Wednesday 2 February 2022

Presales capability in SAP S/4HANA

Introduction

This blog post provides an overview of SAP S/4HANA On Premise (and PCE) Presales Management features (or Sales Force Support – don’t get confused with a 3rd party “SaleForce” 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 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.

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

◉ Adopt CRM functionality migrated from classic SAP CRM codebase into SAP S/4HANA OnPremise (and PCE) Core – option is valid for customers who:

  ◉ would like to leverage on their Z-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.

  ◉ Customers without SAP CRM legacy system who implement SAP S/4HANA and who don’t have complex business requirements for their CRM processes. 

CRM and Service functionality embedded into SAP S/4HANA OnPremise (and PCE) 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 Cloud for Customer (C4C), SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC), SAP Field Service Management (FSM), SAP Emarsys – option which is considered as strategic by SAP, as huge number of developments are ongoing which bring a number of innovations every quarter.

In this blog post we will focus on the first option with the “CRM” functionality embedded into SAP S/4HANA. 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.

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.

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◉ “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.

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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.

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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:

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◉ 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

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Search Leads results with infographics

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

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Search Opportunities results with infographics

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

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Search activities

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Activity document

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Activity Calendar

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).

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Search Accounts

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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.

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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.

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