SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) is a comprehensive solution for managing your customer relationships. It supports all customer-focused business areas, from marketing to sales and service, as well as customer interaction channels, such as the Interaction Center, the Internet, and mobile clients.

SAP CRM is part of SAP Business Suite.

To make the right decision quickly and effectively, employees need central access to all relevant data and information. Constant availability (at any time and from any place) and instant access to data and information are the essential building blocks of today's decision-making processes.

1 Supported Roles and Worksets

The Business Package for SAP CRM 2007 supports the following roles and worksets:

Partner Channel Management: Channel Manager Partner Channel Management: Partner Manager Telecommunications: Channel Manager Telecommunications: Partner Manager CRM Web Channel: Customer Digital Asset Management (DAM): Digital Asset Management Incentive and Commission Management (ICM): Incentives and Commissions

SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) offers a number of business scenarios and business processes that describe integrated business activities across several SAP components and non-SAP components.

1 Marketing

This area in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) enables you to carry out all of your marketing activities, starting with managing leads and planning campaigns and trade promotions, through to creating target groups and personalized product recommendations, and using complex marketing analysis functions.

2 Sales

 This area in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) enables you to manage your sales cycle, starting with creating appointments and business opportunities, through to managing sales orders, contracts, and invoicing. It also allows you to organize and structure your sales territories according to your business requirements

3 Service

 This area in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) enables you to manage your service cycle, starting with managing service contracts and warranties, through to processing service order quotations and service orders, complaints and returns, and service confirmations.

4 Interaction Center

 

This area in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) provides you with tools to help you ensure efficient and consistent customer service by collaborating and communicating with your customers over various channels. It supports agents and managers who are involved with the interaction center.

Agents can handle inbound or outbound service, sales, or marketing transactions using the phone, e-mail, fax, or the Web. They can process business transactions such as quotations, sales tickets and service tickets, and enhance their productivity by using alerts, scripting, and a solution search. All relevant account information is available to them in one location, such as account data, order status, and product-related information.

Managers can access administration, maintenance, and reporting tools, ensuring optimized and efficient interaction center operations. For example, they can forecast, schedule, and monitor their staff, adjust workflow and routing rules, monitor inbound and outbound interactions, and view analytics to make strategic decisions for the interaction center.

5 Field

 

Field applications enable sales representatives and service technicians who work in the field to use marketing, sales, and service functions of SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) in an offline environment.

To manage customer relationships successfully, companies that have employees working in the field must make sure that their employees have up-to-date and complete information about the customers they visit. In turn, new information gathered by employees in the field must be made available to other employees who interact with the customer. Field applications provide a range of functions and integration capabilities to meet these needs.

Sales representatives and service technicians can access and update customer relationship data on their laptop computers and other mobile devices while they work in the field.

6 CRM Web Channel

 

This area of SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) enables you to turn the Internet into a profitable sales and interaction channel for both business partners and consumers by providing your customers with a personalized Web experience and convenient self-services. The CRM Web Channel applications cover

Web-based sales and service transactions, targeted marketing, and analytics for system and customer behavior.

7 SAP CRM for Industries

 

SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) for industries provides you with functions that enable you to perform tasks in business scenarios specific to service industries or manufacturing industries. SAP's generic CRM applications already address most of the CRM demands of many different industries. However, some industries require additional product and service capabilities to suit their own requirements.

Components and Functions 

The business scenarios and processes in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) use a wide range of SAP CRM components and functions.

GENERIC FUNCTIONS IN SERVICE1 Item Hierarchies 

You use this function to arrange any items hierarchically in a service transaction. In this way, for example, you can show that specific service parts belong to a particular service, or that a service is made up of several other services.

You create item hierarchies by specifying the higher-level item for an item in a service transaction. You can create any number of subitems for an item.

The system cumulates pricing data, and duration and quantity in the higher-level item.

2 Products in Service Transactions

 Products are central objects in a service transaction, representing the following:

Services provided (service product: product type Service) Service parts required for the service (service part: product type Material) Products sold in relation to a service (sales product: product type Material) Expenses incurred (product type Material) Tools required for the service (product type Material or defined as object)

You enter each product in a separate item in your service transaction.

3 Counters and Readings

 

You use counters to measure usage or wear and tear on an object. A counter describes the characteristics of a physical measuring device, such as a counter on a photocopier.

You enter readings for a counter to record the counter status at a specific point in time.

Example

You can use counters to:

Record service histories (for example, recording the mileage during the technical inspection of a car)

Record energy consumption (for example, household gas or electricity readings)

Assess warranty claims based on consumption (for example, a car warranty is only valid for the first 30,000 miles)

SERVICE CONTRACTS AND SERVICE PLANS

 

Service contracts are outline agreements with business partners which define services offered for a particular period. You support service contracts by processing contract-based services and planned services.

Service contracts represent long-term service agreements with customers in relation to the content and scope of services guaranteed within specific tolerance limits for certain parameters, for example, within a predefined timeframe.

Example

If a technical defect occurs in a customer’s machine, they are assured that a technician will be on-site at the customer’s place of business within four hours to correct the fault.

Features

A service contract consists of header data and item data. A service product can be stipulated for each service contract item and the customer can claim this product over a certain period at a specific price.

Different types of services can be stipulated as service products in a service contract item:

An individual service (such as a hotline) A complex service that is made up of multiple services and materials, such as

an automobile inspection A service limited according to value or quantity (such as ten free-of-charge

telephone consultations after buying software, covering costs up to USD 300) A service plan in which planned services reoccurring at intervals are entered

(such as maintenance of a pump every three months)

A usage-based service (such as maintenance of a photocopier after every 100,000 copies)

Service Contract Items 

The parts of a service contract or a Service Contract (Value/Quantity) in which the services to be performed for the customer under service contract conditions are defined.

Structure

Maintenance of the following data is relevant at item level:

Service data

For service contracts, you can maintain the service agreements that define the characteristics of the service product in the contract items, for example. Different parameters, such as response time or availability time, can be such concrete service agreements. For more information, see Service Level Agreements (SLA).

For service plans, you can maintain Service Plan Data instead of service agreements.

Object list

Here you assign objects to which the service product stipulated in the contract item refers. The object list can contain installed bases, installed base components, objects, or products.

For more information, see Object List.

Product list

Here you enter the services and service parts that should be in the service product as stipulated in the contract item. The product list can contain products, product categories, or product ranges (partner/product range).

For more information, see Service and Product List.

Release list

If services or service parts entered in the product list are claimed as part of service orders or repair orders, the system records this in the release list.

For more information, see Service Contract (Value/Quantity).

Price agreements

In addition to the prices defined at header level, special price agreements can be made for each contract item. Price agreements are contract-specific prices and discounts. You define which services are covered completely, partially, or not at all by a contract.

Example

In a price agreement, you could define that service parts are not charged for and that the installation of service parts should be billed at USD 25 per hour. If contractually agreed service processes are executed, the system uses the price agreements defined in this contract during billing.

Price agreements do not have any influence on periodic contractual billing. The amounts for periodic billing are taken from the header conditions and item conditions in the contract.

Billing plan

Billing plans in the contract items control periodic billing. Depending on the billing plans and Customizing settings, billing requests are generated automatically and transferred directly to CRM Billing.

Counters

Counters are particularly important for processing service plans.

Service Contract Quotations

 Service contract quotations are legally binding offers to a customer for the purpose of defining the services in a service contract.

A service contract quotation can be of use to both customers and providers. On one hand, it gives customers the option of getting informed about prices and delivery conditions to enable them to make decisions, while providers can include the expected services at an early stage in their planning and get an overview of the expected costs and revenues.

Within the validity period of a service contract quotation, the customer has the option of agreeing on a service contract for specific conditions with reference to the quotation.

Contract quotations are business transactions in service with the leading business transaction category Service Contract. Service quotations are only identified as such by the system status Quotation.

Service Contract (Value/Quantity)

 A particular form of service contract, in which the defined service products are restricted with regard to a certain target quantity or a certain total value.

 Like the service contract, it is agreed between customer and provider that the customer can claim service products over a specific period at a specific price. In the case of the service contract (value/quantity), however, the defined service products are restricted with regard to value or quantity.

Services and service parts are entered in the product list belonging to the contract item.

The customer can claim (release) products from the product list, if required, whereby any quantity or value can be selected. The service employee creates a service order in the system for this purpose.

The system enters the released products and their quantity or value in the release list. In this way, the service employee can use the release list to trace the quantity and the value of the products that have already been claimed.

Service Agreement

 A long-term outline agreement between business partners in which conditions, such as prices, and releasable products are defined. These conditions and products are valid for all service contracts or service orders that are created with reference to the service agreement.

Unlike service contracts (value/quantity), service agreements contain no target values or target quantities.

Service agreements make it possible for service providers to create long-term outline agreements with information about prices and services that are valid for certain business partners or a certain group of business partners.

Service agreements may include the following predefined data:

Services Service Level Agreements

Follow-up activities

Price agreements

Billing

Service providers can create follow-up transactions such as those below with reference to service agreements:

Service order quotations Service orders

Service contract quotations

Service contracts

Service Plan

 

Description of services and follow-up activities that are to be performed regularly.

You can use service plans to define and support the dates and scope of planned, recurring services, such as maintenance or creation of quotations.

The service plan creates release objects, such as service orders, in the system with the help of scheduling, which can take place on the basis of time intervals or counter readings.

 

You can use a service plan to schedule and organize periodic services that occur repeatedly at certain intervals, such as regular maintenance, ahead of time.

Service plans help you to save costs resulting from unforeseen outages or breakdowns, to plan services in a better and more transparent way, and to schedule resources, like personnel or materials, more efficiently.

Usage-Based Service Contract Management 

You can use this process to manage service contracts depending on quantity used. You can use this method to bill your customers for services with a certain usage volume (of copies, for example) after you have defined a service contract. This allows you as the service provider to react more flexibly to customer demands while reducing costs for the end customer.

You can model the entire process of usage-based service contract management in SAP CRM, from creating a service quotation and contract, entering and calculating the usage volume using counters and readings, right through to billing.

In usage-based service contract management, you specify the quantities to be used in the service contract and define corresponding conditions.

You can specify credits, or quantities that are included with the service flat rate.

You can link various contracts together with a pool contract for pricing and billing purposes in usage-based billing. You can use pool contracts to periodically recalculate the usage of all assigned contracts (single pool contracts) or run consumption billing for all assigned contracts in the pool contract (aggregate contract).

Volume determination can occur in many different ways. For more information, see Usage Determination.

Usage-based billing occurs on a periodic basis. You can bill the service contract separately from usage-based billing.

For example, if customers pay the contractual services monthly, but the usage-based component quarterly, several different billing plans are available.

Usage-Based Service Contract Processing

 

You calculate a quotation for a service for a potential customer based on a specific request from that customer. If the customer accepts the quotation, you create a contract in the system (the creation process is also called contract inception).

A valid contract is a prerequisite for recording usage, calculating the usage volume, and subsequent billing.

Process

The following business process runs in SAP CRM:

1. You create and maintain the parameters for the Service Level Agreements.2. You create a service contract quotation.3. You create quotation items.4. You maintain the object list. In the object list, you enter the objects for which

the service product agreed in upon the quotation item can be claimed. Installed bases, installed base components, and products can be used as elements of this object list.

5. You maintain the product list in which you define the services and service parts that can be claimed within the context of service order management with reference to a service contract. In the service contract, you can group services and service parts in a service package which you can then offer as a service product.

6. You maintain price agreements in quotation items. Note that price agreements in items take precedence over prices defined in the contract header.

7. You send the contract quotation to the customer.8. If a customer accepts the service contract quotation, create a usage-based

service contract as a follow-up transaction from the quotation.9. The system generates a billing plan.10. The system generates billing request items.11. The system activates the usage-based service contract.12. The system runs revenue recognition for the usage-based service contract.

In the case of leases, the system generates attachments. The system determines the data for generating these attachments by using the product master data Device Class and Residual Value Curve.

13. A controlling object is created for the service contract in financial accounting. Costs and revenues are posted to the controlling object, or an existing controlling object is assigned to the service contract.

14. You make changes to the usage-based service contract.

Single Contract (Usage-Based Service Contract)

 

A service contract that also includes an agreement for the usage volume. The contract defines the services and specific conditions for the usage volume.

 Single contracts contain the following data:

Price agreements Validity periods Business partner data Billing plans Object lists

In addition, single contracts contain a flat-rate charge for a certain usage volume, such as the number of copies for a leased copying machine. The lease is billed on a flat-rate basis, which means the leasing installment for the copying machine already includes a certain number of copies. The customer pays the flat rate regardless of whether or not all the included copies were made. If the number of copies made exceeds the included number, the customer pays an additional fee.

Pool Contract

 A service contract that collects the data of single contracts and recalculates the usage values of the single contracts. If applicable, the customer receives a credit.

There are two different types of pool contracts:

Single pool contracts Aggregate contracts

 You can use pool contracts to periodically recalculate the usage of all assigned contracts (single pool contracts) or perform consumption billing for all assigned contracts in the pool contract (aggregate contract).

Specifically, you enter the following detailed information, which you have agreed upon with the customer, in the pool contract:

Percentage for single billings (single pool contract) or existing readings (aggregate contract) for prebilling the pool contract

The percentage is a condition that specifies when prebilling of the pool contract can begin. If you enter 80%, for example, then 80% of all the required readings for this period have to be available before pool prebilling can start.

Conditions for terminating the contract

During the term of the pool contract, you use the pool contract to:

Regularly start automatic billing

Check the pool contract's assignment (automatically ending the pool contract assignment when the pool contract ends)

The pool contract accesses all the relevant data in the single contracts for billing.

WARRANTY MANAGEMENT 

Warranty management includes the following activities:1. Identify warranties within the processing of business transactions in service

(service processes, confirmations, complaints)2. Check whether the claims on the warranty services are legitimate3. Check whether an incoming problem message is a case for warranty4. Define the effects of warranties on pricing and billing5. Monitor warranty costs

Warranties Commitment from a manufacturer, vendor, or salesperson to a customer that a product has no defects, and that services such as repairs and partial or complete exchange of defective parts are guaranteed for a particular period of time without the customer being billed. Several business transactions such as the buying, selling, and servicing of products are linked to a warranty. In the service industry, warranties play a crucial role, since they are often the starting point for the services themselves.For warranty management in CRM Service, use the product type warranty. Warranties can be subdivided as follows:

●      Warranty category: Customer warranty, vendor warranty●      Warranty reference: Time-dependent, counter-dependent, time/counter-

dependentWarranties can be tailored to meet customers’ requirements and can be flexibly assigned to the individual components of a customer installed base. You can assign several warranties for each component of an installed base. You can define a warranty template in advance for those warranties that are used frequently. When you create a business transaction in service, the system automatically checks in the background whether warranties exist for the reference object and assigns them accordingly. When calculating prices for services and service parts in billing, these warranties can be accounted for through appropriate discounts.

WARRANTY CLAIM PROCESSING Warranty claim processing is designed to be used by service providers and is also relevant for vendors such as manufacturers, importers, and sales companies as well as their suppliers.Warranty claim processing enables you to process a high volume of warranty claims conveniently and, depending on your Customizing settings, to a large extent automatically.

The system is used by service providers who are themselves submitting a warranty claim or are doing so on behalf of their customers. There is an interface between warranty processing and the vendor. The vendor checks the claim and returns it to the claimant.A claim for reimbursement of material, labor, and external service costs that were incurred while rectifying faults in an object.You create a warranty claim, which is the basis for further processing. Depending on the process step and requirements, the system creates follow-up transactions for this warranty claim that contain information for and about business partners. The warranty claim contains the specific items for each business partner. Warranty claims are created manually, by copying or transferring data from the claimant or reimburser via an interface. Every warranty claim type has its own data, such as data relating to the business partner, and contains one or more items. The individual labor values, parts, and other activities are listed at item level. There are different item categories for these activities.

Processing Warranty Claims During warranty claims processing, warranty claims can be created manually or automatically from a service order or service confirmation, even if each warranty claim contains several items.You can also use warranty claim processing separately, without reference to a service order or service confirmation.The warranty claims can still be sent automatically to the various vendors (manufacturers, suppliers, and so on) and you can then process them further once they have been checked and returned by the vendors. In other words, you can send any decisions that you do not accept or any corrected warranty claims back to the vendors immediately.When warranty processing is complete, the system generates an overview of total costs and revenues.

PRODUCT SERVICE LETTERS

 Product service letters are official documents that are given out by the vendor or other authorized parties to avoid risks or complex repairs in case of damage.

With product service letters, you can create a request for services for certain products to correct identified and predictable defects or to avoid costly repairs.

Product service letters are also used in recall management, where suppliers of service parts use recall campaigns for defective components (service parts) that are still in the warehouse stock of their customers.

In SAP CRM, the product service letter is available as a business transaction and can be linked with a service order template or sales order template, depending on the type of product service letter.

CASE MANAGEMENT

 Case Management enables you to consolidate, manage, and process information about a complex problem or issue in a central collection point, the case. Within a case, you can group diverse information, such as business partners, transactions, products, and documents. This information can reside in different physical systems.

You can also use Case Management to process problems and issues that involve multiple processing steps or multiple processors. Case Management therefore supports the processing and communication flow between organizational units and helps you to increase processing efficiency.

Case

A structured collection of information related to an issue, incident, or problem that requires processing. The processing flow of a case is defined by activities and processors that are assigned to the case.

Cases allow you to group related objects in a central collection point that serves as a single point of access for processing an issue. You can create a case when you establish that an issue extends beyond a single business partner or transaction, or involves many processing steps.

SERVICE RESOURCE PLANNING

 You use service resource planning to execute project-based scheduling or service order-based scheduling, with a number of resources.

You can do the following:

Make employees (internal) and service providers (external) available, by entering service arrangements as resources for service resource planning

In service arrangements, you define availability, skills, job functions, and service areas, for example.

Determine and schedule resources

You determine the resources that are most suitable for service order demands or project role demands, and create corresponding assignments.

You can use service resource planning to comply with determined SLA dates, respond to critical situations, and improve resource utilization. Once you assign the required resource to a job, you can notify the resource using the following channels:

SERVICE CONFIRMATIONS

 You can use the service confirmation transaction to report working time, service parts, expenses, and tools used while performing a service.

You can create a service confirmation as a follow-up transaction that refers to service orders and in-house repair orders.

You can report the following key information in a service confirmation:

Working times (duration, start and end of work) Travel times

You enter travel times in a separate service item using a service type and valuation type that you have defined for billing travel time (see "Billing" below).

Service parts used Expenses incurred

You can confirm planned and unplanned expenses, such as expenses for hotel accommodation or miscellaneous materials that are not represented by service items or service part items.

Reference object(s) for the service Technical details in Categorization Tools used

IN-HOUSE REPAIR ORDERS

 You create an in-house repair order within complaints processing if a customer wants to send in or bring in a defective product for repair.

The in-house repair order is integrated with service processes and sales transactions. This means you can create in-house repair orders as follow-up transactions and thereby transfer the data from each preceding transaction.

A complaint can precede an in-house repair order, but this is not necessarily the case.

COMPLAINTS AND RETURNS 

In complaints processing, you can create complaints, complaints with reference to billing documents, returns, and in-house repair orders for products, services, or deliveries with which customers are dissatisfied.

Complaints can either be product-related or have no reference to products. Complaints with reference to billing documents, returns, and in-house repair orders always refer to a product.

You can use complaints and returns in both sales and service.

Returns

 You can use this function in the following situations:

A customer (dealer) returns goods delivered to him or her (products of type Material).

A customer (dealer) sends back to you remanufactured products or service parts that were not yet used. The customer may also have paid a deposit for these parts and remanufactured products.

SERVICE ORDERS

 You use service orders to record the details of a one-off service agreed upon by a service provider and a service recipient. Service orders contain all the information needed to plan, execute, and bill for a service.

The system can determine valid service contracts for reference in a service order. If you reference a service contract, details from the contract are automatically copied to the service order.

SERVICE ORDER QUOTATIONS

 Service order quotations (hereafter referred to as a “quotations”) are legally binding offers with fixed conditions, made to a customer for the performance of services or for the delivery of spare parts. Quotations allow customers to inform themselves about prices and delivery conditions before placing an order. They also enable providers to plan for anticipated services orders at an early stage and get an overview of the expected costs and revenues.

Within the validity period of a quotation the customer has the option of agreeing a service order with specific conditions in reference to the quotation.

Create Service Order for Accepted Quotation Items

When a customer accepts quotation items you can create a follow-up service order and copy the accepted items into this. When you copy items to a service order, they are automatically marked as accepted in the quotation.

Complete Quotation

Quotations are automatically set to Completed in the following cases:

When the validity has expired When all quotation items have been copied to follow-up service orders

You can also manually set the status Completed if the quotation is rejected by the customer.

BILLING

 You can use the billing functions in SAP CRM to perform billing for the following business transactions:

Sales orders Deliveries relating to sales orders Sales contract release orders Service orders Service contracts Service confirmations Complaints (creation of credit/debit memos) Entitlements Warranty claims Billing requests

Billing is also used to process the settlement of claims in market development funds and trade promotion management.

When business transactions are saved, billing-relevant transaction data is automatically transferred to the billing component, where input processing takes place and data is collected in a billing due list. Billing can either be triggered manually or can be scheduled to run periodically without user interaction. During billing execution, the system creates billing documents that can be sent to customers, and transfers data to integrated components.

SERVICE ORDER TEMPLATES

 You use service order templates to define reusable sets of service-related data that minimize the amount of time required to create a service transaction. A service order template describes only the scope of planned services and not the actual execution (customer and time frame).