Compare Salesforce CRM and SAP - CRM - Apr 2024

Shlomi Lavi / Apr 10, 2024

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Bottom Line: Which is Better - Salesforce CRM or SAP - CRM?

Salesforce vs. SAP CRM

About the providers

Salesforce

Salesforce is an American company which specializes in Software-as-a-Service. It was formed in 1999 by Marc Benioff and other shenanigans. They together formed a cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It has the largest market share of around 18% across the world. This market share has made Salesforce the world’s No. 1 CRM software in today’s date. Currently it has a market capitalization of $45 billion.

SAP CRM

SAP CRM is a product of SAP SE Technologies. It has Enterprise Resource Planning level system which caters to midsize and large businesses. SAP SE is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. It has regional offices in 130 countries and caters to almost 293,500 enterprise customers across 190 countries, a global presence like none other. It notched up annual revenue of 20.79 billion euros in 2015.

Ease of Use

Undoubtedly, Salesforce is the winner here. It gives meaning to the word “ease of use”. The current version release of Salesforce has a lightning experience, which enables users to enter information lightning fast. The ease of flexibility and customization scores way too high over SAP CRM. This ease enables organisation’s big and small to manage their entire CRM in a simple tool, which further can be used online and accessed from anywhere across the globe. All you need is an Internet connection, that’s it.

Although SAP CRM is also available in cloud, but the ease of use is nowhere near Salesforce. System connectivity is highly dependent on steady Wi-Fi connection. Once there is a small break in connectivity, the entire SAP CRM connection will go for a toss. Moreover, it is not easy to customize suiting the needs of the organisation. You will need a dedicated team of developers to customise/create a report, whereas the unique drag-and-drop feature in Salesforce, make it amazingly easy even for the layman users.

Reliability

Salesforce has great integration capabilities, even with SAP CRM. The latter has a direct integration with the underlying ERP from SAP, which is a boon for companies that run on SAP. They don’t have to spend on additional customizations and integrations, thus, SAP CRM has more reliable data to work upon. Because a CRM has to have an end mile feature wherein the leads can be matured to the last invoice. Since invoicing facility is there in Salesforce, but there is no accounting facility. Once Salesforce is integrated with many other usable softwares, it will give the best output, but still SAP CRM has won on the reliability tracks.

Speed

Nothing can beat the speed quotient of Salesforce. Its cloud computing makes it truly fast. Pages load much faster. Even the users can enter leads and opportunities faster than before.

Like I said, SAP CRM has a backend accessibility to huge servers located somewhere on premises. Organisations have to pay top dollar for keeping the servers up and running. Whereas in Salesforce, you can rent the Amazon Web Servers, which are extremely fast, and that come at a very cheap plans. There is a pay-per-use concept in SaaS. Organisations only need to pay for the space being used/rented by them.

Features

SAP CRM has multi modules, including sales, marketing, service, analytics, partner channel management, WebClient, Investigative case management, Social service, Mobile Solutions amongst many others. They give a complete solution for midsized and large scale enterprises. Users have to login to the system through the ECC environment unless they don’t have mobile solutions installed on their devices. There is no training module or help available. Users have to pay Annual Maintenance Charges over and above the licence charges to get simple help from SAP. Trainings run into thousands of dollars. SAP CRM turns out be a costly affair with Return on Investment and paybacks on a slightly lesser side.

There is no intra-company or group communication system.

Salesforce also has a multi modular approach, including sales (lead, opportunity, contact, account management), marketing, service, ParDot, ExactTarget, Campaign Management, quotation management, case management amongst others. Users can customizes, given the level of authorisation provided to them, they can change and update leads and other information wherever they are. Connectivity won’t be a problem, since organisations are paying just for the cloud, so, no tall tower servers here. There is an inbuilt “Help” module on every single page, so users can check out the solution from hundreds and thousands of pre-solved know-hows. Now no need to call up the call centre executive with your small problems.

Salesforce comes with a Chatter function, wherein users within the organisation can chat with each other and discuss on the go. This is a key feature where employees who have shared something on the feed of Salesforce, the same can be liked, shared or commented upon. Employees can appreciate and see reports and dashboards on real-time basis. They can also give an appreciation badge over Chatter and help motivate others.

Security

Having your server with someone else is always a risky affair. That’s what Salesforce is all about. Since there are no servers and firewalls of your company in action, the data security can be compromised. Although an organisation can opt to buy an in-house server and spread a firewall around it and simultaneously put up Single Sign On facility, the data is more or less safer. The Salesforce has an added pre-determined role hierarchy structure, which doesn’t users to see each other’s information. Users can restrict their view ability themselves, given the level of access by system administrators.

SAP CRM, is also available on cloud, so equal problems with it too. Security wise, we are on the same boat here. Given the level of security and budget your organisation has, choice of software is easy on security point of view. If your organisation is ready to ride the cloud tide, then Salesforce would be a better and cheaper option. Given the level of transaction code authorisation, data can be kept safe from leakage within the organisation.

Summary

It is clear that Salesforce is the ultimate winner here. it saves ample time for the users, so that sales reps can spend more time on dealing and closing sales rather than write theses about it. A faster and simpler system is the need of the hour.