SAP Cloud for Customer ( C4C) beginners Guide-Part 1
I hope below information gives you basic details on SAP C4C.
In today’s competitive market, it is important to meet customer requirements and align your sales, marketing and service business lines to provide higher customer satisfaction. It is also important to design a cheap, integral solution that helps an organization to achieve its objectives and meet customer needs in a flexible environment.
SAP Cloud for customer (C4C) is a cloud solution to manage customer sales, customer service and marketing activities efficiently and is one of the key SAP solution to manage customer relationship.
SAP C4C is based on the following individual products :
- SAP Cloud for Sales
- SAP Cloud for Marketing
- SAP Cloud for Social Engagement
- SAP Cloud for Service and Cloud for Field Service
- Employee Central Service Center – leveraging Successfactors Employee Central/HR solution.
Following are the key objectives of SAP Cloud for Customer:
- Relationships
- Collaboration
- Insight
- Business Processes
SAP C4C Key Points
Following are some interesting facts about SAP C4C :
- You can easily integrate C4C solution to SAP ECC, CRM and Outlook using SAP NW Process Integration or
SAP HANA Cloud Integration HCI for standard scenarios
- SAP C4C is a new product of SAP based on SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (Platform as a service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a service).
- SAP C4C connectors are available for popular middleware like Dell Boomi for cloud integration, Informatica, MuleSoft for application integration etc.
Advantages of SAP C4C
Following are the benefits of using C4C management :
- One of the key benefits of using SAP C4C is its operation expenditure cost and operation maintenance.
- You can take licenses as per your requirement and it can be increased on demand.
- SAP C4C solution is managed by vendor and all operational costs and maintenance is the vendor’s responsibility.
- SAP C4C solution allows you to manage customer needs from anywhere and with seven-layer security from cloud service providers.
- You can access all customer information regardless where they are stored or available
- SAP C4C is based on cloud and use secure and fast communication using web, mobile and supporting mobile platforms iOS, Android and Windows devices, in both online and offline mode.
SAP C4C – Architecture
SAP C4C has multitenant architecture where solution and components is shared between multiple customers.
There is an option to go for single tenant by paying additional cost. In a multiple tenant environment, all the updates and releases are built on C4C custom solutions for multiple clients.
SAP C4C provides prepacked integration for SAP ECC, CRM and Outlook. It consists of HTML5 UI, Silverlight UI, and mobile Apps for IOS, Android platform and HANA for HANA Cloud integration HCI
SAP C4C solution can be easily integrated with SAP ERP and CRM on premise solution.
There are two ways of integration:
SAP Process Integration PI/PO integration is recommended when you are already using process integration for on premise systems
SAP HANA Cloud Integration HCI integration is recommended when you have to perform cloud-to-cloud integration
SAP C4C – Public tenant Vs Private tenant
When a customer goes for SAP C4C production tenant, there is a test tenant provided as free to the customer. A separate unique URL is provided for each tenant. A customer can also purchase permanent test tenant subscription.
Public tenant: SAP C4C solution is hosted on cloud tenant that has many customers .
Private tenant : C4C customers can also go for private purchase edition, which allows them to subscribe for a tenant with no other customer on it.
SAP C4C production and test tenants are always of separate system. A customer can purchase a permanent test tenant and it is recommended only when SDK solution is in use.
Each tenant has a unique 6 digit number and tenant URL looks like https://myXXXXXX.crm.ondemand.com , XXXXXX denotes tenant number
SAP C4C – User Interface
In SAP C4C system we have three types of UIs.
HTML5
SAP C4C is used by end-users. This is considered as light version and provides fast and easy access to different work centers suitable for the end-users in C4C environment.
The user interface framework for SAP C4C for end-users is based on HTML 5. All business user features and functions are available in HTML 5. Most of the administrator features and functions are still only available in Silverlight.
To access HTML5-SAP C4C user interface, open Internet Explorer and type your tenant URL
Silverlight
This C4C-Silverlight user interface is used by Administrator. For this, you need to install Microsoft Silverlight in your local system.
Note − the default client is HTML5 but C4C administrators can launch the Silverlight UI from the Adaptation menu to access the configuration relevant work centers.
To open Silverlight UI mode, go to the Adapt tab at the top and select Launch Microsoft Silverlight.
Responsive UI
Various capabilities offered by responsive UI (RUI) via the mobile extended edition (Field Service).
—— To be continued ——–
Hi Rajasekhar - there are a couple of items/clarifications to add:
Products. C4C is a single solution with various business scenarios licensed separately or in total - its a licensing/topic scenario vs. product. Additionally it includes Cloud for Service and Cloud for Field Service - Generally social and field service are add-on's to Cloud for Service. We also sell and market a scenario called Employee Central Service Center - leveraging Success Factors Employee Central/HR solution.
Lastly as far as UI - for various capabilities we offer the responsive UI (RUI) via the mobile extended edition (Field Service) - it's worth noting we are working on parity with HTML on all end user scenarios and we have a short term roadmap for availability.
Thanks for the summary post, looking forward to part deux!
Hi Renee,
Thank you for looking at blog and providing valid inputs.
Updated them in the current blog.
Thanks & Regards
Raja
Hi All,
Can we link business transaction documents of C4C and ECC? For example: C4C Quote to ECC SAles order. Your inputs are highly appreciated.
Deepak,
Yes, when you have OnPremise ECC/CRm inetrgated with C4C (Transaction data intergation includes), you can actually see the wole document flow in C4C when you have for ex: a Sales Order created in ECC as a follow up to a Sales Quote which was created in C4C (There is a tab/facet - If not visbile -ADAPT oe PERSONALIZE the Quote/Order screen to make it visbile under which you can see the document flow)
BR
Ankur
Hello Rajasekhar,
Good attempt!
Few observation on your blog, you may want to make updates to the blog based on my feedback in BOLD:
1. You can easily integrate C4C solution to SAP ECC, CRM and Outlook using SAP NW Process Integration or SAP HANA Cloud Integration HCI for standard scenarios
=> MS Outlook intergationn does NOT need a middleware like PI/PO or HCI - the intergation is enabled through the Outlook Add-on available under Downloads sections in C4C
2. SAP C4C solution is managed by vendor and all operational costs and maintenance is the vendor’s responsibility
=> If you are calling 'SAP' as the vendor, then your statement could be correct, however, if you mean the SI as vendor doing implementation for the Customer, then it's not completely right. The maintenance from System health perspective along with security and upgrades, etc. is managed by SAP. For day to day support and operations, it could be the SI/Vendor who implemented the Solution and they reach out to SAP for raising incidents for support.
3. SAP C4C solution allows you to manage customer needs from anywhere and with seven-layer security from cloud service providers
=> SAP data Security is all managed and owned by SAP Data centers, not sure what do you intend to imply by Cloud service providers here!
4. You can access all customer information regardless where they are stored or available
=> What does this mean? Stored/Available? Elaborate on this please.
5.SAP C4C is based on cloud and use secure and fast communication using web, mobile and supporting mobile platforms iOS, Android and Windows devices, in both online and offline mode -
=>This is a vague and very broad statement - Based on Cloud could have several meanings, moreover just saying Cloud in itself is not a statement that makes technical sense. A mention like SAAS based Application solution is good enough and that makes more sense.
6. SAP C4C has multi tenant architecture where solution and components is shared between multiple customer
=> Please make a note here that Customer's data is never shared between Customers, it remains with the Customer's tenant space and there is no overlap of data between Customers.
7. There is an option to go for single tenant by paying additional cost. In a multiple tenant environment, all the updates and releases are built on C4C custom solutions for multiple clients
=> Please remove this section and refer to SAP guides on Tenant architecture - What is Single tenant with additional cost? Customer can take additional test tenant for additional cost on top of 1 productive and default Test tenant they get. You need to be specific when talking about Public and Private cloud tenants and any additional tenants/costs precisely.
8. There are two ways of integration: HCI or PI
=> Well, technically there are more ways in addition to SAP PI/PO & HCI, like using 3rd party middleware or Direct integration, the only caveat with these is there is huge additional effort of building custom interfaces and maintenance and it adds to the complexity of integration. Please provide complete information.
9.SAP HANA Cloud Integration HCI integration is recommended when you have to perform cloud-to-cloud integration - This is not really true
=> You can use SAP HCI for performing both OnPremise to Cloud as well as Cloud to Cloud integration.
10. SAP C4C production and test tenants are always of separate system. A customer can purchase a permanent test tenant and it is recommended only when SDK solution is in use
=> You can replace the word 'ONLY recommended' to make it more generic like - When complex Custom Development/Complex Custom integration is involved - This is to ensure that Customer can perform ongoing Change management for these scenarios on a dedicated tenant.
I hope you take my feedback in the right spirit - my objective of giving the feedback is that when you publish anything on SCN, it's referred and read by people all over the world who are into related SAP module/area of expertise - So the information has to be correct and consistent without any ambiguities in it.
Hope this feedback helps you in future!
BR
Ankur