Presales capability in SAP S/4HANA

[AlexShipilov]

“The lead generation process

starts by finding out where

your target market ‘lives’ on the web.”

– Wayne Davis

Introduction

As you might have guessed, this blog post is about leads and opportunities management, and I am going to provide an overview on how they "live" in SAP S/4HANA. We are going to talk about SAP S/4HANA On Premise (and PCE) Pre-sales Management features (or Sales Force Support - don't get confused with a 3rd party "SalesForce" solution).

It is not a secret that SAP S/4HANA architects' strategic goal is to build a comprehensive core ERP solution which may also contain capabilities from other formerly standalone SAP applications. One of those is CRM functionality coming from the good old SAP CRM 7.0.

Historically, SAP offered its "classic" SAP CRM solution which has been evolving over years from version 3.0 to its final 7.0 EHP4. SAP CRM 7.0 is a part of SAP Business Suite 7 for which SAP is going to provide mainstream maintenance until the end of 2027 with optional extended maintenance until the end of 2030 (according to the official announcement made on Feb 04, 2020). However, no major improvements will be delivered for SAP CRM 7.0.

Starting from SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, selected functionality from classic SAP CRM 7.0 was introduced  into SAP S/4HANA  as "SAP Customer Management add-on" (with some exceptions - see note 2824120), which is now included into SAP S/4HANA Core starting from SAP S/4HANA 1909 onwards.

To avoid naming confusions, let's call this functionality as "SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management (CM) Platform" because it is no more an add-on and it is included into standard package at no additional cost.

Customers who want to migrate from their classic SAP CRM 7.0 to other SAP solutions now have two main options:

• Start a strategic "CX Cloud Transformation Journey" to SAP Customer Experience (SAP CX) products such as SAP Sales & Service Cloud (former C4C), SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC), SAP Field Service Management (FSM), SAP Emarsys:
  
  
  • This option which is considered as strategic by SAP
  
  
  • Huge number of developments are ongoing which bring a number of innovations every quarter.
  
  
  • This option is recommended for customers who are:
    
    
    • cloud-friendly
    
    
    • ready to innovate
    
    
    • keen to leverage on the latest SAP developments in Customer Experience area which are seamlessly integrated between each other and with SAP S/4HANA Digital Core.
    
    
    • with no or low prior investments into classic SAP CRM.
    
    
    

• Adopt CRM functionality migrated from classic SAP CRM codebase into SAP S/4HANA OnPremise (and PCE) Core (- SAP S/4HANA CM platform) - option is valid for customers who:
  
  
  • would like to leverage on their custom enhancements made in their classic SAP CRM;
  
  
  • adhere to a "Maximum On-Premise" policy which is a common practice for e.g. Public Sector companies in some countries. Embedded CRM functionality can be considered as a basement for customers' own enhancement. (However, you should think about TCO at the end)
  
  
  • are Customers without SAP CRM legacy system, who implement SAP S/4HANA and who don't have complex business requirements for their CRM processes. For example, if customers manage their leads and opportunities in Excel - why not trying to do that in SAP S/4HANA?
  
  
  • want a lightweight interim CRM solution in their transition architecture towards Cloud.
  
  
  

Here is a typical quadrant analysis to help SAP CRM Customers in finding their Road Ahead:

In this blog post we will focus on the second option with the "CRM" functionality embedded into SAP S/4HANA - SAP S/4HANA CM Platform.

First we need to shed some light on what is SAP S/4HANA for CM Platform..

 

SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management (CM) platform

What is SAP S/4HANA for CM platform? 

This is a simplified SAP CRM 7.0 technology stack in SAP S/4HANA (any-premise/PCE) - SAP CRM platform functionality inside SAP S/4HANA with superior integration and low TCO:

• Simplified landscape & operations compared to side-by-side operation, with HANA and UI innovations.

• New back office foundation for Service & Solution Business processes and industry solutions

• Allows landscape consolidation and private cloud migration for existing SAP CRM installations.

• Non-disruptive innovation to leverage on existing SAP CRM investments. Incremental adoption/migration.

How it was done technically?

Selected codebase has been reworked, optimised and moved to SAP S/4HANA Core. As a result, we have a "merged" solution:

• No middleware, Java stack and TREX. Harmonized data models and engines between CRM and SAP S/4HANA

• CRM OneOrder data model optimised for SAP S/4HANA analytical frameworks and CDS.

• Improved performance through native HANA DB.

• UI "face lift" - Fiori3 powered by CRM WebUI.

• "Best of both worlds" approach: identify functional redundancies and select most suitable object/engine/process

• Unify CRM and SAP S/4HANA Objects - unified objects share the same database representation, thus requires no middleware.

User interface

We mentioned above that the UI in SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management apps is Fiori-like, but technically it is built on a refurbished CRM WebUI technology.

The entry point is Fiori Launchpad where you can put any application you require - either Fiori, or WebUI, or link to SAP GUI transaction.

Fiori Launchpad for Pre-sales

Presales Management features 

Overview

Now let's have a look at the PreSales functionality powered by SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management Platform. The functionality is available as scope item 41V in SAP S/4HANA Best Practice explorer

This functionality sometimes can be referred as SAP S/4HANA Sales Force Automation or SAP S/4HANA Sales Force Support (don't get confused with 3rd party "SalesForce" solution).

Business capabilites:

• Sales Lead Management - Collects any potential sales information at the beginning phase of sales pipeline.

• Opportunity Management - Records recognized sales possibility and tracks the progress across the sales cycle

• Activity Management - Administrates  undertaken or planned activities during the customer relationship life cycle.

• Account & Contact Management - Delivers sales force a holistic view of each customer with identified key contact and account data

We call this functionality "Presales" because historically SAP Sales is what you have in the Sales & Distribution/Shipping/Invoicing modules of ECC or SAP S/4HANA. But usually if we talk to business people from Sales departments - for them "Sales" ends with a sales order created. 🙂 Usually it is worth mentioning to set expectations.

The functionality allows to manage presales activities to maximise leads to order ratio. It uses unified master data (e.g. Business Partners), transactional data objects and harmonised UX. You are able to  track the entire document flow from Lead to Invoice.

It is included into SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management license at no additional cost!

Sales Lead Management

Leads enable you to provide a streamlined link between first interest and sales.

Key Features

• Qualification

• Survey assignment

• Deduplication

• Creation via Workflow

• Rule based distribution

• Follow-up documents

Search Leads results with infographics

There are no automated lead upload or lead generation tools available in standard SAP S/4HANA system so far. However, APIs are available for custom developments in this area. Same applies for other objects like Opportunities and Activities.

 

Opportunity Management

Opportunities provide the framework for presenting sales projects from the very start, and tracking their progress.

Key Features

• Sales Methodology with sales assistant

• Mapping of the Sales Cycle

• Sales stage history

• Reason for Status

• Milestones

• Notes

• Attachments

• Follow-up documents

• Competitor and Competitor Products

• Rule based distribution

Search Opportunities results with infographics

APIs are available for custom developments in in the area of Opportunity Management.

 

Activity Management

Activities are organized based upon their transaction type and category. This approach allows users to identify the type of communication or interaction that has occurred with the customer very intuitively.

Key Features

• Tasks, Appointments, Interaction Logs

• Automatic partner and organizational data determination

• Status Management and Results

• Notes

• Attachments

• Reference to Customer Management objects

• Follow-up documents

• Survey assignment

• Calendar

Search activities

Activity document

Activity Calendar

APIs are available for custom developments in in the area of Activity Management.

 

Account & Contact Management

An account is a company, individual, or group with which you have a business relationship. An account can be, for example, a customer, prospect, vendor, or competitor. Accounts are subdivided into Corporate accounts (companies or organizations), Individual accounts (private individuals), and Account groups (any groupings, such as households)
A contact is a person with whom you have a business relationship, and is mostly assigned to a corporate account.
You can create and manage your business partners centrally for different business transactions and indicate the different roles they play, such as sold-to party and ship-to party.

Key Features

• Search and display accounts, contacts, employees

• Create and maintain account and contact data

• Classify account and maintain account life-cycle

• View all relevant information at a glance.

• Use the PDF account fact sheet to distribute relevant information

It is important to mention that although Account is actually a SAP S/4HANA Business Partner, data is represented in a different view comparing to SAP S/4HANA Fiori application for Managing business partners. Here it is powered by "classic" and reworked CRM WebUI application which may benefit in displaying all data facets on one screen (configurable through personalisation).

Search Accounts

Account details. A different WebUI view on a business partner

Customising of SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management Platform

You perform customising of SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management via SPRO. You should navigate to the "Service" node. This node groups all functionality related to SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management Platform - Pre-sales, Service, Interaction Center.

SPRO path for SAP S/4HANA CM Settings

The SPRO structure  resembles the one in SAP CRM. However, the grouping of configuration transactions could be different due to the fact that the functionality was redesigned.

Conclusion

I hope that this blog post gave you some insights related to SAP S/4HANA for Customer Management platform and its Presales management capabilities.

Please bear in mind that SAP S/4HANA Customer Management pre-sales capability is not considered as strategic by SAP and should be used only as a transition option to safeguard investments from the "classic" SAP CRM 7.0 or if pre-sales business requirements are very limited or if customer has a strict on-premise policy. In other cases, SAP recommends using SAP CX Cloud portfolio.

I would be more than happy if you provide your comments, feedback, questions or requests for SAP S/4HANA CM related information which might be interesting for you.

Stay tuned for other blog post regarding SAP S/4HANA Customer Management Platform!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA 2021, check out the following links: 

• SAP S/4HANA release info: sap.com/s4hana

• SAP S/4HANA Community here

• SAP S/4HANA Release Highlights community call here

• The Link Collection for Sales here

• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here

• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here

• Join the SAP S/4HANA Movement

• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA here

• Help Portal Product Page here

• Feature Scope Description here

• What’s New here

• SAP S/4HANA Best Practice Explorer for scope item 41V: here 

Best regards,

Alexander Shipilov, Principal Enterprise Architect, SAP S/4HANA RIG