One of the most important characteristics required from the service department is the speed of reaction allowing you to meet customers’ requirements, and thus gain their trust. The reaction of the customer service, however, depends on the information flow rate and information accuracy. Therefore, a suitable data source is necessary for making service-related decisions and for their efficient processing.
SAP offers two solutions that can be used to meet the needs in the service area. These are SAP Customer Service (CS module of the ERP system) and SAP CRM Service. Each of these tools gives access to the functionality supporting the business processes at all stages for companies providing customer services – from reporting the problem, through planning the works and their execution, to the invoice settlement and issuance.
Both solutions provide flexibility, allowing full integration with other SAP systems (ERP, BI), and also with external applications. By using interfaces, it is possible, for example, to integrate them with GIS (geographic information systems that allow of choosing an optimal route for service technicians), to transmit service requests to the technicians’ devices (laptops, palmtops, PDAs) or to access the module through web browsers and portals.
Basic functions – similarities
Both SAP CS and the service module in SAP CRM support a wide range of business processes implemented by the departments responsible for providing the services. The most important ones include mapping and management of master data, that is, information on customers, employees (responsible for customer relationships, service engineers, etc.) and materials (e.g. equipment, spare parts, services) as well as warranty data (conditions, dates, coverage).
Service tools also allow you to map and manage customer technical objects used to carry out the service activities. The main system objects used for this purpose include: installations, functional locations, equipment, components, materials with serial numbers.
Request management is another process which is essential for customer services. Both systems allow the registration of service requests through the use of different types of documents (types of service requests) or through the call centre functionality and its integration with telephone exchanges. This allows for rapid identification of customers calling and the use of the advanced features of telephone exchanges (recording calls, calling back to the customer, etc.)
Within the two solutions, you can use the so-called solution database, enabling you to quickly identify the reported problem and propose a solution based on the reported symptoms. Additionally, the system enables the codification of the reported problems by using definable code catalogues that describe the problems, reasons, effects, actions to be taken, etc.
Planning and processing the service tasks, both warranty and non-warranty, by using different types of service requests is another service functionality. Requests in the system may contain information about what should be performed on which object, what resources are needed to process the request (materials, tools, service engineers or third parties), as well as the cost and revenue accounting method (internal costs or customer billing), etc.
In addition to ad hoc planning based on customer requests, SAP service solutions also support the planned execution of service tasks. The use of the mechanisms controlling the need to execute tasks on serviceable items allows you to automatically generate service requests or orders in a given period, together with information describing the scope of work to be done on the item. This function will be useful whenever the periodic inspections of serviced equipment are needed, when we are obligated by technical requirements or service contract provisions to carry them out.
Similarly, both solutions support shipment of spare parts to customers under warranty or outside warranty.
Another service functionality is service settlement and billing based on revenues and costs arising out of service tasks, with taking into account arrangements with the customer (service contract provisions or payment without a contract).
The SAP CS and SAP CRM Service tools allow end-to-end processing of service contracts containing defined information, such as the scope of work, payment terms, serviceable items, etc. Multidimensional reporting is possible by using standard system reports, evaluations, comparisons and benchmarks.
…and differences
Comparing the scope of business process support by SAP CS and SAP CRM Service, as well as the scope of master data in the systems (customers, service employees, technical objects, materials and services, service plans, warranties, counters, etc.) and transactional documents (service requests and orders), one may conclude that both systems are similar in terms of the functionality offered.
It’s true, but taking a closer look you may notice some differences in individual functions. Their detailed analysis will be the main criterion – though not the only one – for choosing the best service solution for the company. The comparison of key differences is included in the table below.
SAP CS and SAP CRM Service – functional differences
| SAP ECC CS | SAP CRM Service | |
| User interface | SAP GUI. Standard user interface for SAP systems. | CRM WEB UI. Interface available through a web browser; a very simple and user-friendly, used for handling business functionalities; SAP GUI used for technical tasks by system administrators. |
| Service | In both systems, similar functionality is available to support purely service processes. A similar scope of master data, the tools for handling service requests, customer service plans, resource planning to orders, service orders and confirmations, billings. With regard to working principles, the functionality of both tools is similar. Typically, those available in SAP CRM are slightly more powerful.
| |
| Customer Interaction Centre (CIC) | Customer Interaction Centre is available, but no longer developed by SAP. It includes functionalities facilitating simple processing of inbound and outbound communication (except for mass campaigns). | Customer Interaction Centre is constantly developed by SAP. The support for individual and mass communication is available through the following media: phone, e-mail, SMS, chat, and fax. Available additional tools: modeller, alerts for agents, interactive scripting, surveys. Possibility to run internal routing for incoming e-mails. |
| Resource planning | Available. Automatic resource planning may be enabled. | Available. Automatic resource planning may also be enabled. An additional available tool for a manager for manual assignment of service engineers to tasks. |
| Activities (service engineers’ task descriptions,meetings) | Available at a service request level. Notes may be entered. | Available as separate SAP document types, which allows us to use them almost freely in the process. It is possible to create and plan them automatically, which may be linked with planning the work of service engineers. |
| Actions (automatic actions that may be run from a document level) | A simple actions menu available on a service request. | The entire environment for creating and configuring actions on all document types is available (this way, it is possible to e.g. automatically create a new document or its items, escalate, or determine a person responsible). |
Not only service
In addition to those fundamental differences between both solutions, it is worth mentioning that in SAP CRM, there are many additional features supporting the customer service that can significantly contribute to the increase in the competitive advantage.
To actively communicate with customers and gather customer feedback about the quality of your services, you can utilize the functionality of marketing campaigns and surveys. Campaigns allow you to prepare, manage and collectively send messages to customers. For example, if we want to gather information about service quality from customers who were serviced by our service engineers over the last year, we can create the so-called target group (based on service orders), to which we then send an e-mail with our request and a link to the survey. Customer responses can then be analysed in SAP CRM or SAP BW.
In order to encourage customers to make more use of our services, you could also generate discounts for services in the SAP CRM and send them to SAP, where pricing conditions records will be created. We can send the message to customers through the campaign, e.g. via e-mail, to inform the customers on that.
In SAP CRM, customer self-service tools, such as ICSS, are also available. ICSS is a web application, by using which we can give customers access to our system, e.g. for direct reporting of defects.
The most advanced installations of SAP CRM allow you to work in a Shared Services Center scenario. This is the option for large call centres that can perform marketing services or register service requests for many companies. An agent of such a call centre, having received a customer request, switches within the same SAP CRM system between different customer bases connected with other SAP systems. Thusly, it is possible to work on several SAP systems of different customers’ on behalf of whom we provide services.
The SAP CRM Service tools are systematically developed by the system vendor to include new functions. The disadvantage of SAP CRM is that physically it is another system in our IT landscape, requiring an additional server (or servers if we consider the test and development environment) and database. SAP CRM and ERP systems will be connected using bi-directional interfaces (at least for the exchange of master data or billing requests) that need to be monitored.
Another important issue is the licensing type. SAP Customer Service is available under the SAP ERP licence, while the use of SAP CRM Service requires a SAP CRM licence (e.g. within the SAP Business Suite licence).
Different tools – one purpose
It is difficult to find a “better" solution. The choice will always depend on the character of the business, and therefore, the business requirements.
In companies that do not have sophisticated needs and the service would be primarily based on the receipt of customer requests (e.g. by phone), a comprehensive system is not required, and therefore, SAP CS would be a more economically viable solution.
For larger installations with a large number of business processes and in companies that provide services for many customers and, in addition to service functions, expect tools facilitating the execution of other tasks related to customer service (for example, support for sales and marketing), SAP CRM would be a more beneficial choice. This solution also provides greater scope for development in the future. In fact, popular are SAP CRM implementation models, where fundamental functionalities are activated first and only after some time, in successive stages, other and more advanced functions are included.
Regardless of the chosen tools – the purpose of the implementation of SAP customer service tools is similar – efficient customer service within the fixed parameters of SLA.