Chris Rooney Explains the Importance Of Industry-Specific CRM Solutions

Defying the Limits: What type of customer interactions does mySAP CRM facilitate?

Chris Rooney: SAP enables and supports the full breadth of customer channel interactions. SAP supports face-to-face customer interactions through our field, mobile, and handheld sales applications; phone interactions through our robust inbound and outbound sales and service center applications; Web contact through our strong self-service Web portal for sales and service; as well as traditional mail and email through our powerful campaign management and CRM analytics tools. But the impact is broader than just the traditional CRM processes; our portal-based solutions and full integration from supply chain through the enterprise to the customer are ideal for managing the fast turnaround times required by today’s business environment. SAP is the backbone that enables fast closed-loop processes and can go beyond order-to-cash and deliver opportunity-to-cash to our customers. SAP enables the shortest distance between the customer, the enterprise, and suppliers.

DTL: Can customers benefit from immediate ROI from mySAP CRM, and in what areas of their business will they notice ROI?

CR: SAP’s strategy is to be recognized as a driver of business impact and ROI for our customers - we are not a niche player. Our goal is not just to be yet another software company providing CRM capabilities, but to lead the software industry in providing best-in-class, industry-specific, integrated business processes. Because of this approach, SAP will be in the leadership position in CRM.

Our main focus is assuring our customers about their ROI. There are specific areas where customers can expect to see immediate impacts on ROI, such as immediate improvement in days sales outstanding by having a closed-loop process from contracts, order capture, pricing, and invoicing.

One area that is enhanced is cross-sales and up-sales, which drive incremental revenues. One of the strengths of SAP is its rich analytics capabilities - capabilities for understanding a customer, seeing the whole product history and the interaction history, as well as refining pricing and highly targeted marketing and scripting, which provide the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. Opportunities in cash have really enabled some people to increase selling time right off the bat.

Another area to consider is overall inventory management - having a robust and well-integrated front-end system can have a big influence on opportunity inventories. The ability to understand demand from all channels in real time can have an immediate impact on our customers’ turns.

We also see an immediate impact in the area of service management. SAP enables full visibility into warranty contract conditions, entitlements, and service parts inventories for the service tech on the phone, greatly reducing costs and improving incremental service revenues.

These are some of the areas where people typically see an immediate impact. Leveraging these and other areas, companies such as Brother have seen a 124 percent return.

DTL: Is this a solution that can work in a variety of industries, and how will it adapt in different spaces?

CR: SAP has industry-specific solutions targeted to 23 different industries. These industries include, for example, financial services, high-tech, manufacturing, services, consumer products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, to name just a few. SAP’s last CRM release was focused on offering robust and industry-specific solutions or scenarios - for example, trade promotion management, CPG, intellectual property management in media, channel management in high-tech, and channel management for service providers. In mySAP CRM 4.0, we have specifically completed end-to-end solutions for each individual industry in addition to the core CRM capabilities such as call center, service center, and self-service automation. SAP’s core functionalities are appropriate for all industries and SAP’s industry-specific solutions have introduced a new software category to the CRM market.

DTL: What lessons has SAP learned, and what can you share with the senior-level executive who is going to be reading this material?

CR: I think, as everybody knows, that CRM itself has a bit of a black eye. Statistics have shown that up to 70 percent of initiatives started in the past four or five years did not produce the expected impact. I think when we step back and look, some things have improved, such as the ability to get a better view of pipeline and the ability to have a script in front of a call center agent. But these capabilities have to be designed by process first. You also have to look at how to size these initiatives because adoption and absorption into a company is critical. That is one of the key areas. We must deliver solutions for our customers that are complete business processes, because that is the only way we’re going to get measurable impact.

Second, you need to understand your clients’ uniqueness in their industry and really deliver the main expertise by industry, not just data definitions, but actually deep understanding - for example, the price calculations or complications for a high-tech company.

Third, people need to start thinking about what they expect from technology to change their business. It’s not just about efficiencies and operations; it’s about driving insights to make more money and to make better business decisions. We have to deliver solutions to really support and even drive changes to our customers’ business processes.

DTL: As a leader in that whole movement, where do you think we’re going to be five years from now?

CR: I think not even in five years, but in the short term, the whole idea of front office, back office is going to go away. People are going to have to have a one-office concept and really start thinking about opportunity to cash, because that’s really how you’re going to have to institute real change.

Five years out I would expect that having real-time analytics and deep insights about your business is going to be expected - it’s not going to be a luxury. For example, Dell has had in the last few years the insights and intelligence to make great business decisions; they are a leader in understanding and driving the business with customer insight. Between competition and the fundamental shift in customer expectations, demanding that companies know who they are and what their preferences are, every single company, five years from now, is going to need to have a deep analytic capability in place. For example, a field salesperson is going to want to have insights given to them as well as blueprints about exactly what is happening in the industry and what is happening with the clients - and they are going to expect this knowledge/customer intelligence as part of the technology of the package.