As part of my North America SAP Education responsibilities, I had the opportunity to work with solution management this past week on a project involving their new SAP Solution Sales Configuration application. Although I have a fairly deep background in SAP ERP, the Solution Sales Configuration product is new to me and possibly you as well. So, in the interest of continuous learning, here is a brief explanation of Solution Sales Configuration as well as your opportunity to learn about the product yourself.
To better understand the purpose and value of the new application, the SAP Solution Sales Configuration (SSC) Solution Brief provides a pretty simple explanation of the product: “It’s an axiom of the business world that companies should sell solutions rather than products. After all, customers want a clean floor, not a mop. But in sectors such as engineering, construction, high tech, and many others, selling solutions can be a complex undertaking. The SAP® Solution Sales Configuration application helps you cut through the complexity, so that you can configure multiple solution components – including hardware, software, and services – quickly and efficiently.”
Apparently, many companies utilize manual business processes requiring vast amounts of time and effort to configure complex solution offerings. To automate the configuration tasks, companies turn to product configuration tools and processes with very questionable results. SAP Solution Sales Configuration is a powerful add-on application enabling SAP CRM and ECC sales processes to fully support the configuration and definition of complex solutions comprised of hardware (e.g. servers, industrial machines), software, technical services (e.g. installation, maintenance), project- based services and financial services including combinations thereof. With a powerful configuration engine that provides bottom-up configuration capabilities (instead of the established top-down approach), in a new Eclipse-based environment, it allows easier solution configuration model data maintenance as well as seamless integration to downstream processes.
To give you a feel for the breadth of the SAP Solution Sales Configuration application, here are the key features designed to alleviate solution configuration issues described above:
- Solution Configuration – innovative configuration engine to quickly design multifaceted solutions from the bottom up
- Sales and Service Integration – leverage existing sales and service data and processes in your SAP software environment to speed up configuration and minimize maintenance
- Data Modeling – use productivity enhancing Eclipse plug-in for modeling solution data using collaborative and distributed development techniques
- Interactive Pricing – updates pricing as you configure solutions without going back to the quotation document
- Analytics – optimize high-margin sales offerings by understanding what sells best
Now it’s your turn to learn. On March 1-2, 2012 in SAP Education’s Newtown Square, PA Training Center, the WUSSSC – SAP Solution Sales Configuration (SSC) course will be delivered to an anticipated target audience of project leaders, solution engineers, solution modelers, and SSC implementation consultants. If you are interested in attending, call SAP Education at 1-888-777-1727 or email education.northamerica@sap.com.
Link to SSC Help Porta: http://help.sap.com/crm_ssc10
