SAP Customer Relationship Management
Content
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 SERVICE
1
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 contractbased 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.
2.
3.
4.
You create and maintain the parameters for the Service Level Agreements.
You create a service contract quotation.
You create quotation items.
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:
Identify warranties within the processing of business transactions in service
(service processes, confirmations, complaints)
Check whether the claims on the warranty services are legitimate
Check whether an incoming problem message is a case for warranty
Define the effects of warranties on pricing and billing
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/counterdependent
Warranties 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).
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 SERVICE
1
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 contractbased 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.
2.
3.
4.
You create and maintain the parameters for the Service Level Agreements.
You create a service contract quotation.
You create quotation items.
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:
Identify warranties within the processing of business transactions in service
(service processes, confirmations, complaints)
Check whether the claims on the warranty services are legitimate
Check whether an incoming problem message is a case for warranty
Define the effects of warranties on pricing and billing
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/counterdependent
Warranties 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).
