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 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.

4. 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).

5. Contract management encompasses various contract types, including sales, distribution agreements and inter-business unit contracts. Contract data storage varies across business units, with key details including tracked validity periods for notification purposes, maintained product information for planning and sales forecasting in Qliksense, and excluded prices and discounts. The approval process is managed externally in ContracTech(Legal), with no output templates generated from CRM for customer sharing. Contract management is not integrated with backend systems or processes, CRM contracts serve only as a centralized repository for tracking and notifications, with contract volumes reported to Qliksense for forecasting and stored in CRM for reference and expiration reminders.
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

The decision may translate into business rules which enforce the decision and will require configuration. List these business rules here. For example, "An Outline Agreement cannot be created via the RFQ process. An awarded RFQ can only result in a Purchase Order". 

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.

Decribe the option in sufficient detail for a reader familiar with the subject matter to understand it properly

Evaluation

Outline why you selected a position. The best format could be a pro/con table (sample below), but is up to you as the author. You must consider complexity, feasibility, cost/effort to implement, but also ongoing operational impact and cost. You must consider the program principles and explain any deviations in detail. This is probably as important as the decision itself.

See also

Insert links and references to other documents which are relevant when trying to understand this decision and its implications. Other decisions are often impacted, so it's good to list them here with links. Attachments are also possible but dangerous as they are static documents and not updated by their authors.

Change log

Workflow history