The CRM King

Inside-out CRM

Salesforce had a perfect run with its consistent focus on CRM functions plus some (expensive) acquisitions. Salesforce CRM became the central communication and sales tool for many existing SAP customers. The openness, simplicity and focus brought Salesforce many customers. Salesforce created CRM hype and SAP was left behind. Salesforce became the epitome of CRM among SAP's existing customers and in the IT scene.

Single Point of Truth

Former SAP CEO Bill McDermott wanted to eliminate the competitive disadvantage and bought the American IT company Qualtrics for eight billion euros. This was to create a hyper-CRM that would not only manage relationships with customers and prospects, but would also have to provide detailed information about opinion, mood and affinity at the same time. Qualtrics had a lot of experience and also success in the field of automated opinion research and customer surveys. With Qualtrics and SAP's CRM, a single point of truth could be created for SAP's existing customers in the company's own sales department.

C/4 Hana

The combination of old SAP CRM with new Qualtrics on a consolidated database platform was to be called - not surprisingly - C/4 Hana. The presentation in Orlando at Sapphire many years ago was a great moment for Bill McDermott. Even Professor Hasso Plattner was taken with the C/4 innovation and proclaimed his opinion in front of assembled press and analysts. It remained a dream, because the reality was different.

Old SAP strengths

Anyone familiar with SAP system landscapes since R/3 knows about the high good of integrating all XXM solutions (CRM, SCM, HCM, PLM, SRM, etc.). The current SAP CEO Christian Klein visited Qualtrics' headquarters in Utah, USA, shortly after the C/4 announcement. He came back with a very mixed feeling: what Qualtrics has developed in the past years, Christian Klein described as very, very remarkable - but this autonomous system will never be integrated into the classic ERP world. Klein was right. Qualtrics retained its autonomy, was floated on the stock market and thus ultimately still a great success for SAP CFO Luka Mucic.

The last will be the first

SAP remembered its old strengths and began to consolidate CRM - and no one ever doubted that the programmers and developers in Walldorf know their craft. In the past few months, an almost new CRM thus grew up under its own steam and in the tradition of holistic ERP systems. This SAP system was intensively tested by a renowned Swiss SAP customer together with Salesforce.

The new CRM king is therefore SAP. While Salesforce was portrayed in the final report as a better Excel for sales, SAP CRM was convincing in terms of both integration and user interface. CRM is therefore more than a singular solution. Added value has always come from the harmonious interaction of all ERP components. SAP has obviously found its way back to the old virtue and brought a well thought-out CRM to the SAP community.