Successful Application of SAP CRM by CARABAC - Case Study Example

CRM SAP Application Technology Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name: (September 05, 2011) CRM SAP Application Technology Technology overview Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term used in the information industry to describe methodologies, software often internet capabilities that play a significant role in helping in organized management of customer relationships by enterprises. For instance the management can do so through building of database regarding customers’ details to enable the management, people providing service, service people, and customers access it. This will serve to fostering matching of the customer needs with the products plans and offerings to remind customers of the service requirements as well as other products purchase (Desbarats, 1995). Therefore it is possible for an enterprise in various It initiatives that allows an integrated customer relationship systems and one of the way that such can be attained is through investment in SAP enterprise business technology. SAP is an abbreviation fro systems, applications and products in data processing. This technology is significant when it comes to centralizing the organizations customer data as well as in restructuring the way it deals with its customers. The SAP enterprise resources system has many capabilities that it can provide to an enterprise and from a managers point of view the SAP system main focus of the is based on its applications schedules which are interrelated (Turban, et al. 2006). Each is designed to perform specific task and they include the following: material management, plant maintenance, sales and distribution, asset management, production planning, industry solutions, controlling, financial accounting, industry solutions, work flow and project system. Generally, the SAP system package ensures tracking as well as management of real time sales, finance accounting, production and the enterprises human resources. Contrary to the traditional computer system that have been used by business the SAP takes a different approach and comprises of a single information system where all the company’s applications are able to access data initiating transactions based no real time events. The SAP system facilitates an automatic accounting both in sales and production allowing sales to see when the products are being delivered. In this system sales drive production schedules thus the entire system is basically designed to real time as opposed to the one based on history (Roddick, & Spiliopoulou, 1999). SAP CRM Benefits The SAP CRM technology helps a business achieve the best returns using the available resources enabling improvement of the processes thus promoting differentiation of the company’s products and services in the market niche. The technology is business driven where its implementation process encourages a delivery of optimum solutions that meet the organization’s business needs on global or local level. The SAP CRM application provides the tools essential fro improvement in the organizations sales, service staff and the marketing leading to increased profits from the improved customer relations. The technology plays a significant role in employing the organizations staff giving them ability to deliver experiences at all the customer touch points. Therefore by an organization deploying a SAP CRM it will be in a better position to providing its partners and employees with the tools and knowledge that will enable them to deliver a customer experience that will make the organization to be singled out of the crowded market place. The technology benefits the organization by allowing the employees to access information that will promote an urgent and efficient answering of queries targeted at solving various problems that are customer-centric. Therefore application of the SAP CRM technology ensures that company employees learns to deliver excellent service increasing customer loyalty. The SAP CRM technology application in an organization facilitates maximization of the company resources as it pertains to services delivery, marketing and sales which serve to drive the organization business efficiency thus reducing the company total ownership as well as the operational complexity. As the company processes experience an improvement it s agility regarding to the challenges in the market condition also improves as well as the time spend in responding to the market changes. One of the benefits of the company gaining better insights pertaining to company’s clients plays a critical role when it comes to the management abilities to drive up its profits trough the opportunities to tap onto the lucrative new markets (Richard, & Christian, 1999). Another benefit SAP CRM technology derives for organizations that apply it in its operations that it helps in the improvement of the understanding of the business critical parts thus giving a whole sided view of the clients through enhancement of both collaboration and communication between the organization’s employees and the clients consequently leading to increased customer satisfaction. Therefore the application of his technology in all phases of the company’s It cycle helps in supporting the business needs thus enhancing the skills essential in ensuring that the business remain competitive. SAP R/3 Performance Tuning This version of SAP software application has been successfully applied in enterprise resource management and it has been successful y applied by most fortune 50 companies who comprise it in their accounting, management logistics among other modules of the company operations. Installation of the SAP R/3 is adaptive to other commercial systems including oracle 8, Microsoft SQL servers, Informix adaptive server, IBM UDB and Adabas D. Many processes using this application have been able to process it thousands of transactions concurrently making it data base system to become large. The current SAP R/3 database has 1.5 Tera bytes and considering the release of it new version this data base will in the near future increase several time its current size. In order for a company to successfully apply the SAP R/3 application to its operations a tuning between the R/3 application and the company’s underlying database. The SAP/3 is one of the leaders in the integrated administration of businesses and it serves to integrate all the processes of the company ranging from providing modules for the human resources, materials management as well as for the finance. This data base plays a crucial role in the management of the entire SAP database storing the data company, for instance, the customer and supplier information, the SAP R/3 data dictionary, internal data control as well as the code for all the company information programs and thus ensures that no file system is used because virtually all data is stored in this system (Roy, & Dewit, 2001). SAP R/3 is based on three-tier client/server architecture comprising of the presentation layer, application layer and the database layer. This version of SAP application a highly generic and very comprehensive application system designed to be used companies of various organizational structures with different lines of businesses. SAP R/3 has several bench marks proposed which includes the testing of the whole system contrary to testing of the RDBMS in isolation. Most prominent benchmarks of the application is the SD that is essential in measurement of the performance of distribution transactions and the processing of company sales. SAP is used to collect and certify results and publishes them. Successful application of SAP CRM by CARABAC CARABAC an electricity company has been able to successfully apply the SAP CRM into it its customer module enabling it to centralize its customers’ data allowing the company to rework its sales as well as its customer support processes. The SAP CRM tools has been very useful in collating and extending the company’s customer information from the new outbound sales area taking it to the level of mobile-welding sales staff operating on the road (Schäfer, & Melich, 2010). Considering the fact that only few areas of investment in the IT initiatives yields significantly, CARABAC wholesaler in the electrical industry has managed to benefit from its early investment in the SAP enterprise business technology (Christian, & Snodgrass, 1996). In the past, the company heavily relied upon its roving yet expensive sales team when it came to calling the company’s current as well as potential customers and the customer’s data existing at the time was isolated and widely distributed particularly in the minds of the sales teams. This problem was handled well by the application of SAP CRM module facilitating centralization of customer’s data as well as fostering restructuring the company’s way of dealing with its customers. The centre point of the company restructuring is the centered at outbound call centers with eight employees tasked with making of calls to customers to market the company business. Initially the company only maintained an inbound call center and the new techniques has seen the company realize new sales opportunities fostering generation of wealth through the discovery of new leads that has been turned to be new source of revenue for the business. In addition to that by CARABAC integrating the SAP CRM solution to its SAP’s enterprise system it has managed to keep the cost incurred in out bound marketing at minimal levels as compared to those incurred in keeping the company physical sales people out in the field (Mirel, & Olsen, 1998). The CARABAC Company has been able to use costs and increase its efficiency through the use of SAP CRM and it has built its future around the SAP enterprise management technology and it has seen its twenty five users in 1999 increase to hundreds of users. The current company’s SAP incorporates all of its business functions ranging from financials, inventory as well as payroll out into a n online store that is powered by the SAP store. The company through consultation has been able to extend its SAP implementation through introduction of enhancements that includes direct links to foreign companies and the Electronic Document Interchange (EDI) for order transfer as well as numerous orders and address verifications features. The enhancements has played a significant role in increasing the company efficiency regarding to processes handling of the inventory, and integration of the fax, mail and web channels ensuring that the inquiries and the orders placed using one method gets reflected in all the customer screens displayed across the entire company (Shasha, 1992). By applying the SAP CRM module in the company operations, the company has been able to use a highly advanced computing that has yielded a vey high levels of customer service is and one of the best ways of doing so is by having a good ERP structure that facilitates implementation of checks, bells, balances and whistles making the system to the best result possible. Also, the company by applying the SAP CRM module in its marketing campaigns has made the process easy as the employees in the outbound call centers through the use of database gets allocation of blocks of customers they are supposed to make calls to. This process has been made more efficient has the application ensures that each to bound call prompts on-screens display of customers history thus facilitating revenant and intelligent conversations with company customers. Furthermore, the intimate relationship with company customers also has been boosted by the recent implementation of mobile extension into the company’s CRM system. This extension uses GPRS and Bluetooth enabled phones which the sale people can utilize to wirelessly gain access to company’s SAP system through phones web browsers, over dial up modem speeds and through GSM mobile networks and this serve to enable them to pull up customers’ history almost from everywhere hence fostering intelligent and profitable marketing (Mclean, & Wetherbe, 2006). Generally, SAP CRM has enabled CARABAC to fully implement its CRM methodology leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty putting the company in highly competitive levels as compared to its competitors. The company is planning to expand its SAP solution to incorporate work flow capabilities that will allow tracking of potential sales’ leads via sales organizations. Also, the company will aim at implementing the SAP business warehouse that will allow the company to organize its customer’s information in such a way that it will promote further refining of the company’s marketing strategies. List of Reference Christian, J. & Snodgrass, R. (1996). Semantics of time-varying information systems. 21(4) 304-341 Desbarats, G. (1995). Usability: form that says function. Industrial Management & Data Systems 95(5):3-10 Mclean, E. & Wetherbe, J. (2006). Information technology for management (5th Ed.). New Jersey: John Wiley &sons, Inc. Mirel, B. & Olsen. L. (1998): Social and cognitive effects of professional communication on software usability. Technical Communication Quarterly 7(2) 190-204 Richard, T. S. & Christian, S. J. (1999). Developing Time-Oriented Database Applications Chicago: Morgan- Kaufman Roddick, J. F. & Spiliopoulou, M. (1999) “A bibliography of temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal data mining research.” SIGKDD Newsletter, Roy, M. C. & Dewit, O. (2001). The impact of interface usability on trust in Web retailers. Internet Research 11(5):378-398 Schäfer, M. O. & Melich, M. (2010).SAP Solution Manager Enterprise Edition. Boston: Galileo Pres. Retrieved on September 05 2011, from http://www.sap-press.de/download/dateien/1730/sappress_sap_solution_manager_enterprise_edition.pdf Shasha D (1992). Data base Tuning: a principled approach. New Jersey: Prentice hall Turban, E., Leidner, D., Mclean, E., & Wetherbe, J. (2006). Information technology for management (Ed.5). New Jersey: John Wiley &sons, Inc Read More