What SAP is Doing Right in the CRM Space vs. Salesforce

Posted by Knack Systems on September 6th, 2017

Both SAP and Salesforce are known for their CRM capabilities, but since the first was mostly based on an on-premise system (only recently entering the cloud space) and the latter was an early mover as SaaS-based CRM, comparing them is an apples-to-oranges proposition. This said, both platforms have their own pros and cons when applied to various aspects of business operations. Below is a rundown of things that SAP does better than Salesforce and vice versa:

• Customer Relationship Management for Sales – Both SAP and Salesforce offer very similar pre-sales features such as leads, activities, opportunities, and so on, except that SAP has an upper hand when it comes to providing customers with an SAP ERP-integrated end-to-end solution. SAP Cloud for Customer can almost instantly be integrated with an on-premise ERP/CRM system as the middleware can easily be acquired for SAP. Salesforce, on the other hand, requires adapters to be built for integration, making it difficult to integrate with SAP ERP and enable moderate to heavy customization.

• Customer Relationship Management for Marketing – Since its acquisition of Exacttarget.com, which is a cloud-based marketing company, Salesforce is able to fortify its cloud marketing offering. Even then, SAP still makes for a better choice when it comes to end to end marketing, although it does have issues with user experience. Salesforce provides better integration capability and user experience with other cloud-based CRM, with valuable offerings such as social media, email, and mobile marketing, but SAP is the better choice for complex segmentation around transactional data and SAP BW integration. Other advantages of a SAP based CRM for marketing include efficient budget planning, tracking of marketing expenses, funds management, and campaign ROI tracking.

• Customer Relationship Management for Service – SAP has clear advantages over Salesforce in terms of service functionality providing users with an entire range of customer service solutions, ranging from work order management to warranty and claims, parts allocation, contracts, and even integrated billing.

• Customer Relationship Management Analytics – SAP also stands out in terms of analytics. SAP Cloud for Customer can very easily be integrated with BO and BI for richer and more comprehensive analytics.

• Other SAP advantages – Apart from these basic CRM functions, SAP offers a long list of other functions and advantages that Salesforce lacks, such as ecommerce solutions (through Hybris), RTOM, trade promotion management, claims, leasing, grantor management, BCM, and a host of other industry solutions that set it apart from most other CRM tools in the market.

About the Author:
Knack Systems is a Premium Gold Partner of SAP with a focus around Customer Management, which includes Cloud Solutions, Hybrid Solutions, E-commerce, and Analytics. Knack Systems provides end-to-end services in SAP transformation programs, including solution roadmaps, implementations, integration services, rollouts, support, upgrades, testing, and package evaluations.