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.