Easily Integrate SAP ERP and Salesforce Via CPQ, Out-of-the-Box

SAP users still have a problem in 2016: Customer Service. SAP is developing more effective customer service offerings, Hybris and C4C, but these are still not up to par with Salesforce. The 2016 Sales Force Automation (SFA) Magic Quadrant shows the sales and service capabilities of SAP CRM to be in the Challengers’ quadrant, and the more comparable SAP Hybris as a top visionary but nowhere near the ability to execute of Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics cloud offering. This leaves SAP users in a bit of a quandary when they seek differentiation through customer service and sales. To truly differentiate among competitors still requires a non-SAP product, specifically, either Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics Online.

Middle market B2B Sales units might have Salesforce on their wish list, or they might be using Sales Cloud® already. Everything is fine for parallel front-office and back-office processes, but SAP/Salesforce does cause significant challenges where processes overlap: around the sale, itself. Both Sales and Operations take ‘orders’ from the signed contract, Sales in the pricing and configuration rules it uses to generate an active quote, and Operations in the translation from contract to order.

Complex B2Bs can see the need for alignment on both sides of the sales equation, complex products and services often leading to challenges in the quote-to-order (Q2O) function before the sale, often leading to challenges in order fulfillment, contracts, and pricing after the sale. Aligning these two systems through Q2O or quote-to-cash (Q2C) is essential for make-to-order manufacturers because pricing and configuration need to be performed up to engineering specifications but handled with the customer service and salesmanship of a master sales rep.

Middle Market Learns from Enterprise’s Mistakes with SAP-Salesforce Integrations

Multinational B2Bs have tried integrating SAP Variant Configurator (VC) and SAP Pricing with Sales Cloud®, but implementation, maintenance and execution of these integrations can demand significant resources:

• Incomplete Extractions — Complex dependencies, materials, BOM, pricing procedures, implementation procedures must be transferred to the CPQ, and often the integration leaves gaps in the knowledge base, which then are filled in manually in Sales Cloud®, leading to a resource-heavy implementation followed by manual maintenance whenever a change is made in SAP Pricing and SAP VC.
• Converting Data into Structures — Custom implementations must also develop unique code to convert extracted data into structures that can be imported to the CPQ. This process is also resource-intensive, particularly when converting Constraints and Constraint Networks into rules. And when an SAP admin makes changes, there is an added risk that the custom code will not support the change, requiring additional maintenance.
• Performance-intensive Simulate Order BAPI Calls — Typical integrations link pricing structures by using BAPI calls to request pricing data from SAP ERP. These can place significant pressure on the network, as most changes made by the Sales Rep will create another call. The workaround is to essentially disconnect SAP pricing from the CPQ, but then what is the point of the integration?

All of these challenges have made custom integrations expensive and relatively ineffective for many enterprises. But there is now a solution that handles these SAP-Salesforce integration woes, out-of-the-box, helping both manufacturers and service companies align Sales, Operations, and Service.

A Simple Solution to Integrate SAP ERP with Salesforce CRM: Revvy CPQ for SAP

Revvy CPQ for SAP was designed for multinational manufacturers who want the best of both worlds: SAP ERP and Salesforce CRM. Revvy solves all the above-mentioned problems automatically by synchronizing directly with SAP Pricing and SAP VC on a frequent basis, creating a complete run-time version of pricing and configuration rules. The Sales Rep can then use Revvy to configure-price-quote as if in SAP, but from within Sales Cloud®. The quote is then sent to SAP SD, where orders are generated that are 100% accurate, seeming as though they were generated from SAP ERP and which can be changed directly in SAP in the event of a change order.

ALTAVI has implemented Revvy CPQ successfully for upper middle market organizations up to Fortune 100 companies, giving our clients a competitive advantage in Sales while driving operational efficiencies across the organization.