SAP Technology blog: Future of SAP CRM

Recent Announcements

• SAP CRM is currently guaranteed to be supported till at least 2025 and SAP has not announced any end-of-life date or replacement for SAP CRM on-premise system.
• Release of “S4 HANA for Customer Management 1.0” (S4CRM) in last Feb,2018.
• Latest announcement was the launch of “C/4 HANA”, a front office customer experience suite released in Jul’2018.

SAP S/4 HANA for Customer Management 1.0 (S4CRM)

This is simplified version of CRM embedded into S/4 HANA. This add-on is installed on top of on-premise SAP S/4 HANA (Prerequisite is SAP NetWeaver 7.52 with SAP S/4HANA 1709 FPS 01)

Features of the solution:

• Deployed on ABAP NetWeaver
• S4CRM UI is still based on SAP CRM Web Client UI.
• CRM one order framework in the backend
• Same data model for S4CRM and S/4 HANA i.e. S4CRM tables will be part of S/4HANA database scheme
• Seamless integrates with S/4 HANA
• No middleware required between core S/4functions and CRM functions as it shares same HANA database
• Underlying UI is based on SAP Web Client UI
• ABAP development tools are still used for partner development
• Uses S4H key user extension tool instead of AET of CRM
• Web Services and XIF are mostly used for integration with other systems
• Uniform harmonized user experience for both S4CRM and S/4HANA with a new “Belize” UI theme.

Functions supported in S4CRM release 1.0:

• Service Order Management – This function covers entire service life cycle and supports Service order quotes, Service requests, Service request templates, Service orders and execution, service parts and finally Service confirmations.
• Customer Interaction: CRM Interaction center solution embedded into S/4 HANA enables businesses to collaborate and communicate thru various communication channels (phone, chat, e-mail, fax, letter). It supports various customer service specialists (IC agents and Managers) features like agent inbox, alerts, rules, multilevel categorization, knowledge articles and other IC interaction features. This solution covers 45+ typical business process steps of utilities industry and with more to come in the future releases.