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.

Core CRM interface provider.pdf

Core CRM interfaces consumer.pdf

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 Integrated Contribution Margin (ICM) insights, Customer Product Combination (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.

• OneQuote is a custom application that manages the quotation process, including creation, product configuration, pricing, approvals, and customer communications, although it has not been adopted by all Global Business Units (GBUs). Quotation validity dates and price validity dates differ, with the latter having a longer horizon to minimize the impact of policy changes on customer orders. While OneQuotes themselves are not replicated to ECC, but their price conditions are replicated, and open orders are adjusted manually during policy revisions.

Composites GBU uses the ECC Quotation process, which differs from OneQuote due to material group level differences. The outputs of OneQuote and ECC Quote vary significantly in detail and format across GBUs. For forecasting, quotes from both systems integrate with Dynasys, and quote reporting is done in Celonis (Composites) and Cliksense (TS and Novecare).

• Complaints, linked to sales orders or not, follow a guided process: registration, investigation, commercial response, customer communication, and closure. The process integrates with Gensuite for corrective and preventive actions, and Qualtrics for customer feedback. However, quality inspections, returns handling, and credit memos are not linked back to the complaint. Custom functions facilitate acknowledgments and communications between internal and external teams, improvements are needed to connect all related processes.

• Sample management and tracking is a complex process that requires enhancement. Currently, some GBUs have an interface integrating Salesforce, SAP, and CMC (third-party sample provider) for automated sample transmission and information sharing. This interface needs to be replicated across all GBUs using CMC services for compliance purposes. The sample order process involves manual screening, resulting in inefficiencies. Commercial samples management is entirely manual, relying on emails for inventory management, material records, and transactions. This leads to significant communication challenges and wastes time. A standardized approach is essential for capturing orders, communicating with production and R&I, and managing outbound logistics to end customers (both billable and non-billable).

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.

Orders generated from the Additive Manufacturing webshop and Small Customer Webshop account for only 4% of total orders for 2023. Understand that there are on-going discussions to put the AM webshop on hold by year-end, hence a comprehensive analysis is not done on these two webshops.

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: “Market to Quote” and “Manage Customers & Channels” 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”.

The integrated master data management of SAP CX and S4/HANA creates a unified customer platform, delivering a seamless experience through real-time data replication, tailored corporate group management and GBU segmentation, streamlined team assignments, centralized organization management, and enhanced security.

With SAP, the Lead and Opportunity lifecycles are streamlined with guided procedures, automatic team assignments, and seamless integration with revenue projections. This enables a unified lead-to-cash cycle, allowing for accurate sales revenue tracking and forecasting without the need for multiple system integrations. Additionally AI-based lead scoring uses machine learning to analyze customer data, predicting conversion likelihood and enabling businesses to identify high-quality leads.

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