SAP CRM - no confidence in UI by SAP?

[stephenjohannes]

After reading this blog and looking at the article attached to the blog. I had an interesting question:

Does SAP have any confidence in its own CRM software? Right now SAP is touting how easy to use the new version of SAP CRM is, and yet this article implies they don't use their own product's user interface.

Now I know the eSOA mantra says this shouldn't matter, but I would say this is one of those cases where it doesn't. If the vendor won't/can't use their own CRM software because the UI is too ugly/clumsy or other reason, why should I as a customer.

As a customer I don't want to purchase a CRM software and then have to purchase a better UI to go on top of the software. I might as well spend the money on software that might have a better UI perceived by my sales folks(think siebel, salesforce.com, sugarcm, etc), and spend those dollars on integration instead. It's a lot cheaper to do integration work, than completely rewrite the UI to meet my users needs.

I'm also wondering why SAP would even send this message by displaying this article on SDN? I'm sure if the guys at oracle saw this article, we would see a press release from that says something of the like:

"Even SAP acknowledges, that SAP CRM is too difficult to use".

I bring this up because we are selling use of SAP CRM 2007 in house right now, and it makes it harder for me to sell the solution to my business users, if there are conflicting messages on the market.

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Hi,

With introduction of Fiori, I think, SAP is now confident on UI ?

What do you say experts?

[stephenjohannes]

Funny you ask, as this shows that user interface historically @SAP is more like fashion than long-term when it comes to web applications.  I must admit the CRM Webclient has stuck around for six years, to that was a pretty good run.

Actually I  think in another five years Fiori will be seen as outdated and SAP will be talking about the next UI pardigm, yet to be developed.  Trust me .

Take care,

Stephen

[former_member182421]

Well, my two cents here, WebClient and Fiori are two very different thinks ( oh really? ) I mean, Fiori is meant for a very specific functionalities while WebClient acts like a portal, it's true we still have a segmentation by business role, but still the L shape paradigm, in conclusion I really don't see WebClient begin replaced by Fiori, unless there's a huge change in the SAP CRM Business strategy but if that happens, well, who knows...

Cheers!

Luis

[stephenjohannes]

Actually in the long-term the fiori UI style will replace everything.  If you haven't seen the SAP Simple Finance solution, then you need to look at that, because that's where SAP is heading with all applications.   Even the cloud for customer application was redone in Fiori style.

[former_member182421]

Thanks for the input, I didn't know about SAP Simple Finance (to be honest I try to avoid anything with the FI word ) going back to the topic, I'm quite sceptical about that, I will focus in my area (CRM) you know well how are the CRM processes designed and how is the user interface designed, migrate all the stuff to SAP Fiori is not only a major change on the UI technology, also is a major change how the user interacts with the process, replacing an application designed as L with Fiori will lead you to slice the application into small and nice Fiori apps, but I wonder what will happen when a key user wants to perform 4-5 steps which involve 3 or more Fiori apps (?),

I have numerous complaints from users about WebClient like "I need more tabs to do this" or "why I have to go back an forward all the time", this is a pretty "normal" scenario with a "small" company which sells a lot, I guess if we talk about big companies where the tasks are pretty segmented will work fine, but still will be some "high" profiles which will need more "control.   Don't misunderstand me, I like Fiori and UI5 and I think is very nice approach to fill a very big existing GAP, but as I said, I'm quite sceptical that everything will be replaced by Fiori in the future

Actually I  think in another five years Fiori will be seen as outdated and SAP will be talking about the next UI pardigm, yet to be developed.  Trust me

I heard that once (webdynpro here, webdynpro there) and even if this is how things will go I don't know if everything will be replaced "so fast" that no new paradigm is proposed on the road, SAP GUI was released in 1992, oh wait...

[stephenjohannes]

Well the bigger "rumor" is that SAP will collapse the entire business suite back to a single instance design running on HANA.  Thus my comments about CRM are not about the current CRM product, but rather the logical roadmap of the "Simple Suite" by SAP and how CRM will go away.

I really don't know if I believe SAP will do it, but the key is to see what is in Simple Logistics which is the next application after Simple Finance and would start to get closer to our part of the world.  That being said, it probably doesn't matter anyway since all the current on-premise CRM customers will more than likely end up on cloud solution(and most of those non-SAP ).

Take care,

Stephen

[stephenjohannes]

It's interesting re-reading this thread after going through week 1 and part of week 2 of the S/4 Deep Dive on open.sap.com.  There is a clearly a slide where it shows that SAP has plans to collapse CRM back into the same physical system as S/4 HANA(think add-on).  In addition everything for S/4 HANA will be Fiori, so if you don't like Fiori, then you probably need to pick a different vendor for enterprise software.

That being said all the HTML5 based applications developed today are probably going to be outdated in three to five years.  It is going to be interesting how things look with web assembly gaining further support.

Take care,

Stephen

[former_member182421]

yup, lots of things changed in one year (counting from my Hari's comment) but to be honest I'm not very excited about all this changes, to me cloud for customer is the way to go, washing the face on the on premise solution is like hiding all the dirt under the carpet (yes, the dirt is still there)

[Former Member]

I have the same doubts. It seems that we are going towards two solutions in the portfolio for sales & service:

- C4C

- CRM add-on for S/4HANA

The marketing part at least seems to be just Hybris Marketing.

What is not clear to me is why going ahead with two solutions?!

[stephenjohannes]

My understanding is that it's part of the cloud / on-premise strategy of S/4 HANA.  It appears SAP is leaving an on-premise option for almost everything in S/4 for those customers that don't want XYZ in the cloud.

That being said, the real answer is that SAP hasn't figured out how/finished to create the "hybris sales" module yet that could replace both C4C and SAP CRM. My guess we are two years down the road for that. 

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Dear Stephen,

Thanks for your feedback. This is very valuable as it outlines a potential misunderstanding:

The shown examples outline what could be done on a project basis with different respective UI tools and technologies on top of SAP CRM 2005 and Business Server Pages. It is by no means intended to be any kind of future UI strategy nor a potential replacement of the new CRM 2007 WebClient UI.

We strongly believe the newly created UI shipped within the SAP CRM 2007 delivery is easy to use as well as it addresses the main functional and usability related requirements faced in today's business. SAP CRM 2007 UI comes with built in, UI related tools (e.g. personalization, UI configuration) and this results in strong flexibility and extensibility which our customers and/or partners can leverage in their implementations. The standard CRM 2007 WebClient UI therefore is not only "yet another new UIu201D but also a UI built on top of the related tools, based mainly on one technology stack. This overall concept as a whole comes with a huge amount of advantages for partners and customers as it addresses next to the UI related tools also modification free enhancement concepts, direct stack integration and strong supportability features.

To sum up, it is possible in certain well defined areas to use other UI technologies based on the CRM engine as a complementary technology (SAP CRM does this in certain areas as well, where it makes most sense - see the key figure planning table). We don't see any reason for the mass scale replacement of the CRM WebClient UI by any other technology from a SAP CRM perspective. We can only highlight that we are recommending the CRM WebClient 2007 UI for the overall CRM solution as this UI is simple, flexible, extensible and at the same time lowers TCO, TCD and support costs.

Kind regards,

Florian Weigmann

SAP CRM UI Framework

[markus_doehr2]

Hi Florian,

although this was/is addressed to Stephen I need to comment - forgive me

We can only highlight that we are recommending the CRM WebClient 2007 UI for the overall CRM solution as this UI is simple, flexible, extensible and at the same time lowers TCO, TCD and support costs.

Honestly, that statement is and was made with every new CRM release coming out. Of course, things are developing and progressing which is by no means a bad thing. But I never saw so may paradigma changes in any other products (let Solution Manager apart) of SAP products.

For new implementations your statement may be true (I don´t know) but for customers already running a solution and have to re-implement everything because there´s a new "recommendation", it´s a bad thing. The "old" thing is still supported but not further developed and you must admit, that it´s impossible to do a complete reimplementation every time a new CRM release comes out. We have had quite some bad experiences with continue to run the still supported "old thing" - so it´s a one-way street.

We calculated - and to follow your marketing speech: It would take us almost two years to depreciate what we will need to invest (in u20ACu20ACu20AC) to switch to the new UI which is by no means a decrease of TCO - and until then CRM XYZ is out...

Markus

[stephenjohannes]

Florian,

I would have responded yesterday, but our upgrade golive was going on. We did make it to CRM 2007 finally with no major problems so far. It will be a matter of time to see how things go.

I understand your response but it really didn't fully answer my question. I guess I will clarify my question even further:

1. Is SAP using the "example interface" for CRM instead of the standard CRM interface on a productive basis? If so why can't SAP use the standard product. Sorry but as I customer we are always encouraged to use the standard solution.

2. Even though this example was posted by partner, was it not made clear that this is an example of the eSOA platform in action, and not how SAP internally was using CRM.

Thank you again for your response and it is good to see that the UI is fully supported.

Thank you,

Stephen

[NathanGenez]

On the ERP side, GuiXT has had a small but avid following without calling into question SAP's delivered solution. I think most SAPers realize some of the inherent complexity of designing a screen such as FB50 or VA01 for such a large and diverse userbase and that a niche product has its... well... niche in the market. Despite its reasonable price you don't see SAP customers crushing one another at the checkout line.

That said, for every 1 positive comment I've heard/read about SAP CRM I've heard/read another 999 to counter it so I wouldn't doubt that this tool provides greater appeal and functionality than SAP's existing solution.

-nathan

[Former Member]

I think CRM would have been fine say 5 years ago -- It's really passed it's sell by date with newer (and often cheaper) technologies arriving. Business process modelling and SOAP are the new kids on the block here.

This might sound strange to people who are just about to install their squeaky clean shiny new CRM systems but I suspect that this is the wrong application at the wrong time.

There will always be some users --like there are still some mainframes out there running COBOL programs, and people using Windows 98 but I suspect SAP has seen the light in this area as well,

cheers

jimbo

[stephenjohannes]

James,

With all due respect, do you even follow the CRM application market? BPM and SOAP are technologies, but not an actual application solution trying to solve a business problem. You can't build anything from a model without any "building blocks" available.

I guess with your perspective, people should abandon all their packaged software and build it all custom with the latest tools, so that we can spend $$$$$$ on overpriced consulting firms. I mean nobody would ever want to use something that was already built and predelivered and it wouldn't involve a huge cost to setup and install?

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member]

Actually I am 100% IN FAVOUR of packaged solutions if they are fit for purpose.

The trouble is most businesses - even small ones always tend to have processes that only apply to their own individual circumstances (and smaller businesses won't spend huge $$$$'s on a CRM solution anyway).

Anybody who knows me over the years would also know my views about a lot of these "consultancy" type organisations --without naming specific firms (probably not allowed by Forum Rules) I think if you do a search on my posts over a period you would understand I regard these organisations a little better than cockroaches --they easily infest an organisation - but it's almost impossible to get these people out again --like wasps around an open jam jar.

If CRM really did what it was intended to do cheaply and then I could understand it -- however these days it really has passed its Sell By date.

And since we are talking about overpaid Consultants here whats the going rate for a CRM consultant compared with an Abap developer - especially if the Abap developer comes from Malyasia, Singapore etc etc. -- That's another story however.

Almost nobody implements CRM with their own in-house resources -- CRM has been viewed by these "Parasite" consultancy companies as the next great Gravy train or "Milch Cow") -- so the expensive consultant argument vs an in house bespoke solution doesn't wash anyway.

I think I can rest my case here.

Cheers

jimbo

[stephenjohannes]

James,

You actually hit the nail on the head on why 50% of CRM implementations fail. Now there are still quite of bit success stories with CRM, but those are because the software implementation was coupled with a culture change. CRM projects often fail because unlike ERP projects, users can simply choose to not to use the software if they don't like it.

You are right about the "parasites" problem, but this is not just an CRM phenom, but rather applies to every solution. I think the issue with using inhouse resources is not just an CRM issue, but rather a general phenom.

Now comparing the rates of CRM consultant vs an ABAP resource is not fair. A good CRM resource is supposed to be more like an BPX than a traditional follow the spec sheet ABAP developer. Good CRM technical resources are more of a SME than just a guy brought in to code. It's a higher up on the food chain function than just being a vanilla ABAP developer.

Now the interesting part is that even with all these issues firms are still predicting a lot of growth in the CRM software sector(take it with a grain of salt). I would say that the older versions and ways of doing CRM are definitely on the way out.

My original question begs point then, why isn't an application like the one shown built using UI framework in CRM 2007 keeping in mind that functionality if not the same interface is there?

Take care,

Stephen

[markus_doehr2]

Back to times of 2.0B we were also a customer of those success stories. Since then a lot has changed. The jump to 3.x was so big we did a complete reimplementation because there was no smooth migration path. With CRM 2005 we switched off from the Mobile Sales components (WAY too much overhead off site for the support people) to an online solution with Portal (including EEWB and all that stuff).

I think that especially CRM was never a "packaged solution" - it´s has more the character of a "framework with templates" than for what I personally call a "solution". Due to the ever-changing-frameworks and ever-changing-new-UI each upgrade is almost a complete reimplementation and that´s one of the reasons we have no plans (as of now) to upgrade to CRM 2007. We did a test upgrade and only about 10 - 15 % of our customized application is working out of the box after that - and I´m not talking about modifications.

For me personally the CRM has always been a bit suspicious because with each upgrade the vision changes (e. g. CDB vs. no-CDB) and it´s just too much work (and hence too much $$) to follow each upgrade just to be on the tip of the hype.

Markus

[Former Member]

Hi Markus,

We just got successfully live in june with CRM 2007.

The 3 months ramp up project went relatively smoothly.

You make me fear the future CRM upgrade (hopefully several years in the future) !

Olivier

[markus_doehr2]

Olivier,

I don´t want to make you frightened.

I just see that there is a big difference between the ERP and let´s say "all other products - especially CRM". If you upgrade your ERP most of the applications are still working - at least they did for us. In fact - the upgrade from 4.7 to ERP 6.0 was one of the smoothest upgrade we ever did. I was seriously astonished that we needed only four weeks in total to do the upgrade on test and production without any serious problems.

For CRM this is just vice-versa. Maybe SAP has found now a stable UI for the CRM environment what will survive successor releases, maybe. And exactly this "maybe" is the problem (for us). We invested a lot of time to build our CRM frontends in the portal - and still doing so - and I don´t see a reason (well, I´m just a technical guy) to repeat that now for UIF just to re-do it again in a year or two for Flex/Silverlight/whatever-is-hip-then.

I´m sure there are customers seeing a benefit if they do so - then they should do it by all means. I just don´t see any benefit for us (as of now - minds may change)

Markus

[Former Member]

Markus,

Only the future will tell us the CRM UI evolution ! For the time being, the users seem satisfied and this is the only thing which does matter.

>In fact - the upgrade from 4.7 to ERP 6.0 was one of the smoothest upgrade we ever did. >I was seriously astonished that we needed only four weeks in total to do the upgrade on >test and production without any serious problems.

That's some good news ! We are just beginning the first test upgrade from R/3 4.7 to ECC 6. The last upgrade was in 2004 from 4.5 to 4.7 and it was several months long...

Cheers,

Olivier

[stephenjohannes]

Markus,

An interesting point you bring up is about the how crm serves more as template rather than a package. I think even up to today that point is still intact. Some of the processes that are modeled in CRM are so "soft", that it would be hard to develop a "concrete" mold that covers each and everyone. As someone once said to me SD is basically a giant user exit, then CRM is essentially a starting "example".

Sorry to hear about not being able to upgrade due to a lot of breakage? Has your organization contacted SAP and said we can't upgrade because you broke everything in the new release.

For us we did the upgrades so that we could extend our maintenance window and get rid of the PCUI. Our users HATED the PCUI and basically would not use the SAP CRM software because of the UI. We are only starting new CRM projects here because after the upgrade the users reconsidered using the system.

Now I must also add that if SAP did not come out with the new UI for CRM, we probably would have ended up on another solution even though we are in general a pro-SAP shop. Salesforce.com, and several vendors were knocking on the door ready to sell us a different solution and our business users probably would have been down that route, if we did not have an alternative from SAP.

I think this conversation so far at least has brough up a lot of good points about CRM software in general, that you will find on the CRM(non-SAP) sites.

Take care,

Stephen

[markus_doehr2]

> <...> As someone once said to me SD is basically a giant user exit, then CRM is essentially a starting "example".

bigsmile - yes - although our people tend to like the SD and all it's tabs and sub-tabs more than they like the CRM PCUI.

> Sorry to hear about not being able to upgrade due to a lot of breakage? Has your organization contacted SAP and said we can't upgrade because you broke everything in the new release.

Admittedly - no. We didn't.

> For us we did the upgrades so that we could extend our maintenance window and get rid of the PCUI. Our users HATED the PCUI and basically would not use the SAP CRM software because of the UI. We are only starting new CRM projects here because after the upgrade the users reconsidered using the system.

PCUI is far from being intuitive and we spend (and still spending) many hours in training users and sales reps to use the system appropriately. We once upgraded some BASIS and ABA (no CRM!!) supportpackages and needed six weeks and several OSS calls to get the new appearing PCUI-problems fixed. As of this point the CRM system is frozen, no changes will be made in sense of support packages because they cause just too much trouble and the same is true for an upgrade - as of now. Burnt child dreads the fire.

Markus

[stephenjohannes]

Markus,

Wow, you almost have the "nightmare" scenario when it comes to maintenance. I just have to ask what functional areas (high level) did you implement? Was it the marketing module?

The marketing module in CRM 40 was so unstable on SP08 that basically we ditched the application and wrote something custom in the SAP GUI instead. Any t-code that had over 400 related notes(segment builder) is just a nightmare not to mention just plain bugs in the PCUI that we weren't willing to wait a month for fixes.

I'm still leary of doing any marketing related processes(segment builder) even on CRM 2007, due how unstable that area was in the previous releases.

I still think the SAP GUI sometimes beats the web based interfaces, once you learn how to use it. The problem was that everyone got obessed with zero-client installations and forgot about the benefits of "specialized" clients. Now everyone is basically trying to make a web browser work like a desktop client, which puts you back full circle. In would have been interesting to see how well SAP would have fared if they had made the mistake of making the original R/3 application 2-tier instead of a 3-tier client/server. Going back to our conversation about CRM, it seems that the 3rd tier is always in flux.

Take care,

Stephen

[markus_doehr2]

> Wow, you almost have the "nightmare" scenario when it comes to maintenance. I just have to ask what functional areas (high level) did you implement? Was it the marketing module?

I can tell you...

We were using Mobiles Sales with activities, campaigns, sales documents and master data and we switched that to CRM 2005 and Portal (+ adding BI reporting functionality with BI-CRM content). For the Java part there's enough said (by me) already, I won't start again with that (mess). The CRM looked pretty well at first sight but devil's in the detail.

> The marketing module in CRM 40 was so unstable on SP08 that basically we ditched the application and wrote something custom in the SAP GUI instead. Any t-code that had over 400 related notes(segment builder) is just a nightmare not to mention just plain bugs in the PCUI that we weren't willing to wait a month for fixes.

Well.. people have always be VERY helpful, especially the guys and girls in India were doing a very good job at fixing bugs - once the communication was done via email and not via phone...;) But you're right - it's taking sometimes too much time to get a fix and yet-another-note.

> I still think the SAP GUI sometimes beats the web based interfaces, once you learn how to use it. The problem was that everyone got obessed with zero-client installations and forgot about the benefits of "specialized" clients. Now everyone is basically trying to make a web browser work like a desktop client, which puts you back full circle.

Everyone THINKS it's zero installation but in fact you have to configure proxy exceptions, add/install certificates, enable/disable Javascript things, add trusted sites, (re-)configure firewalls on Laptops, delete browser caches, install SVG viewer and other "plugins", install and maintain security fixes for the browser etc. etc. and this on a distributed environment where our sales reps are spread over the whole world in different time zones. So the "zero-installation" is nothing but marketing flowery because the maintenance you needed to put into Mobile Sales is now needed for the browser - nice antagonism

> In would have been interesting to see how well SAP would have fared if they had made the mistake of making the original R/3 application 2-tier instead of a 3-tier client/server.

It's been like that @ R/2 times and I must tell you I loved the green screens (http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/images_hist/R2-0.GIF and http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/images_hist/SCREENO1.GIF)

Markus

[Former Member]

I see. Very "GREEN" screen! )

[markus_doehr2]

Ok - you caught me!

The poster of those seems to like a different color scheme - the characteres were indeed green originally (IBM S/390 terminals looked like it), I just couldn´t find a "greener" one

(maybe this one: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0606_col_barosa/0606_col_barosa_images/image...

Markus