How to take your CRM software to the next level
The challenge:
New opportunities for you and your customers regularly emerge with the constant evolution of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Consumers quickly become accustomed to innovations and immediately adopt them as the new standard for the future.
To expand your customer base and strengthen your existing relationships, you need to differentiate yourself from the norm and create a superior customer experience. Intelligent and integrated interactions in real-time characterise a customer experience that is both unique and increases profits. But to achieve this, your CRM software must have the necessary technological capabilities.
The solution:
We support you as a competent partner with our best-practice expertise. Guided by your corporate strategy, we focus on your end users' customer experience to design a solution with the right CRM sofware for your company.
We show you all the suitable technological options that enable an intelligent and integrated customer experience. Our team can implement them efficiently for you at the highest level - from the company-wide holistic introduction of a CRM system to area-specific modernisations and developing custom solutions for highly specific challenges.
Let us help you renew and revitalise your CRM system and processes. Reach out today to find out more.
Our CRM software implementation and modernisation services
SAP Customer Experience (CX) Consulting
Our SAP Customer Experience consulting services build on a unique end-to-end service offering. They span from an initial assessment of your situation to customised implementation and after-go-live support. Our services include CRM best practices consulting, teaching agile working methods, change management and training. Besides the core CRM consulting topics, our PwC network enables us to offer services beyond this, such as strategy consulting, UX design, or legal advice in data protection.
Our services are tailored to a broad range of requirements, and our experts have the knowledge and experience to apply them to your scenario.
Find out more about our services in detail here or contact us via our contact form for a personal introduction.
Maturity assessment
Using internationally recognised IT standards, we determine the maturity of your CRM system’s processes and structures. We identify its weak points and the areas with modernisation potential. This approach enables us to identify and eliminate potential risks in your existing CRM application.
Description:
Our Maturity Assessment is a deep dive evaluation of the quality of your procedures and systems, addressing development, organisation, maintenance and more. On this basis, we determine the maturity level of each respective function. We can then initiate measures for improvement
Business process design workshops
In workshops, we design with you the future processes, using our business process redesign framework. We follow a dedicated procedure that includes templates and best practices, enabling us to conduct the workshops with you in a results-oriented way.
We place particular focus on the following aspects:
- Defining the future procedures.
- Establishing roles and responsibilities.
- Aligning procedures with digital best practices.
An agile approach and a continuous exchange of feedback to customise and improve operations.
Requirements workshops
We determine the requirements for your future CRM based on our conference room pilot approach. We use an interactive approach that allows you to see directly in the system how your future processes will run.
The procedure consists of four phases:
- Preparing for your future CRM based on the business process redesign and existing information.
- Tracing the future business processes with you in the CRM.
- Capture deviations of the existing functionality against the desired functionality through user stories.
- Prioritising user stories together with your key users.
Our workshops enable you to document the necessary adjustments in a short time in a language that is meaningful to your future users. You will also gain a practical understanding of how your CRM software will work in the future.
Test management
The success of a CRM project also depends on the right test strategy and the appropriate test management. Our test management framework covers the planning and execution of the usual types of tests and includes personnel planning, change management and scope management.
We can also significantly reduce the personnel-intensive test effort with our test automation strategies and tools. Tests do not just start at the end of the development phase but are an intrinsic part of development. For example, a unit test is carried out and documented once a user story is complete. End-users receive a demo of the new functionalities at the end of each sprint and can test and give feedback based on the acceptance criteria of the user stories.
Finally, a structured integration and user acceptance test happens before a go-live. The test management shows a significant advantage of our business process redesign approach: operations develop, and system needs are documented based on user stories. These contain acceptance criteria for the test cases. In this way, you can trace every deviation (incident) reported by users, whether an error in the system, a user question, or a new requirement.
The system makes it possible to directly deduce whether an error in the system needs to be corrected, the training documents expanded, or a change request raised.
Solution design
Our technical experts create a design based on the SAP Customer Experience (CX) solutions, your business processes and the recorded user stories.
In doing so, we place particular emphasis on:
- Completely mapping your requirements.
- Innovative use of standard functionalities in the system.
- Identifying different design options, considering implementation effort.
- A modular structure of the necessary adjustments to help prioritisation.
- Transparency.
- Integrating new technologies into your existing system landscape.
In certain situations, out-of-the-box software reaches its limits. Sometimes specific functionalities required by your business model are not available. In this case, it is necessary to develop a customised solution for your business model perfectly tailored to your needs. We are the ideal partner for this.
Thanks to our worldwide network of experts and professional development centers, which bundle competencies on various technologies, we are positioned optimally for every challenge.
Project management
We are happy to adapt our project management to your corporate culture. We support both agile methods based on SCRUM and traditional approaches. We also offer a hybrid variant of the waterfall approach and SCRUM. In this water-scrum-case approach, we take advantage of both approaches.
The start of a project is characterised by a strongly planned approach. In the software configuration and development phase, the advantages of an agile approach then come into play. Before you adopt your new CRM, it goes through preplanned stages of testing, training, data migration, and final system preparation.
We achieve above-average project transparency and high-quality results through the water-scrum case approach.
Change Management
With our change management approach, we support you in managing change with maximum success.
We focus on employees' motivation, skills, behaviour, and attitudes - regardless of whether they influence or are affected by the changes.
The most important aspects we consider are:
- Demonstrating intended changes and answers to the question "What's in it for me?"
- Creating transparency about the "what", "where", and "why"
- Setting clear goals and measurable results
- Considering all individuals involved
- Communicating a clear leadership commitment
- Empowering managers and staff
Those involved are introduced gradually to the changed business routines and structures throughout the project. We design the critical transformation model efficiently and effectively through our comprehensive and proven approach.
After-Go-Live Support
After the go-live of the new CRM software, our responsibility for the project's success does not end there. Once the system is in day-day-to operation, further challenges or unanswered questions often arise.
To ensure that the new operations continue to run smoothly in the long term, you will receive our support beyond the go-live to resolve any open questions.
System configuration
The latest CRM software provides a wide range of functions. Unconfigured, however, these cannot offer any added value for your company. Our experts tailor the technology ready to implement to meet your business’s exact needs.
Our CRM consultants support you in achieving a customised system that ensures functionality and enables you to make the most of its potential.
You also benefit from numerous best practices from previous projects. In this way, the transformation provides you with significant further advantages.
System integration
When implementing your target architecture, it is essential to connect the new systems and technologies with the existing system landscape in the best possible way.
Therefore, as well as selecting the individual technologies, it is also vital to use future-proof, flexible and scalable integration platforms. This is important for two reasons:
On the one hand, to ensure the necessary performance and maintenance in the long term. On the other, this is the prerequisite for being prepared for future changes in the architecture, for example, through the integration of more systems or services.
Through our global network of experts, we can draw on specialists from established providers of every technology to implement even the most complex integrations successfully.
Data migration
When transitioning from the old to the new CRM software, migrating your company's data is essential to the implementation. In most cases, this offers the opportunity to modernise data structures and increase data quality.
Our proven Big Data and data migration specialists analyse, transform, and migrate your company's data using sophisticated procedures. Your new CRM system can benefit directly from your optimised datasets and seamlessly integrate and improve operations.
Involving your business departments in selecting the data for migration and mapping it to the new structures and quality gates are integral to our approach.
The critical milestones for data migration are:
- Scoping: defining the scope of migration, i.e., determining the entities and lifecycle events to be migrated.
- Architecture: choosing the migration tool, creating the mapping between source and target entities, and deriving the message types.
- Mapping: creating the field-level mappings in close collaboration with business and technical experts.
- Cleansing: selecting the data records to be migrated from the source systems.
- Implementation: technical implementation of the defined mapping using the selected migration tool, testing at the level of individual data records in the form of unit tests.
- Test stage: a fully simulated migration to verify the results in two phases: Software Integration Test (technical) and User Acceptance Testing (functional).
- Migration: go-live with migrated data.
On-premise to cloud migration
The benefits of cloud-based systems are driving more and more companies to migrate from their existing on-premise systems to advanced cloud technologies. In doing so, they must identify and manage significant challenges early. These include a wide range of issues such as the right project approach, coordinating the required resources and data migration and integration.
The following points are essential to project success:
- Change: Accompanying and managing your organisation’s evolution.
- Processes: Recording and optimising customer-specific needs and procedures.
- Knowledge: Transferring learning throughout the project’s life cycle.
- Transparency: Transparently communicating and bundling information.
- Cooperation: The goal-oriented cooperation of all central stakeholders and team members.
These points can be highly complex to realise. Our experts have the necessary experience and expertise to integrate in-house system developments into your new cloud.
Our BXT approach for successful CRM system transformation
Business
How can added value be created for your company?
eXperience
What is the best user experience?
Technology
How do we realise it?
The strategy sets the tone
We use industrial and functional expertise to support the most relevant concepts.
Focus on the experience
People-centred thinking engages and inspires all individuals and breathes life into concepts.
Technology supports the implementation
We combine the necessary technologies into a platform with the best concepts to create a roadmap.
The advantages for you and your customers
Modernising your CRM software opens many benefits for you and your customers.
The advantages for you and your customers
Consistency and contextual relevance
Customer experiences are consistent and contextual across all channels and devices.
Convenience and security
Interaction options are characterised by ease of use and high data security.
Seamless and integrated operations
Navigation is intuitive and seamless across all channels.
Real-time personalisation
Delivering the right experience to the right customer in the right way.
The advantages for your company
By moving to cloud-based CRM software, your business can reduce costs, offer a great customer experience, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase revenue.
You can automate processes much more easily and in more areas with a cloud CRM. Improved analytical tools and reporting allow you to allocate and use budgets optimally. It also simplifies the implementation of data-driven decision-making.
The cloud-based applications from established providers meet the highest security standards and allow you to expand the digital opportunities you want.
These are just a few generic advantages. We would be happy to explain the exact added value for your company in a conversation.
The possibilities by area
Each area of CRM has specific requirements. A CRM system needs certain functionalities to master them. In the following overview, we list these challenges and explain how you can overcome them.
The challenges in marketing
Classical marketing measures are becoming less and less effective, and the standards for modern marketing methods are continuously evolving and becoming more demanding. To reach your leads and customers and exploit the opportunities of digital and data-driven marketing, you must overcome the following challenges:
Current challenges:
- How do I make better use of the quality of my customer profiles to increase their meaningfulness?
- How can I increase the efficiency of my marketing planning and implementation?
- How can I reach potential customers precisely, across channels and at the right time along the customer journey?
- How can I implement professional and efficient lead and account-based marketing to increase my conversion rate in all markets?
- What insights will accelerate my decision-making, and how can data-driven marketing enable a more efficient customer approach?
- How can I use AI technology for my marketing performance?
- How do I realise a short go-to-market phase to act flexibly?
SAP Marketing Cloud can meet these challenges head on in the B2B and B2C environment, while Emarsys is designed specifically for the B2C markets.
We would be happy to inform you about the details, possibilities, and advantages in a non-binding discussion. We analyse your digital marketing’s maturity with you to create data-driven marketing by combining business, experience, and technology knowledge.
SAP Marketing Cloud for B2C and B2B enables:
- Advanced customer profiling
With SAP Marketing Cloud, you can build comprehensive customer profiles based on various sources. - Efficient marketing planning and implementation
From planning budgets to preparing and executing campaigns to evaluating metrics, holistic control is possible. - Cross-channel customer experience
Consider online and offline channels, social media, and more channels. - Lead- and account-based marketing in B2C and B2B
The system allows the individual targeting of leads and accounts. - Data-driven marketing
Based on data analysis and evaluation, carry out precise customer targeting and achieve greater campaign efficiency.
The Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform for B2C enables:
- Hyper-personalised customer experiences
Data-driven marketing logic orchestrates all customer touchpoints, supporting highly personalised customer experiences. - Out-of-the-Box marketing tactics
Specific strategies and use cases are predefined in Emarsys. - Integrated marketing analytics
Predefined strategy-based analytics and KPIs. - AI-based Omni channel marketing
Channel-independent personalisation using AI is enabled. - Short implementation time
Rapid deployment and short time-to-market.
Challenges in online commerce
From desktop to mobile-first to headless commerce, customer interactions in e-commerce are now a multi-channel experience.
In this context, headless commerce means that the backend logic and content can be made available via high-performance interfaces on any front end – the head.
The SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly Hybris Commerce) offers these interfaces and, with Spartacus, provides a matching encapsulated front end on the latest technology stack.
Consequently, managing content and the context-related control of interactions play a central role.
Implementing personalised customer experiences along with efficient order processing are two critical success factors. Customers often want to hold their purchased products in their hands immediately. So, quick delivery is significant in determining whether their shopping experience was satisfactory.
Current challenges:
- How can I harmonise and manage interactions and purchase processing across any channels and touchpoints, including brick-and-mortar retail and field sales?
- How can I build services or offers that consider the individual customer’s context?
- How can I perfectly orchestrate my content management so that the right customer sees the right elements at the ideal times?
- How do I create a highly personalised shopping experience?
- How do I implement efficient order processing that meets customer expectations?
The functionality of SAP’s Commerce Cloud enables you to address these challenges.
We would be happy to give you more information and explore the possibilities and other advantages in a non-binding discussion.
SAP Commerce Cloud enables:
- Cross-channel online commerce
Based on the headless approach, the Commerce Cloud enables the connection of any front end and the creation of an omnichannel online shop with SAP Spartacus. It offers customers search and filter functionality and various integrated functions for promotions. - Context-driven offers and services
Use intelligent segmentation, personalisation and merchandising alongside real-time insight generation and intelligent remarketing. - Content management
Integrated functions for validation, workflow review and approval, mass editing and mass upload of content are essential components. In addition, consolidated publishing of all product data and product catalogues is easy via intuitive and user-friendly management interfaces. These include the straightforward generation of multilingual catalogues. - Highly personalised customer experiences
A website editor is integrated for simplified storefront management. For a consistent brand and shopping experience, build multiple connected online shops through inheritance and built-in multi-touchpoint support. Design and implement unified advertising campaigns seamlessly. You can also set up context-driven services. - Seamless order processing
Handle the purchase and collection of goods via any channel and the return process via omnichannel and self-service functions. SAP Commerce supports B2C and B2B business models and provides customers with constant visibility of stock levels.
Challenges in sales
To close sales successfully, sales staff need comprehensive customer information at each touchpoint in the customer journey. An efficient and flexible offer design, simple and efficient billing management processes and sound administration of sales regions are also crucial for success. It’s also becoming increasingly important to help sales staff make quick and targeted decisions. SAP Sales Cloud (formerly SAP Cloud for Customer or C4C) specialises in facilitating salespeople’s work, accelerating closings and maximising success rates.
Current challenges:
- How do I provide my sales talent with the correct information at the right time to increase their chances of success?
- How do I easily configure even the most complex offers online and design contracts, prices, and discounts simply and quickly?
- How can I modernise territories and enable better planning to optimise my turnover?
- How can I accelerate our sales and billing processes and adapt them to modern customer requirements?
- How can I easily and transparently integrate my compensation system into the sales process across all channels?
The SAP Sales Cloud’s functionality, SAP CPQ (formerly CallidusCloud), and SAP Commissions (formerly CallidusCloud) meet these requirements.
We would be happy to give you more information and explore the possibilities and other advantages in a non-binding discussion.
The SAP Sales Cloud with CPQ and Commissions enables:
- Sales support and optimisation
The Sales Cloud offers lead and opportunity management in real-time and complete transparency about the pipeline. It enables automated sales processes with an integrated sales assistant, as well as detailed insights into your deals and built-in reporting. It gives a 360° view of each customer with the entire interaction history. Enjoy a full insight into sales forecasts and set up offline functionalities for mobile devices. An integrated visit management and route planner complements these functions, affording extensive collaboration options for efficient cooperation. - Offer and contract design
Your salesforce can benefit from digital quotation configuration (Configure, Price, Quote or CPQ), Guided Selling and fast quotation creation. Product configuration and pricing are quicker and easier. Realise margin protection and grow sales through simplified cross- and upselling. Increase efficiency through automated workflows and approval processes. Gain mobile access to contract documents and the option to implement contract negotiations in a protected online portal. - Sales performance management
Supra-regional management of sales regions and accelerated commission settlement increase efficiencies. SAP Sales Cloud with SAP Commissions also supports the faster realisation of sales plans, real-time updating of sales documents, and an integrated and transparent compensation system. - Order processing and settlement management
The solution automates order processing across multiple systems, providing seamless and simplified settlement management. - Intelligent decision support
Implement intelligent budget planning and get support from the Sales Cloud by automatically identifying KPI-specific outliers and anomalies. Access personalised recommendations to increase sales. Data analyses supported by machine learning are also possible.
Challenges in service
In saturated markets especially, maintaining and strengthening existing customer relationships is essential for a company’s sustainable turnover. Outstanding service plays a vital role but requires a holistic approach across all channels. For a compelling customer experience, your services must be flexibly and intelligently structured to retain customers in the long term.
Current challenges:
- How do I synchronise my service processes to create a superior customer experience?
- How do I reduce manual efforts for service requests while providing an exceptional customer experience?
- How can I make services flexible to meet every customer request directly?
- How do I optimise on-site service activities at customer locations?
The SAP Service Cloud (formerly SAP Cloud for Customer or C4C), SAP Field Service and SAP Cloud Platform help you to overcome these challenges.
We would be glad to give you more information and explore the possibilities and other advantages in a non-binding discussion.
The SAP Service Cloud with FSM enables:
- An end-to-end service offering
The Service Cloud opens consistent communication within existing SAP systems for your services. It goes hand in hand with simplified data access for service employees and a decisive knowledge advantage through consolidating information. - Scaling service technology
Use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered speech technology for service bots and machine learning-based service ticket management. Automate information retrieval via intelligent bots. Advanced customer self-service technology is another component of the Service Cloud with the Cloud Platform. - Intelligent user experiences
Realise consistent service offerings across channels, from self-service to agent-assisted service to field service and feedback management. Use Deep Learning to efficiently route, categorise and prioritise service tickets and set up gamification to motivate service agents.
Challenges posed by customer data
Handling customer data properly is central to business success but comes with significant challenges. Your customers and partners want personalised and seamless experiences without compromising trust and control over their data. Additionally, the ever-changing technological and regulatory environment makes it difficult to realise the full potential of your customer data.
Current challenges:
- How do I build my customer data solution on first-hand identities while creating seamless user experiences?
- How can I implement specific access and consent management requirements?
- How do I ensure legal compliance and a trust-based customer relationship based on control and transparency?
- How can I take the next step towards superior customer experiences, considering my existing CIAM and ECPM solution?
- How do I use the 360° view to orchestrate customer interactions along the entire customer journey and across all touchpoints?
- How do I ensure compliant handling of my customer data via access and consent beyond the level of individual touchpoints?
With the SAP Customer Data Cloud's CIAM and ECPM solutions, you can create the foundation to master these challenges. And with the SAP Customer Data Platform, you can take your customer data and experiences to a new level.
We would be glad to give you more information and explore the possibilities and other advantages in a non-binding discussion.
The SAP Customer Data Cloud enables:
- Turn anonymous visitors into loyal customers – Customer Identity and Access Management for B2C
Offer your customers cross-touchpoint registration and social login for all your platforms through a simple integration and under high-security standards. Build uniform customer profiles according to your requirements in a central database to synchronise them with other data sources. - Bind business partners and customers while reducing costs - Customer Identity and Access Management for B2B
Ensure fast onboarding based on your partners’ self-administration according to your requirements. Enable policy-based access management, dynamic access control, and privacy-compliant (self-)management of preferences and consents. - Trust-based customer relationships and compliance – Enterprise Consent and Preference Management
ECPM is a solution for managing and audit-proofing the storage of preferences and consents. It provides version control and simple processes for capturing and viewing consents and preferences. - Connect online and offline customer data and all sources in real-time
Through simple integration, merge data silos such as ERP, CRM, partner data and anonymous third-party data with your customer identities. Events fed in real-time complement your customer profiles. This gives you a comprehensive view of your customers, enabling coordinated interactions. - Orchestrate customer experiences along the entire customer journey in real-time
SAP CDP is the central activation layer between all customer data sources and interaction systems such as email, marketing or customer service. Activation can take place in different views depending on the quality and trustworthiness of the data. Defined campaigns and journeys pass information about events, segments, and target groups to the solution, which can distribute to downstream systems. - Ensure data protection and governance across all downstream touchpoints and systems
Starting with captured consent and preference data from ECPM, the SAP Customer Data Platform is the control centre for your customer data. Reassure the regulators that your customer data is used for its intended purpose across all downstream systems. Built into the solution’s architecture from the ground up, it ensures compliant use of your customer data.
Challenges for individual system extensions
Companies’ CRM systems often grow organically over time and are extended by individual applications within the CRM. These systems are usually particularly well adapted to internal business processes. However, if a new underlying CRM replaces the old one, adopting such extensions is not always possible. This approach is also no longer in line with best practices. In such cases, you need a suitable platform that supports the smooth integration of customised solutions into the new CRM solution and other existing systems.
Current challenges:
- How can I easily and quickly implement individual extensions or migrate existing ones?
- How can I connect the most diverse IT systems with one other?
- Is the corresponding platform suitable for further development of the IT structures, and does it support digital transformation?
The SAP Cloud Platform offers the necessary functions to master these challenges.
We would be glad to give you more information and explore the possibilities and other advantages in a non-binding discussion.
The SAP Cloud Platform enables:
- Integration of the entire value chain
The SAP Cloud Platform enables the integration of cloud and on-premises systems along the whole value chain. Rapid implementation is possible with the help of pre-configured integration packages, APIs, and business processes. And thanks to intuitive operating elements (drag and drop) the handling is particularly user-friendly. - Easy development of application extensions
With the development and provision of applications and services for integrated business processes, you can create consistent experiences for customers and employees. Open standards allow tremendous flexibility and the use of existing knowledge. The SAP Cloud Platform provides a wide range of services around data storage, security, IoT, analytics, UX, AI and ML, and mobile.
Why PwC?
To the point:
- PwC delivers successful SAP Customer Experiences projects from strategy to execution from a single source.
- We can access on a global network of experts quickly and efficiently to identify and implement a solution to your technology or management challenges.
- We follow the BXT approach and our goal is always to add value to the business, enhance the user experience and enable implementation in technology.
- Our integrated change management focuses on increasing user qualifications and acceptance of new solutions.
- We ensure short times to introduce new systems thanks to our agile implementation approach.
Customer Transformation
We transform business models for sustainable customer growth.
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