SAP’s CRM Solutions: Going Cloud or On Premise?

It is a question that our customers ask us often – Where is SAP going to invest when it comes to CRM – is it in the cloud or on premise? This is a question that we were asking ourselves a few years ago. To find out where to invest, we spoke to many of our trusted advisors: our customers, analysts, partners and, industry thought leaders. When we analyzed all the conversations, it was abundantly clear that both the delivery models have their fair share of advantages and each one is better suited for a specific set of requirements.

An on premise system offers the ability to build end to end processes with numerous integrations into the back office applications. It offers multi-channel capabilities and greater control on adapting the solution to unique business needs. It tends to be more economical for higher number of users. On the other hand, a cloud based CRM solution offers a move from Capex to Opex, rapid innovation delivery and ability to get started with the application without much in house expertise.

Given the merits of both the delivery models, it was clear that our customers will greatly benefit from either model; however, the benefits of either model seemed mutually exclusive. We took up the challenge to ensure that our customers are able to leverage the benefits of both the delivery models and the result is the SAP Hybrid approach for CRM.

SAP offers comprehensive Marketing, Sales and Service capabilities through a) SAP CRM – An on premise multi-channel CRM solution spanning Marketing, Sales, Service and Analytics that is delivered in industry specific flavors b) SAP Customer On Demand – A cloud based CRM solution for Marketing, and Sales professional with built in social and collaboration capabilities. In addition to these two offerings, SAP also provides collaboration capabilities through its cloud based offering SAP Jam and SAP’s partners offer cloud based offerings for various complementing functionalities such as Savo for sales enablement. The SAP hybrid approach for CRM brings together various cloud and on premise CRM related offerings to deliver best of both world’s to our customers. In SAP Hybrid approach, an on premise system is securely connected to cloud based solutions through pre-built integrations with end to end vendor accountability. An illustration of SAP Hybrid approach for CRM is given below:

SAP Hybrid approach offers great deal of flexibility to our customers. Customers, depending on their requirements, can just deploy only SAP Customer On Demand – cloud based CRM offering or only SAP CRM On Premise or the hybrid approach in which both the cloud and on premise solutions are deployed and integrated.