Salesforce was an early mover in the cloud CRM space that gives an advantage to Salesforce, they have built a full suite of CRM solutions on the cloud, However SAP C4C is rapidly growing and making functionality available as it was only SAP on premise system sometime back, software was required to run the CRM whereas Sales force is a SaaS based CRM, it does not need a software. Now SAP offers a SaaS based C4C solution.
SAP C4C is fast catching up with more functionality added each release already 50% of SAP CRM on premise functionality is now available in C4C, and going ahead we wish entire on premise functionality will be available in the C4C space. Attempt to compare the functionality available in both the CRM
Cloud for Sales
Features such as leads, Opportunities, activities etc. are similar in both the CRM, except that SAP Cloud for Customer has an upper hand if customers look for an end to end sales solution with an integrated SAP ERP system. SAP's Cloud for Customer (C4C) provides inbuilt integration to SAP CRM, E and several other Third party applications (e.g. Integration with SAVO's Sales and Marketing Software), the middleware is already available for SAP cloud for customer. For Salesforce, the adapters have to be built for integrating. It will be a challenge to integrate Salesforce with an SAP ERP with moderate to heavy customizing as most of the customers use an ERP for their ordering and logistics; however Salesforce is better placed in social selling Chatter is by far one of the most successful collaboration capabilities in CRM world today. SAP C4C does have SAP JAM but is not free service like chatter provides the sharing and collaboration capabilities of chatter are very intuitive and customers love it.
SAP's Trade Promotion Management (TPM) is known as one of the most complex and integrated solution sold by SAP, given the complexity It was difficult to implement well and the usability of the solution had left a lot to be desired in TPM space, With SAP C4C latest upgrade which includes TPM, SAP taken first step to move TPM into cloud space along with On premise integration, SAP Cloud for sales retail execution is designed for sales teams and merchandisers selling consumer products into retail stores with integration and completing entire cycle from usage of promotion to sales order
Cloud for Marketing
Salesforce was lagging in marketing solution until they acquired Exacttarget.com; a cloud based marketing solution company. Salesforce has fortified its marketing cloud offering since then. The offerings around social media marketing, email and mobile marketing, marketing automation tool etc. are really nice. But if you are looking at an end to end marketing solution then C4C should be a better choice, only issue with SAP C4C user experience is not that great though it’s improved a lot. SAP C4C can be a better choice if you use complex segmentation around your transactional data, integration with SAP BW can be very challenging when using Salesforce. Sales Target planning, tracking sales revenue & tracking campaign ROI are additional super advantages of a C4C based system
Cloud for service
SAP clearly has a big advantage over Salesforce on this functionality. It does not offer rich functionality that SAP offers. SAP offers a whole range of solution in customer service – Service and repair, warranty, contracts, an integrated billing, and so many advanced features that clearly distinguishes it from Salesforce as well as other CRM vendors. SAP Cloud for Service can be integrated with CTI provider solutions. The Live Activity pane allows agents to see detailed information from a telephone call, or chat session in progress.
SAP provides out of the box integration with SAP Contact Centre (formerly BCM) and open CTI APIs with other 3rd party CTI providers, such as Avaya and Cisc much better than Salesforce
Cloud Analytics
SAP is a standout performer in analytics compared to Sales force, SAP C4C does not necessarily require an external reporting module for analytics on processes based solely on SAP C4C data. C4C is built on top of an SAP HANA database. Many standard real time reports and dashboards are available across sales and services processes. Reporting and transactional performance won’t be much impacted by data volumes and/or concurrent usage because of the SAP HANA architecture.
SAP C4C provides the ability to load 3rd party data via the Cloud Data Source concept with either a manual or an automated data load via web service Custom reports and KPIs can also be built based on standard fields also can be easily integrated with BW for richer analytics
Cloud Extensions
SAP cloud solution, it provides a strong lifecycle management backbone that supports the long life of each customers' solution. The studio supports the development of solution capabilities that are tailored for specific customers. The development and deployment of these solution capabilities causes no disruption to daily business because the upload process of a solution to a customer's production system does not require any system downtime.
Standard C4C includes not only the business configuration choices, but also all the extensibility adaptations that have been made. Extensibility adaptations include:
Company specific documentation on a global or per-"ui page" basis
- Output form customization's based on customer, market segment, or master layouts,
- Custom analytics,
- Custom KPI's,
- UI mashups
- Web service scenarios and communication arrangements,
- Custom fields, and
- New data object definitions
Apart from the above basic functions of a CRM solution, SAP C4C offers other functionality that Salesforce does not offer. Examples are Industry solutions; SAP may bring Trade Promotion Management, Leasing, Loyalty etc. to cloud over the time
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter
Thanks & regard,
Surjeet Bhati
