My company has been on CRM ISA B2B for some time now. It was one of the few IT projects where the users hailed it as being truly successful. It had more functionality than the legacy web application and some features we did not have before. The screens are intuitive and almost no training is required as any web application should be.
Moving from CRM 4.0 to 5.0 and about to hit the new 7.0 the capabilities that we are seeing a need for are not offered so much in the ISA application but in other areas of what 7.0 provides in the delivered business roles or what can be provided thru the SAP channel management solution.
We are seeing a need to provide our B2B customers with online access to such things as;
- BI reporting
- Actual sales reporting to plan
- Pushing leads & opportunities
- Pipeline data
- CRM solution db
- Content Management
- Customized ECC reports
- Fact sheet data
While we have seen a benefit for moving in this direction for some period of time, the PCUI screens offered in the CRM buinsess package via the EP portal just was not sufficient in 5.0 and the development lead time was way too long. All the tabs in the opportunity, quote, order screens are too overwhelming for a B2B or BOB user.
This is where I see CRM 7.0 allowing us to move in this direction. For a non tech person like me, even I have been able to figure out the web design tools in 7.0 to take the simple screens delivered by SAP and even simplify them even more.
I do not see this being a slam dunk but I think the potential is closer. Even though it appears a channel partner solution could be offered with just the CRM browser it looks like using an external EP portal would be optimal solution. This adds more complexity and more systems are required to provide this solution. The traditional ISA user management application appears it would no longer be the tool in order to support SSO accross EP portal, CRM, BI, etc. Security accross mulitple systems, looking at ACE to replace some traditional basis security, etc....
But I see a huge upside in taking the current ISA application to the next step.
