CRM 2005, announced in April and due to ship at the end of October, is the result of a huge investment for SAP and represents the biggest CRM release for the company, surpassing release 4.0. With additions to the sales, service and marketing components as well as improvements to the user interface, and dashboard-based analytics for real-time reporting and alerts enabled via Visual Composer, it also adds further industry-specific functionality.
According to Siegfried Leiner, VP CRM Solutions Manager, this version is a customer driven release, with developments based on feedback from user groups.
SAP is gradually changing the make up of its CRM application from a large single application to a portfolio of smaller applications and processes, brought together and orchestrated through SAP’s NetWeaver and Enterprise Service Architecture platform. While the idea of CRM as a single application is not sustainable in the long term, Mr Leiner believes the CRM concept will carry on because it is more than a single application.
In the long term, a zoo of different technology products, with different products for the front office, back office, analytics and technology components, will be costly and risky. [Organizations will] chose one backbone platform. CRM will be an integral part of the platform, he said. That is why Siebel went to Oracle, he added, because they saw the need for sales, marketing and service to be integrated into a platform.
He believes the concept of CRM remains true, defined as having one view of the customer and sales, marketing and service driving back office processes, but the technology to enable it has changed. SAP is embodying this move through its ESA SOA implementation which enables components rather than monolithic applications, and is showing early fruits of what it means through the forthcoming analytic dashboards in CRM 2005.
Each SAP analytic application is a composite application, created using NetWeaver technology components including Visual Composer, SAP’s model-based, code-free, composite application development tool.
SAP’s position in the CRM market is a subject for hot debate, with claims and counterclaims over how many of its CRM sales have translated into live implementations. SAP says it has 3,200 CRM customers, of which 1,000 are live. As far as individual users are concerned, AMR Research believes there are 160,000 live SAP users, compared to Siebel’s 3.2m. However, it rates SAP ahead of Siebel in term of sales growth.
Oracle’s move to acquire Siebel could threaten SAP’s market position but Mr Leiner believes SAP’s safe harbor product, with its proven integration and backed by ESA platform developments, will ensure its success in the face of Oracle’s strategy of buying products and acquiring customers.
As far as its other main competition is concerned, hosted CRM delivered by companies such as Salesforce.com, this is dismissed as commodity CRM.
Everyone can do commodity CRM functionality, said Mr Leiner, referring to CRM basics like opportunity and customer management. It is fine for easy, low-risk entry he maintains, but organizations need scalability.
Although the company has yet to reveal its hosted CRM plans, scalability is one of the areas it will concentrate on with its forthcoming hosted offering. Another area will be integration. Companies will see it is not sufficient to have one component. They will have integration and technology platform issues and will end up with a best of breed [solution] again, he cautioned.
