools and professional service offerings to support the transition to V2.
- Readiness Check Tool: This summarizes solution implementation details in existing V1 and provides feature parity, detail info about transition support from V1 to V2, complexity
- Data Transfer Tool: The Data Transfer tool supports in transitioning data from SAP Cloud for Customer to SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 and SAP Service Cloud Version 2. It provides a transition tool with connection between SAP Cloud for Customer (V1) and SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 and SAP Service Cloud Version 2 (V2) for automatic data transfer.
- The following scenarios are supported by the Data Transfer tool:
- Single Go-Live implementation
- Core data transition
- Extension fields, Notes, and Attachments are supported for transition when mapping is completed by business objects. For more information, see the respective business object transition documentation for detailed scope.
Below image outlines transition phases and associated activities for successful transition journey from V1 to V2.
- Closing Comments
The SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 solution, built on a modern technology platform, making it more powerful to meet current demands and future advancements in sales and customer services. It provides standardized business processes, extensive customization options, business AI, and seamless integrations with other products.
As part of the transformation process to V2, SAP is introducing additional tools to assist in transitioning from Core V1 to V2. Customers can benefit from a comprehensive readiness analysis check and can embark on this journey with the support of internal teams, implementation partners, and SAP. This approach ensures feature parity, effective change management, and informed decision-making, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
