Issue

Syensqo's CRM architecture, comprising multiple instances (Core CRM and ICare) and various integrations with backend systems (PRS, ICare-PF1, Core-WP1) and pointed solutions (Pardot, Dynasys, Gensuite, Qualtrics, Qliksense etc.,), poses significant challenges to data consistency, scalability, and efficiency.

Furthermore, the current digital customer journey architecture, reliant on a heavily customized Salesforce environment, numerous bespoke interfaces, and disparate technologies, is impeding Syensqo's ability to deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience, thereby hindering business growth and competitiveness.

Recommendation

It's recommended to transition from Salesforce to SAP CX for customer engagement, allowing Syensqo to leverage SAP's integrated products, native S4/HANA integration, and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This transition will help address current challenges, enhance customer experience, and drive sustained growth and success. By leveraging SAP CX, Syensqo can create a more unified and efficient customer engagement strategy, ultimately leading to stronger relationships and long-term success.

Background & Context

Syensqo's current customer relationship management (CRM) processes are supported by a complex architecture involving multiple applications, including two Salesforce instances, On-Premises and Cloud applications, and various manual and system interfaces. The various functions implemented, and their current challenges are detailed below.

1. The management of Customer Master Data is marked by diverse creation and onboarding processes for corporate groups and customers, which are dispersed across multiple teams, including the transformation centre, data operations teams, and service teams. These processes employ custom interfaces that lack real-time synchronization, relying on manual intervention at every stage, leading to inefficiencies and potential data inconsistencies.
2. Although lead and opportunity lifecycles follow established sales cycles, custom logic is applied for lead assignments, revenue projections, and realized net sales tracking, relying on manual data entry, which can lead to inefficiencies and potential errors.
3. The price process is a complex, multi-platform system with varying GBU adoption. It integrates SAP ECC historical data and Dynasys forecasts into BW, generating ICM insights, CPC price recommendations, and Contribution Margin improvements via Dataiku. The process involves custom objects for reviewing, committing, and custom interfaces for replicating prices to backend SAP.
4. Quotation management is custom built with no integration to pricing data that resides in SAP. Additionally, there is no linkage between quotations and orders, making it difficult to track the end-to-end execution of sales processes.
5. Contract profitability reports are not able to be performed as contract execution is not integrated with SAP.
6. “Manage Customer Lifecycle” business process is enabled by the following applications: Salesforce, Pardot, Dynasys, Dataiku, Data Lake. These applications add new layers of issues and complexity to the existing architecture and Syensqo’s business process, for example:

• Not user-friendly, difficult to navigate, with manual replication of the same information required in multiple areas of the systems.

Similarly, for managing “Manage Issue to Resolution” (Customer Complaints, Customer Request and Samples), four applications are currently in place: Salesforce, Gensuite, Qualtrics, Google. These applications vary in capabilities amongst each other and do not fully integrate with Salesforce, to provide the 360º customer view across various customer complaints, requests and samples. Overall, the same issues highlighted before also occur within this business process:

• Double data entry to capture customer insights and feedback from applications other than Salesforce.
• GBU’s have different solutions which creates a challenge to consolidate customer interactions for global customers.
• Case management and customer feedback processes are managed differently across the GBU’s, which does not allow to report on common KPIs to measure Syensqo’s performance and customer’s satisfaction.

Assumptions

SAP S4/HANA will be the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application that will enable the management and execution of customer records, sales contracts, sales orders, logistics, warehousing, transportation, billing and rebates. The recommended solution must integrate with S4/HANA to ensure seamless business process execution and master data integrity.

Convergence solution built on Salesforce is evaluated in a separate KDD

Constraints

No constraints identified; further updates may be determined during detailed design phase. 

Impacts

• Data Mapping: Mapping data fields from Salesforce to SAP accurately to ensure all critical data is transferred correctly.
• Custom Development: Existing developments in Salesforce need to be reviewed and potentially deploy/enhance standard features in SAP
• Interface Redesign: Existing interfaces between Salesforce and other systems may need to be redesigned to work with SAP
• Training Programs: Implementing comprehensive training programs for users to ensure they are proficient with SAP

Business Rules

Options considered

Option A: “Manage Customer Lifecycle” and “Manage Issue to Resolution” processes enabled by SAP

Option A leverages a full SAP solution to enable the business processes. The key advantage of this solution is the use of standard integration across all SAP products. This reduces the need for double-data entry, misalignment of enterprise structure and master data and streamlines the business processes providing a full traceability and transparency from “Lead to Cash”.

Other advantages:

1. Integrated Platform: Manage Customer Lifecycle and Issue to Resolution processes integrates seamlessly with SAP S/4HANA, providing a unified platform for CRM and ERP functionalities. This integration can streamline operations and enhance overall business efficiency.

2. Data Consistency: Having CRM and ERP data on a single platform reduces data silos and ensures real-time data synchronization, leading to better decision-making and operational insights.

3. Advanced Analytics: Leveraging SAP’s analytics capabilities, including SAP Analytics Cloud and embedded analytics in SAP S/4HANA, allows for sophisticated reporting, predictive analytics, and business intelligence.

4. Customization and Flexibility: SAP offers robust customization options and scalability, to tailor the system to specific business needs and scale operations as they grow.

5. Security and Compliance: SAP’s strong focus on security and compliance, along with its extensive experience in enterprise solutions, provides peace of mind for organizations handling sensitive data or operating in regulated industries.

The diagrams below outline the business processes that will be supported by Option A. 

Option B: “Manage Customer Lifecycle” and “Manage Issue to Resolution” processes enabled by SAP and Salesforce: It includes S4/HANA and Salesforce.

Evaluation

See also

Change log

Workflow history