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Introduction
This blog post provides a brief overview of SAP strategy in the area of Customer Experience (CRM) and gives a high level description of available data integration scenarios between SAP S/4HANA and some of the solutions from SAP Customer Experience (or SAP CX) area.
SAP Ecosystem contains a number of various systems aimed to fulfill different business needs including but not limited to Core ERP functionality - SAP S/4HANA Digital Core; and Customer Relationship Management processes - SAP Customer Experience (or SAP CX).
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 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, the majority of functionality from classic CRM 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.
Customers who want to migrate from their classic SAP CRM 7.0 to other solutions from SAP now have two main options:
- Adopt CRM functionality migrated from classic CRM codebase into SAP S/4HANA OnPremise Core - option is valid for customers who:
- would like to leverage on their z-enhancements made in their classic SAP CRM;
- adhere to "Maximum On-Premise" policy which is a common practice for e.g. Public Sector companies in some countries.
- Customers who implement SAP S/4HANA and don't have complex business requirements for their CRM processes.
CRM and Service functionality embedded into SAP S/4HANA OnPremise is being enhanced by SAP and also can be considered as a good basement for customers' own Z-enhancements.
- The second option would be is to start a strategic "Cloud Journey" to SAP Customer Experience products such as SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C) , SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC), SAP Field Service Management (FSM), SAP Emarsys - option which is considered as strategic for SAP, as a huge number of developments are ongoing which bring a number of innovations every quarter.
With this blog post I would like to commence a series of articles which describe various aspects of integration scenarios between SAP S/4HANA and SAP CX solutions from the second option above. This blog post contains an overview of available scenarios without going into deep details or customizing settings.
Overview of Integrations
Below we have a brief overview of SAP S/4HANA prepackaged integration with:
- SAP Cloud for Customer (Sales & Service)
- SAP Marketing Cloud
- SAP Field Service Management
SAP Cloud for Customer
The integration of SAP Cloud for Customer with SAP S/4HANA offers many features and benefits.
Features of SAP Cloud for Customer with SAP S/4HANA:
- Replication of master data such as accounts and account relationships (bi-directional) or products (uni-directional)
- Integration of transactional scenarios; for example creation of opportunity follow up documents in SAP S/4HANA, bi-directional replication of sales quotes and sales orders, external pricing calls from SAP Cloud for Customer to SAP S/4HANA, document flows, etc.
Benefits if you integrate SAP Cloud for Customer with SAP S/4HANA
- Provide sales professionals with real-time access to pricing information, Sales Quotes, Sales Orders and follow up documents
- Orchestration of End to End Business Process from Lead in SAP C4C to payment in SAP S/4HANA
- Standard integration content to simplify and accelerate integration setup
Detailed information on supported scenarios depending on release can be found in the note 2293815
SAP Marketing Cloud
Standard content for integration between S/4HANA and SAP Marketing Cloud is available on API Hub:
You can download business partners, contacts, relationships, products and sales orders from your SAP S/4HANA system to SAP Marketing Cloud
Another integration scenario is available for SAP S/4HANA Utilities (IS-U). Here is a blog post with a nice overview: (link)
SAP Field Service Management
SAP FSM is usually a part of an end-to-end Service scenario involving SAP C4C (Service Cloud) functionality where service ticket is initially created in SAP C4C (Service Cloud) and then replicated to SAP FSM for dispatching and execution.
However, the process variation where SAP S/4HANA acts as a starting point for service process is also possible. In both cases, integration with SAP S/4HANA as a backend (time, expense and spare parts consumption) is also a part of the process.
Common integration capabilities:
- Master data replication from S/4HANA to FSM
- Fixed price & T&M order types
- Planned services and expenses
- Planned service parts with follow-up purchasing process
- Released service order replicated to FSM for scheduling
- Planned services replicated as Activities
- Planned parts replicated as Reserved Materials
- Ability to duplicate and re-assign activities
- Release assignment to inform technician and update service order
- Confirmation of planned services, parts and expenses
- Confirmation of unplanned parts and expenses
- Approval of T&M Journal with efforts, materials and expenses
- Creation of Service Confirmation(s)
- Support for partial confirmations
- Aligned Status Management
A bit more details on Master data integration flows between SAP S/4HANA and SAP FSM:
As you see, the integration of master data is one-way from SAP S/4HANA to SAP FSM.
The Integration between SAP S/4HANA and SAP FSM is being developed continuously. The entire list of integrated data objects including future roadmap can be found on the SAP Help Page: (link)
Conclusion
I hope that this blog post gave you some insights to general SAP Customer experience strategy, what could be the options of migration from "classic" SAP CRM and what are the basic integration scenarios between SAP S/4HANA and selected SAP CX solutions.
I would be more than happy if you provide your comments, feedback, questions or requests for further SAP S/4HANA <-> SAP CX integration scenarios information which might be interesting for you and which is worth another blog post from my side with more details.
Stay tuned!
For specific questions and answers about SAP Cloud for Customer integration with SAP S/4HANA, feel free to post your question here.
Best regards,
Alexander Shipilov, SAP S/4HANA RIG
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