Discussion: future for SAP CRM developers

[Former Member]

What do you think? Where might lie the future for SAP CRM developers? With SAP CRM standard development slowing down, from my perspective, and market penetration of SAP CRM increasing, where might be the future areas of work for SAP CRM developers or technical consultants?

Would if be Cloud for customer which is not everywhere accepted completely. Might it be CRM apps of Fiori? Would it mean more support-work and less implementation for technical people? Would it mean a shift to different areas of SAP?

What are your thoughts about this?

(I hope I am allowed to start this small discussion).

Thomas Wagner

[former_member243850]

Many people are not talking good about C4C. Very poorly customizeable, no business concept for SAP partners and the consulting branch, poor overall functionality. It will propably be the same fail as Business By Design, it has its core anyway. I heard of very low interest from consultants, developers and customers when SAP offering trainings or cooperation workshops. I do believe in the future of the cloud, mainly for middle sized companies but i would not invest my time and/or money into C4C skills

In terms of the CRM WebClient i would not write it off too soon. Fiori is best for mobile and field staff but thinkin about all the CRM installations i know (the biggger ones) most of the pople work stationary, inhouse, fix place and with a large screen. Tablets and mobile phones are trendy of course but will allways be a minority in terms of doing business as business processes itself are of some kind old fashioned

[vraoid]

Hi Thomas/Hari,

does that actually mean end of road for SAP CRM on premise, as it will be combined with ecc and some functionalities will get assimilated by erp leaving little for crm.

Regards,

V Rao

[Former Member]

http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/Blogs/John-Appleby/February-2015/The-SAP-Business-Suite-4-SAP-HANA-(...

Hello,

I am very sorry, I still have very limited information and have posted it here how I understood it. You might find more information on the page shown above. I am also extremely curious about the further developments.

Best regards,

Thomas

[vraoid]

this is indeed the thread that i was searching for. Being a CRM functional consultant i was looking for future coarse in SAP CRM.

Hi All,

any links for C4C( in English) as I am new to that and want to learn it.

Regards,

V Rao

[Former Member]

Hello V Rao,

I would say that WebUI is nice but getting old, C4C is very interesting if the client accepts cloud but I don't have any links about it (I know there are 3-day C4C development trainings by SAP) but even more interesting should be SAP S/4 HANA which woule mean the following things:

- CRM is on the same server as Analytics and the rest of ERP/ECC which should also mean that there is no CRM-only database and no middleware if I am not mistaken.

- The User interface will be Fiori like making it very simple, requiring Javascript skills on the frontend and still ABAP on the backend (here OData should be used, I guess).

- The suite can be used on premise and on cloud.

- Maybe HANA is mandatory, I am not sure. I am also not sure, if this means that liscenses fees are therefore as high as HANA liscenses todday.

- Maybe this will be a push for SAP CRM if they have CRM on the same machine, like Microsoft having their Internet Explorer on Windows machines after installation (but this is just my assumption or guessing).

- And I think that this should be a very importent or the most important SAP system in the next years.

- Concerning trainings for it I have asked SAP but I have not yet found anything in the training catalogue.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

"- CRM is on the same server as Analytics and the rest of ERP/ECC which should also mean that there is no CRM-only database and no middleware if I am not mistaken."

Very surprising development !!!

This means a CRM Functional resource has to / must learn SD .... Right?

Also request others to elaborate on this.

Rgds

Hari

[Former Member]

Guys,

Can you throw some light on "future of Functional Consultants of SAP CRM" also...

After all we work together with developers... right?

Rgds

Hari

[Former Member]

Hello Hari,

In my opinion upcoming changes in technology inside the sales area are not that critical for functional consultants as for technical ones. If you change from WebUI to C4C this means quite a heavy change for technicians (e.g. program language and development environment changes) while the sales process mostly stays the same so functional consultants only need to change a little bit. Only if there would be no CRM- or sales processes anymore I think there would be a problem for functional consultants but this is very unlikely to happen.

But of course this is only my point of view which is the view of a technician. Maybe others think different.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Former Member]

For Functional consultants, we should start studying SAP C4C too.

Jedicrm.com.br In Portuguese

Thanks and Good Luck

[Former Member]

Cool site, really a pitty that I don't speak Portuguese.

Thomas

[stephenjohannes]

Actually functional CRM consultants/analysts need to change also.  In moving to the cloud you really need to question all the customizations in your business processes that deviate from best practices.  In addition with in-memory computing, we need to focus first on analytics first and then our process.  We can't put analytics as a Phase II part of our projects, it must be something addressed before go-live.

We also need to look at designing systems to support customer engagement rather just being traditional SFA or enablement.  This means breaking down silos between systems that track customer activity.  CRM can't be a standalone project anymore, separate from pricing, e-commerce, or other systems.  The internal business users (sales reps, sales managers, csr) need a single place to manage the customer experience.  Siloed systems don't cut it anymore.

Finally with the new development toolset and user interface technologies, we need to really challenge our development teams to innovate.  There is so much you can do from a technology standpoint with gateway, UI5, WebIDE, HANA, and Hana cloud platform.  Your limits should be time, budget and your imagination. Don't let developers scared or not familiar with the new tools tell you it's not possible.

Finally if you are on-premise, get your system to EHP3.  You need it not for new "functional features", but for Netweaver 7.40 and the ability to put SAP CRM on HANA.  If you don't want to go the cloud or not considering it, having SAP CRM on HANA combined with Fiori/UI5 applications is the biggest evolution of SAP CRM since the webclient was introduced.

HANA is not all about speed, but being able to write next-generation business applications and turbo-charging this generation of business applications.  Plus you get turbo-charged(real-time) segmentation, full text search, and much improved interactive reporting out of the box.

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Good afternoon,

I think the Abap CRM should start looking for new areas such as HANA, Fiori. For with the SAP C4C developments will greatly decrease.

Tks

[Former Member]

True!

[Former Member]

Hello Willi,

I agree with that and I for myself already do that. One has to add that Fiori is developed with Javascript instead of ABAP and C4C with ABAP-Script. Concerning the demand for C4C I am not yet sure if it is already that big but cloud will definitely be a technology of the future.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas and my dear Jedis!

SAP C4C this grew a lot last year.

Thanks and good luck!!!

http://www.jedicrm.com.br -in Portuguese

[Former Member]

I would like to add a few things from my point of view:

- I really liked the WebUI BOL-model. Especially after I got more familiar with it after time and also because in the old MSA (the offline tool on laptops) we already worked with business objects and business queries. But as far as I know Cloud for Customer, Fiori and partially SMP apps work with oData so I think the sooner one gets familiar with that model, the better (and that includes me).

- Fiori is nice. From my point of view the improvements against the WebUI are not that as great as against SAP GUI applications. But I also have seen implementation time lines w/o creating new apps in the range of 3-4 weeks, so there would not be much left of the value chain for partners (when you don't create your own apps or enhance the standard apps significantly) which would be part of a general strategy of SAP to get a higher proportion of the value chain.

- Concerning Cloud for Customer: I was attending a development training this year and my impression was that the demand for it is not so big yet (also the confidence of the affected SAP employees), which correlated with my experience with my current customers which also all have their own IT/SAP department (which would not be utilized as heavy as before if the move to cloud). So I had this impression even as I know the concept of keeping the working capital of a company as low as possible (e.g. selling buildings and renting them back) which would favor the cloud concept.

Best regards,

Thomas

[former_member182421]

Fiori and partially SMP apps work with oData so I think the sooner one gets familiar with that model, the better (and that includes me).

I fully agree with you.

I don't know if this will be the "next" way, but I believe keep an eye on this worth it:

Plus, maybe we will have a Mentor Monday session by James Wood

OpenSAP has updated their training catalog, one interesintg course can be:

Course: SAP's UX Strategy in a Nutshell by Sam Yen

It's not related to CRM, but I believe this can give some points to let our imagination fly

Message was edited by: Luís Pérez Grau

[former_member182575]

Not a bright future, I see a move to modelling and wizards for many things.

Regards

Waza

[stephenjohannes]

Not if the ABAP in Eclipse guys have their way.  We will be manually editing source files and moving away from modeling and eventually to notepad.  Doing configuration, building and development of applications in a web browser will be frowned upon, because you didn't show your skills of installing a 10+ year old IDE on your windows PC.

Take care,

Stephen

[former_member182421]

I don't know if you rember the BOPF discussion, I bet you couldn't remove it from your memory but the eclipse add-on looks pretty cool:

There's no plan on porting WebUI/BOL/Genil into Eclipse, as you already know I claimed for that several times and there's no positive answer about it, that can mean 2 things.

- WebUI is not so important so we don't care

- WebUI will be replaced with...whateverfiori...so the effort doesn't worth it.

Anyway I was dealing with Hanna flat files, and was felt more confortable than working with SE11, I'm getting older? cough...cough

[Former Member]

Thomas,

where do you see that standard CRM development is slowing? Is it by looking at the roadmap, or based on latest Ehp's?

I can see a broadening of SAP (CRM, ERP etc) solutions to Fiori, Hana etc. and can see development opportunities/efforts in this way. C4C also represents an opportunity, even if I'm not aware how feasible is for a SAP CRM developer to cover both solutions/development environments.

Also what will HANA bring to the table? Would the "simplification" (simplification of FI and other modules in ERP) also embrace CRM? Would it be possible in future to have a Suite where CRM and ERP share the same master data objects, pricing engine...?

BR

Borut - the functional guy;)

[stephenjohannes]

CRM development for on-premise pretty much slowed to a snails pace after EHP1.  I'm not saying that EHP2 or EHP3 didn't have nice features, there just isn't as much being delivered by SAP.  I think we should only expect incremental or maintenance updates for CRM on-premise beyond EHP3.  Most of the new innovations are being delivered "elsewhere".

[Former Member]

By "elsewhere" you mean in CRM area (cloud solutions) or out of CRM area?

[stephenjohannes]

The days of being a pure SAP CRM developer were over about five or six years ago, IMHO.  If you aren't a "technical-functional" or "functional-technical" role, then you need to make the transition.  It's going to be much easier to switch "technologies" than trying to learn the business processes.

I made that switch in my day-to-day of taking a position where I was no longer a full-time developer.  Although due to my current project work I went back into more developer type role, I switched back personally again into more of an analyst role instead of a developer.

If your organziation is still committed to on-premise CRM then I see Fiori, CRM on HANA, and desktop connection for CRM as what the development side needs to focus on.  Once your organization goes cloud you will probably end up with either Salesforce, Dynamics, or Cloud for Customer.  If you go to a non-SAP solution, then Dynamics will be the most logical fit from a "process" perspective for SAP folks(given that the guy who was responisble for SAP CRM 7.0 now runs Dynamics).

That being said I can probably go into more detail offline.  I am also currently planning on attending Teched in Las Vegas this year, so anyone who wants to do an informal ad-hoc meetup during the week(who will be attending) please ping me using my contact details.

Take care,

Stephen

[former_member182421]

I think you raised a good question in a time where everything looks like changing so I also hope this small discussion can still opened and of course, more people get involved

The cloud is an interesting option, I haven't seen the SAP solution, but just looking at the market, the number 1 CRM is SalesForce which...is cloud based, so maybe the acceptance is not so bad

The Web UI is a nice framework, compared to SAP GUI, but I still see very tedious if we talk about usability and look n' feel, I guess SAP Fiori can be a better option, but right now I don't have experience with it so I can really compare.

Last but not least, SAP is not a development tool IMHO what really needs a SAP implementation is decent business analyst team and a customer engaged to the project which really knows what's implementing and compromised with "his/her" choose, until this happens, doesn't matter the strategy of SAP, techies will always be needed.

Cheers!

Luis