Replacing Salesforce with SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer in just four weeks
Earlier this year, we at IBsolution, a German Consultancy and SAP Partner, started off an ambitious project – to replace Salesforce with SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. This would have been a challenge itself but we decided to challenge ourselves even more and to do so on a tight project timeline – in just 4 weeks. There were a number of reasons and they are by no means specific to us. Here are the most important ones:
Avoid excessive price hike
Having quite some sales experience myself I surely know what NOT to do with a satisfied customer who has been successfully using my solution for years: To come up with new prices that leave the customer no choice but to look for alternative solutions.
At the end of last year (2016), when the time came to renew our Salesforce licenses, we were hit by a massive, almost 50% increase. This made the decision to thoroughly evaluate other cloud CRM solutions in order to possibly replace Salesforce an easy one.
Keep your precious data
Replacing your CRM is like performing open heart surgery – you don’t want to rush it, you want to thoroughly consider your options in order to reach the best decision and keep your patient alive. But when you are facing an acute heart failure, you have to act. So we instantly put together a project team to evaluate alternative solutions.
Our short list included sugarCRM and SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer, two native cloud solutions that offer comprehensive CRM functionality. In addition to a fair and market-driven price, they would deploy quickly and allow us to migrate our existing Salesforce data, providing us with a 360-degree view of our customers.
Fit in your SAP landscape
Eventually we fell for SAP Hybris C4C, which was strongly swayed by C4C’s seamless integration with our existing SAP landscape. It enables full visibility into our sales and customer management – from the initial contact, during the quotation process, up to the commissioned order. We are also expecting to see even more effects in the future due to the transparency with which it delivers CRM KPIs and correlates them with relevant information from other sources such as Google Analytics – all analyzed in SAP’s Business Objects Cloud.
Stay cloud
Cloud is an absolute must for anyone looking to deploy a state-of-the-art customer relationship management system. We started our move into the cloud when implementing our Salesforce solution 6 years ago. Going back to on-premise? Unthinkable. We have gradually moved other business areas into the cloud as well. Therefore, the implementation of SAP Hybris C4C was anything but new and thus a very straightforward affair.
Learn more about the project itself in my upcoming blogs soon available here in the SAP Community Network.
Dear Steffen,
Thank you for the blog.
During our evaluation of the CRM solutions in the market, we had anticipated the steep increase in commercials in subsequent years even though the vendors would offer discounts to get the Customer in their fold.
But what surprised me is your unheard of Project timelines of 4 weeks!!!!
Looking forward impatiently to hear from you in the subsequent blogs as well as to learn from you on how a CRM project can be really achieved in 4 weeks.I am prompted to recommend you for the Nobel prize for this achievement.
Hello Varkey,
I have been doing Hybris C4C projects for last 4 yr+ (even when it was not under the umbrella of Hybris). I understand your surprise on the 4 week timeline for SFDC to Hybris C4C transition - That is what exactly the power of the methodologies used and the Solution capability is - Based on experience, I can tell you it is very much possible provided the scope is clear, the requirements are in place and there is no Custom development or complex enhancement to integration involved.
Having said that, it also depends on each Customer's needs and business requirements, landscape of the AS-Is systems and several other factors which may increase the timelines of this kind of Project.
Going by what I mentioned (facts based on several implementations, some also include SFDC replacements, and yes, have achieved within 4 weeks time :)), I believe you can safely recommend me for Noble Prize now!! 🙂
Please feel free to shoot any questions you have for any clarifications required.
BR
Ankur
Hi Varkey,
thanks a lot for your feedback. I hope to get the next one published before the end of this week. Do let me know if there are specific aspects that you'd be interested in?
I agree that 4 weeks is very short but it's absolutely doable if you set up the system without backend integration first and add that in a second step. That's the power of cloud - and not worthy of the Nobel prize 😉
Steffen
Steffen,
Could you please also add the benefits of C4C Vs Sales Force. Most of our clients are so satisfied with Sales force. Even a thought of moving to C4C is a difficult task for us.
Regards
Isaac
Hi Isaac,
good point, I will try to cover that.
A colleague of mine is going to host a Webinar (in German) on that very topic. He's one of our key users and will talk about his experience going from Salesforce to C4C. Here's the link in case you're interested: https://academy.ibsolution.de/events/2017/05/salesforce-com-oder-sap-hybris-cloud-for-customer-ein-erfahrungsbericht/
Steffen
Hi Steffen, Ankur & Issac,
Thanks for the comments.
We had recently done an evaluation of the CRM solutions in the market. All of them was projecting for an implementation period of 8 to 9 months with a phased Go Live.
Four Weeks still remains a dream for me. Since you have done multiple projects within that time frame, I respect you Gurus & believe it is doable. That leaves a major challenge for me in Project Management.
Looking forward to the subsequent blogs as well as Webinars in English.
Hello Varkey,
As mentioned, the timelines can vary depending on several parameters.
I would be more than happy to engage in a one one one conversation if if you think it makes sense, that way we can discuss your use case and get some clarifications done, and then may be I can provide a more accurate timeline based on the use case . Do let me know please.
Will be more than happy to discuss!
BR
Ankur
Hi Varkey,
I just submitted the next post - should be available soon.
Steffen