Issue

The current Syensqo CRM architecture is comprised of multiple instances of the salesforce.com application (Core CRM and ICare). This includes various integrations with backend systems (PRS, ICare-PF1, Core-WP1) and pointed solutions (Pardot, Dynasys, Gensuite, Qualtrics, Qliksense etc.,), which are currently generating some challenges with data consistency, scalability, efficiency, and integration.

Furthermore, the current digital customer journey architecture, is reliant on a heavily customized Salesforce environment, with numerous bespoke interfaces, and disparate technologies. This is currently 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 is recommended that Syensqo transition from the Salesforce.com application to SAP CX, leveraging its comprehensive customer engagement platform to unify marketing, sales, and customer service efforts. With SAP CX, Syensqo can harness advanced capabilities such as AI-powered customer insights, real-time personalization, and seamless omnichannel engagement to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Additionally, SAP CX's integrated suite and native connectivity with S4 HANA will streamline data management with the intention to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and drive sustained growth and success. By adopting SAP CX, Syensqo can create a cohesive and efficient customer engagement strategy, building strong 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 scoring, 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

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 - Transition from Salesforce to SAP CX and integrate with S4 HANA

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, team assignments, centralized organization management, and enhanced security.
• The Lead and Opportunity lifecycles are streamlined with guided procedures, automatic team assignments, and integration for revenue projections and realised sales. 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 analyse customer data, predicting conversion likelihood and enabling businesses to identify high-quality leads.
• The pricing solution offers analytics capabilities to support informed pricing decisions, including pricing analysis for customer-product combinations, manufacturing cost analysis, pricing trend identification, order book comparison, blocked order detection, and financial indicator comparison. It also provides sales, volume, cost, and margin evolution analysis, active contract and flexibility metric display, and enables business users to access and maintain pricing information in S/4 for accurate quoting, driving revenue growth and profitability.
• SAP CX streamlines the quotation process, including guided selling, quotation configuration, pricing and discounting, approval workflows, customer-specific pricing, quote validity, and quote versioning. By integrating with S4 HANA, businesses can access real-time data, automate data synchronization, and simplify order-to-cash processing. Ultimately, this seamless integration provides a single source of truth for customer, product, and pricing data, increasing efficiency and accuracy in the quotation-to-cash process.
• Contract Management provides a centralized repository for storing and managing contracts, automated workflows for approval and notification processes, and real-time tracking of contract validity periods, product information, and pricing. Additionally, S4 HANA provides advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, enabling real-time insights into contract performance and enabling data-driven decision making.
• The complaint management streamlines the process by integrating it with sales orders, quality inspections, returns handling, and credit memos. The guided process covers registration, investigation, commercial response and tracking, customer communication, and closure, with automation of acknowledgments and communications between teams. Additionally, SAP CX and S4 HANA integrate with Qualtrics for customer feedback, providing a closed-loop process. Machine learning enhances case resolution with features of similar case matching, automated summaries, categorization, email translation, and sentiment analysis.
• Sales order management standardize and automate the sample order process, eliminating manual screening and inefficiencies. S4 HANA's inventory management and logistics capabilities will efficiently manage outbound logistics to end customers/distributors.

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

Market to Quote 1

Market to Quote 2(Samples)

Manage Customers & Channels

Option B - Harmonize Salesforce by removing non-CRM features and integrating CRM capabilities with S4 HANA

Leverage Salesforce for CRM and migrate non-CRM functions to S4 HANA, consolidating core ERP functions. Integrate Salesforce and S4 HANA for seamless process and data integration, enabling end-to-end business process execution and a unified view.

Key enhancements:

• Streamline processes by retaining Prospect creation and Customer conversion in Salesforce, eliminating PRS, and integrating with S4 HANA for real-time data replication.
• Align GBU segmentation with S4 HANA's organization structure and map team assignments to S4 HANA's business partner concepts.
• Continue using Salesforce for lead and opportunity management, and revenue projection maintenance, while leveraging S4 HANA for opportunity dashboards, forecasting, and realized sales/revenue data.
• Implement Price Transparency dashboards in S4 HANA for sales revenue, price analysis, forward costing, and contract information.
• Maintain integration with Dataiku for price optimizations and migrate sales price setting to S4 HANA.
• S4 HANA will provide pricing information for Onequote, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
• Centrally manage contracts in S4 HANA, simplifying processes and reducing errors.
• Integrate Salesforce with S4 HANA for case management, quality notifications, and corrective actions.
• Track feedback in Qualtrics, with reporting in both Salesforce and S4 HANA.
• Manage samples in Salesforce, integrating with S4 HANA for logistics and fulfilment.

Option C - Maintain Salesforce in its current state and integrate it with S4 HANA

Evaluation

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