1. How is CRM and R/3 differ from each other? R/3 is an integration of different application suits.

It has its own architecture and way fo functioning. CRM is all about maintaining the relationship with a customer. It is supposed to enhance the profit of the company or organisation since the ultimate goal of any company is profit. Therefore CRM is one step ahead for their goal achievements. SAP R/3 is a 3 tier based client/ server based application. One layer is presentation layer (Client) which interfaces with the end user. Second layer is application layer for all business - specific requirements (Program), and third is database which contains all information and records about the system, including transcational and configration data. SAP R/3 has been developed in it's own language called ABAP (Advanced business application programming). Different modules of SAP R/3 are - FICO, MM, PP, SD, IS, AM, HRMS, SCM, SEM, WM etc. Where CRM is under a business mySAP Business Suit collection (SRM, CRM, SCM etc). 2. CRM Software Sales Force Automation - Contact management Contact management software stores, tracks and manages contacts, leads of an enterprise. - Lead management Enterprise Lead management software enables an organization to manage, track and forecast sales leads. Also helps understand and improve conversion rates. eCRM or Web based CRM - Self Service CRM Self service CRM (eCRM) software Enables web based customer interaction, automation of email, call logs, web site analytics, campaign management. - Survey Management Software Survey Software automates an enterprise's Electronic Surveys, Polls, Questionnaires and enables understand customer preferences. Customer Service - Call Center Software - Help Desk Software Partner Relationship Management - Contract Management Software Contract Management Software enables an enterprise to create, track and manage partnerships, contracts, agreements.

Example: Upside Software, Accruent Software, diCarta, I-Many. - Distribution management Software 3. Advantages of CRM Using CRM, a business can: - Provide better customer service - Increase customer revenues - Discover new customers - Cross sell/Up Sell products more effectively - Help sales staff close deals faster - Make call centers more efficient - Simplify marketing and sales processes The types of data CRM projects collect - Responses to campaigns - Shipping and fulfillment dates - Sales and purchase data - Account information - Web registration data - Service and support records - Demographic data - Web sales data 1. What is Business Process Management - BPM? Business Process Management or BPM, is the practice of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of any organization by automating the organization's business processes. BPM used to be also know as Business Process Reengineering (BPR). Many companies have business processes that are unique to its business model. Since these processes tend to evolve over time as the business reacts to market conditions, the BPM solution you choose must be easily adaptable to the new conditions and requirements and continue to be a perfect fit for the company. In order to use BPM effectively, organizations must stop focusing exclusively on data and data management, and adopt a process-oriented approach that makes no distinction between work done by a human and a computer. - The idea of BPM is to bring processes, people and information together. - Dynamic infrastructure requires separation of flows, business rules and services. - Identifying the business processes is relatively easy. Breaking down the barriers between business areas, and finding owners for the processes is difficult. - BPM not only involves managing business processes within the enterprise but also involves real-time integration of the processes of a company with those of its suppliers, business partners, and customers. - BPM involves looking at automation horizontally instead of vertically. - Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is essential for measurement of BPM impact. Examples of BPM tasks that your organization performs that should be automated

include: - Expense Reports Travel Requests - Purchase Orders Human Resource Management - New Accounts and Credit Authorizations Sales Orders - Project Management Software Change Management The following example illustrates the power of BPM: When a B2B partner needs some inventory, he can log into the web site and order required inventory. An email will be generated and sent to the supervisor responsible for the partner's inventory. The supervisor can click on the link in the email, login to the site and approve the inventory. The partner will be notified of the allocation and the inventory will be shipped. What is a Service Ticket? The Service Ticket (which was a variant of the IC service order business transaction) was introduced in SAP CRM 4.0 Add-On for Services Industries to better support the Service Desk scenario. The service ticket has transaction BUS type (BUS2000116). What is a Service Request? The new Service Request in SAP CRM 7.0 provides most of the functionality available in the Service Ticket as well as some additional functionality, such as multiple multilevel categorization schemas, as well as integration with other new features, such as knowledge articles* and master service requests. Technically the Service Request represents not only a different transaction type than the Service Ticket but is also built on a different Business Object Type in the Business Object Repository (BUS2000223 rather than BUS2000116; the master service request is built on BUS2000224). What are the differences in functionality of these two transactions, the Service Ticket and the Service Request? To answer this question, it is probably easier to show similarities and differences in functionalities in the form of a matrix: SAP CRM 7.0: Service Tickets and Service Requests - A Functionality Matrix: Feature Views Service Tickets Only IC roles Service Requests Available in all CRM WebClient and IC business roles CRM 7.0 Planned for future release; in SAP CRM 7.0 possible via Service Confirmations Yes, Enhanced with up to

Versions Time Recording

CRM 4.0 SIE, CRM 2005, CRM 2006s, CRM 7.0 Yes

Multi-Level Categorization

Yes, Basic

Dispatch ("Escalate") Standard BI Reports

Yes Yes

Out of the Box Interactive Reporting (OLTP) Email Response Management System (ERMS) Integration Intent Driven Interaction Integration

Yes Yes

Yes

Item Determination

Standard Alerts (to show open Service Tickets) Calculation of Work and Total Duration SLA determination Integrated Master Service Request Functionality (i.e., for bundling Service Requests) Print/Print Preview Knowledge Article Integration Find Related Problems Functionality Unlock (from master service request) Display Object Relationships Create Follow-Up Auto Complete Processing Log Escalation management (1st

Hard-coded dummy line item, determination via BAdI Yes Not with standard delivery Yes, Basic Yes, Basic

five categorization schemas Yes BI Content available; standard reports planned for future release No, planned for future release Not yet, might be provided with a CRM 7.0 Service Package. If not, it will be included in a future release Yes, but customers will have to build their own events and actions for now. There is a possibility for pre-defined alerts/events in the future Flexible Item Determination using categorization No Yes Yes, with flexible access sequence Yes

No Not per default, instead Solution Database No No No Yes, Lean Yes No, however the Service Ticket used the Change History to log changes No

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, Full Yes Yes

Yes

and 2nd level) Business Context

Yes

Yes

What is the background information behind SAPs addition of the Service Request transaction to the breadth of Service Transactions offered by SAP CRM? Many customers are wondering where the Service Request came from and what it is when compared to the Service Ticket, the original service desk transaction. From a very high level we can attribute this change in direction as part of SAP CRMs business transaction alignment progress. During the last few SAP releases, there has been a gradual movement towards more robust transactions within the IC and better integration with CRM transactions. In CRM 2006s, there were additional IC specific transactions available for Sales, and Marketing, as well as better integration of the CRM WebClient transactions into the Interaction Center. In CRM 2007, new functionality around the enablement of pop-ups for partner, organizational and contract determination was added for transactions in the IC. Some of the remaining challenges SAP CRM faced was that the Service Ticket functionality was available only in the IC, and that IC transactions behaved differently than non-IC CRM transactions including differences in multi-level categorization, integration issues like the Activity clipboard, and the transferring of confirmed account and contact, with the rest of CRM. The ultimate goal for SAP CRMs business transaction alignment efforts for users was that, for whichever role, the same transactions could be used. There no longer would be an IC Lead in the IC WebClient, and CRM Lead for CRM WebClient. Whichever role the user is assigned, the same transaction can be used, and full integration between CRM and IC is possible. In most cases, there is a lot more functionality in the CRM transaction, so in this case, the Service Request has more powerful functionality than the Service Ticket. The Service Request ultimately will be the more powerful choice for implementations. This move towards business transaction alignment is to benefit the users of SAP CRM and SAP CRM Interaction Center in the long run with a simpler approach to transactions in the WebClient. If I am implementing SAP CRM for the first time, which functionality should I choose: Service Tickets or Service Requests? SAP recommends that new customers use the Service Request rather than the Service Ticket. The Service Request can be used in the Interaction Center, as well as other business roles, such as the Service Professional Role. The Service Request will also most likely be the object where it is more likely enhancements will be done. Finally, there is much more functionality in the Service Request. See the comparison matrix above. What is SAPs recommended strategy for which transaction to use?

Existing customers using the Service Ticket are encouraged to use the new Service Request when possible. However, it is still possible to use the Service Ticket. Were currently upgrading to SAP CRM 7.0 and we are using Service Tickets in our current version, what is SAPs recommended strategy for converting Service Tickets to Service Requests? If customers want to stop using the service ticket and start using the service request instead, the easiest way is probably to make a hard cut and create only new service requests from a specific date onwards. However, this may not be an option for customers. Therefore, OSS Note 1261247 exists to help customers create a conversion report and offers two options to convert Service Tickets to Service Requests. This process can be cumbersome (as with any conversion) and takes time. For those that are interested in doing a conversion, the note exists as guidance.
Q 1. What is the typical landscape for a CRM project? What is the maximum number of landscapes that you have worked on in a project. A. CRM landscape typically has a minimum of three environments. Development Test (Quality Assurance) Production Though in a number of cases, there is also the Sandbox Environment, Training Environment and a pre-Production environment all set up as separate physical boxes.

Q 2. What is the difference between technical consultant and functional consultant with respect to their roles and responsibilities? A. A functional consultant is typically responsible for running workshops, interviewing clients to get requirements, mapping these on to the Software, deciding the best way to customize the solution to meet these requirement keeping the client's future plans in mind. A technical consultant is typically responsible for suggesting suitable technical solutions for gaps, setting up the system infrastructure, doing the developments, testing them, ensuring that performance is not affected etc. In the CRM world in particular, the role between the technical & functional consultants is blurring with there being a large overlap.

Q 3. Explain the general ways of how a CRM can be enhanced?

A. There are several ways to enhance the CRM system. Some of them are: - Transaction Launcher You can add external applications to the CRM WebClient User Interface using the transaction launcher and SAP ITS (Internet Transaction Server). These could be for example, Web sites of your choice Transactions in an ERP system Administration transactions in the CRM system

- BSP Components Workbench This is at a technical level and typical changes carried out are e.g. Adding a completely new View. It assist with the Component Enhancements.

- UI Configuration Tool Allows to make changes such as: Adding or removing fields Changing field labels Adding Headers Making fields mandatory Displaying assignment blocks (direct, lazy) Customer specific changes to the UI must be performed using a Role Configuration Key

- Easy Enhancement Workbench Easy Enhancement Workbench (EEWB) is a development tool that does not require technical knowledge to be used. It automatically creates transportable ABAP objects, updates events and implements BADIs.

Q 4. How Do Modification-Free Enhancements Work? A. You can perform modification-free enhancements at predefined positions in code. There you have anchor points or enhancement options, as they are called in the

terminology. At these points you can insert your enhancements. You can do this without changing the compilation unit that you are enhancing. The inserted implementations are processed at the appropriate position in the compilation unit, but they are themselves not part of this unit. They cannot, for example, belong to another package. Let us take a look at the example of a source code enhancement in a report in order to illustrate this better. We are not looking at details of coding, but the key steps. Anchor point, at which you can plug in an enhancement. Enhancement which is executed here but is itself not a physical part of the code it is plugged into You can to a certain extent compare this enhancement technology with a closet system where you can insert various elements at particular positions. Instead of drilling the wood in the side walls, you can insert various boards and other elements where the manufacturer has already inserted hooks or holders at important positions. There are different types of holders or attachments at various positions. At each holder type, you can insert exactly one type of element: boards at small dowel positions, CD elements at wider dowel positions, and drawer elements at multiple dowels. It seems like the elements are an integral part of the entire closet but, in fact, they are attached to the closet parts through holders. The different enhancement technologies correspond to these different types of elements described above. These technologies become attached at different types of anchor points or enhancement options of the Repository objects. Therefore, you cannot simply insert enhancements into Repository objects at any position you like without modifications, but only where there are so-called enhancement options in place. At these enhancement options, you can also attach only certain elements socalled enhancement implementation elements. A concept that standardizes and structures all previous enhancement possibilities cannot do without a certain amount of complexity. The structure it is based on, however, is extremely simple. . On the one hand, you have hooks or, to put it correctly, enhancement options where you can insert enhancements. There you define enhancement options, which is why one can speak of the definition side. . On the other hand, you have enhancement implementation elements that you can affix to these hooks or enhancement options. The rest is simple detail: There are various types of hooks or enhancement options, and there are also various enhancement implementation elements. The enhancement options

are grouped together to enhancement spots and these, in turn, to even larger units. The same applies to units on the implementation side. Between the different units of a side and between those of the implementation and definition side, you have assignments of different cardinality.

Q 5. We are planning to implement Employee Interaction Centre (EIC). We can do it either in CRM or ERP. What is your advice? A. If the focus is on native HR functionality requiring process depth within your EIC service offering, then the ERP option is recommended. Relevant functionalities not yet available with the SAP CRM EIC deployment option include the handling of concurrent employment scenarios employee authentication integration to HR processes and forms. The SAP CRM solution provides greater depth of Interaction Center related functionality that is not available within the ERP solution. These functionalities include: Campaign management Case management Multi-tenancy capabilities enabling client switch & BPO environments Standard help desk processing methodology including service request handling & problem management Intent driven interaction Billing and charging for delivered services User interface flexibility and personalization Is CRM already in place, planned or a potential future need/consideration? If not, from a technical standpoint - why take on the overhead of CRM? The ERP based solution is geared towards implementations involving a central HCM system running on ERP 6.0 and customers who want a HR specific call center solution to support HCM Service Delivery. If so, it is likely that the EIC will ultimately be realized within the context of the SAP CRM Interaction Center. Consideration should also be given to note 1256691 indicating that "the functions provided in Enhancement Package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 for the Employee Interaction Center component (PA-EIC) constitute the final range of functions." SAP's direction is to establish one common shared services platform based on CRM technology and other SAP Business Suite components to offer functions following the latest business trends such as multi-functional shared services.

The CRM technology will thereby be further leveraged to build this shared services platform in additional to providing functional enhancements for comprehensive scenario coverage across shared service center topics.

Q 6. We sell computer hardware, and need to log customer technical issues. We have been debating whether to use Service Tickets, Service Order, Complaints Management or Cases. Could you explain what each of these are and when they might be used? A. Service Ticket Management The service ticket is the most common type of service-related business transaction. Service tickets are commonly used as the default transaction for logging product defects, bugs, or any other technical issues. After creating a service ticket as a follow-up transaction to the interaction record, agents can perform technical analysis of problems (using multi-level categorization) and provide solutions within defined service-level agreements (SLAs). If necessary, agents can also dispatch or escalate service tickets to second-level support using pre-defined business rules.

Service Order Management Service orders are very similar to service tickets (in fact they share the same underlying technical structure) but are used whenever it is necessary to schedule a repair, installation, or other field-service related appointment -- especially if spare parts/service parts are required. Unlike service tickets, which do not support spare parts/service parts, the service order allows agents to assign the relevant spare parts/service parts required for a repair, maintenance or installation.

Complaint Management Complaints are a very specific type of service transaction. In SAP CRM, complaints are created as follow-up documents to support product returns, exchanges, or refunds. A complaint is appropriate when a customer has a problem or issue with delivery shipment or billing invoice. Agents can create a complaint from a reference document such as sales order or billing invoice. Agents can also generate appropriate follow-on tasks such as credit/debit memos, QM notifications, free-of-charge shipments, and returns. In SAP, complaints are NOT used to record situations in which a customer is calling to

"complain" about bad service or defective products; rather interaction records and service tickets are best suited for such situations.

Case Management Cases are also a very specific type of service transaction. In SAP CRM, cases are created as follow-up documents to group together multiple documents or objects related to a single root cause or issue. For example, a company might create a case for keeping track of all of the service tickets related to a particular product recall, service outage, insurance claim, criminal investigation, etc. Cases are not created to log individual customer issues or problems; rather service tickets are typically used for such situations.

Q 7. What are the difference between Interaction Record and other Business Activities? A. When an interaction record is created the system creates an anchor' document flow link (relationship type INTO with object type CRMCICANCH). This differentiates an interaction record from all other Activity Business Objects (BUS2000126). This additional anchor is used in navigation: when navigating from the interaction history or inbox to an interaction record, the system will use this anchor to determine whether an activity is of type interaction record or not. An interaction record typically has other screens than a normal business activity. The BW extractor makes also use of this anchor object to differentiate interaction record related statistics from regular business activities.

Q 8. We are an existing SAP CRM customer upgrading to SAP CRM 7.0 and are debating whether to convert all of your pending Interaction Center (IC) service tickets to the new CRM Web Client service request format. What would be your advice? A. Prior to SAP CRM 7.0, the service ticket was the business transaction recommended by SAP for service issues related to the Help Desk in the IC. However, as of SAP CRM 7.0, SAP introduced a new business object type called the service request, which can be used in the Interaction Center, as well as in other CRM business roles such as the Service Professional role.

New customers should use the service request rather than the service ticket. Existing customers who are already using the service ticket should migrate to the new service request when possible (although you can still continue to utilize the IC service ticket). In order to facilitate the migration, it may be necessary to create a custom report to handle the conversion of open (pending) service tickets to service requests.