SAP CRM Customer Relationship Management

SAP, started in 1972 by five former IBM employees in Mannheim, Germany, states that it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall. The original name for SAP was German: Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte, German for "Systems Applications and Products." The original SAP idea was to provide customers with the ability to interact with a common corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications. Gradually, the applications have been assembled and today many corporations, including IBM and Microsoft, are using SAP products to run their own businesses.
What is SAP and how is it different from ERP?

Answer:

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is enterprise wide information system which consolidate information

from various functions/departments of an organisation. Here function means Supply chain Management, Manufacturing, Operations, Customer relationship management, Human resource, Payroll, accounts, finance ,Warehouse Management ,etc. Whereas SAP (Systems, Applications and Products) is a name of a company which offers ERP solution for various industries to integrate information from various functions of that industry under one system.

Overview of CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system for managing customer relations between a company/business and clientele, including maintaining current clients and following up on prospective sales leads. The CRM system can be automated in the form of CRM computer software. CRM software stores customer information to a record on a computer, or to a database in an organization. The customer information includes phone numbers, addresses, best times to call, and previous calls made. CRM applications store additional information on products which the customer owns (including past purchases from an organization). DefinationCRM stands for customer relationship management and is a set of methodologies and tools that helps to manage customer relationship in an organized way.

SAP System Landscape

They system landscape basically is the set-up or arrangement of your SAP servers. Ideally, in an SAP environment, a three-system landscape exists. A three-system landscape consists of the Development Server-DEV, Quality Assurance Server-QAS and the Production Server-PROD. This kind of set-up is not primarily designed to serve as server clusters in case of system failure, the objective to enhance "configuration pipeline management".

A Typical SAP Three-System Landscape. At this juncture, it is important to state that a test system - Sandbox can also exit separately. The essence of the sandbox is to test the configuration of the business processes of a company, especially at the inception of the project (before the Business Blue Print is signed). It can also serve as a practice environment, even after go-live.

SAP CRM Implementation Phases

Project Preparation Phase As per Accelerated SAP (ASAP) methodology it is the First Phase of SAP
Implementation. During this phase, following components are discussed and documented: Initial Project Planning Project Procedures Project Team Members & their Training Project Kickoff Technical Requirements Quality Check

Business Blueprint Phase - In this phase, a detailed study of business processes and business requirements are
undertaken by the Project Team members. This is the phase where Project Team Members interact with respective Core Team Members or Process Owners. The entire requirements gathered during this phase are documented as Business Blueprint. During this phase, following components are discussed and documented: Project Management Organizational Change Management Training Develop System Environment Organizational Structure Definition Business Process Analysis Business Process Definition Quality Check

Realization Phase - In this phase, all the business and process requirements are implemented as documented in
Business Blueprint. SAP R/3 system is configured step by step in two work packages, Baseline and Final configuration. How these configurations will be done and how it will be tested. Baseline Configuration and Confirmation System Management Final Configuration and Confirmation Development of external Programs & Interfaces Unit Testing & Documentation Final Integration Test

Business Scenarios & Process Documentation End User Training & Documentation Quality Check

Final Preparation Phase - During this phase, following activities are discussed, completed and documented,
successful completion of these activities leads to transition of all configurations settings to live R/3 System System Management Stress & Volume Tests Cutover Strategies & Plans End User Training Quality Check

Go Live and Support Phase This is phase where all configurations/customizations are transported to live
production operation and business starts all its activities in the SAP R/3. During this phase, all the problems/issues related to hardware, network, operating system, database, training, and application system are addressed by the project team members and they help the end users in achieving their day to day task/assignments. This phase is further divided as: Application Production Support and Maintenance Project Implementation End

Continuous Improvement Phase Towards continuous improvement and to overcome the organizational,
business & technology changes the followings are covered under this phase: Post go-Live Support Improve System performance