Introduction: SAP vs Salesforce

In a day and age when organisations are moving towards streamlining the way they operate, some strategic decisions need to be taken.

Doesn’t matter if you are a funded billion-dollar startup, a large corporate organisation or even a small business, all of you need to figure out steps to make your operations more efficient. In case, you don’t want to fail, simply scale.

That’s how businesses need to adapt to the changing and constantly upgrading technologies. Any agile business has to incorporate a CRM in its operations that help it automate sales, helps improve customer service, creates follow-ups, identifies prospects, organise data, and more.

And when it comes to CRM, there are two names that everyone considers- Salesforce & SAP.

Which one is better? Which of them suits your business better? What makes one stand out from the other?

Let’s find out all the aspects. From choosing the right CRM software to figuring out the tools that might help your business scale better, we’ll cover it all.

Factors Before Choosing A CRM

Before we figure out what CRM is better, let’s find out what you should look out for when selecting the ideal CRM for your organisation.

1. Accessibility & Scalability: The CRM that you chose should be accessible from various platforms & devices. While devices & platforms are one thing, the CRM should be cloud-friendly, and accessible from anywhere, anytime.

2. Ease of Use: At the end of the day, your CRM should be able to invite more people to itself, rather than intimidate them.

When the design and the interface are easy to use and work upon, your employees are going to interact with your CRM in a much better manner. This will create a much better value for their employees.

1. Support: Even the best of the best CRM platforms need customer support services from time to time. Always ensure that there is a clause for customer support, if and when the need arises.

2. Cost: When finalising a CRM for your organisation, always look into the costs. Figure out the cost/benefit relationship for each and every service & feature that comes attached with your CRM contract.
   
   Ensure that you are aware of the new integrations, the customisations, and everything else that has to be included in your final cost sheet.

Comparison of the features: Salesforce vs SAP

• Marketing Functions

Salesforce: When it comes to marketing functions, Salesforce does it all. With a lot more extensive marketing function software, ranging from email marketing to automation and from customer service to managing & executing your campaigns.

SAP: While SAP does have a good list of features in its kitty, it lags behind Salesforce in many spots. While the Marketing Cloud tries to fill the gap, the user interface and the ease of usability doesn’t advocate for it too well.

Outcome: In case, more number of functions are your concern, we suggest you go with Salesforce.

1. Omni–Channel Experience & Functionalities
   
   The purpose of a CRM is to have a dashboard, from which you can access each and everything with ease. Now, when it comes to delivering an omni-channel experience, let’s look at both these platforms once.
   
   Salesforce: The Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a plethora of features like order management, merchandising, marketing automation & more across all the devices.

SAP: SAP on the other end, integrates various points of your customer’s interactions and ensures a more rational approach. Functions similar to Salesforce are available to your customers, on any device they can access from.

• Artificial Intelligence
  
  Salesforce: Salesforce has already been a visionary when it comes to bringing in automation & AI in its CRM functionalities. The Einstein prediction builder from Salesforce can help you determine outcomes, the Einstein discovery platform provides data points that can help you increase your productivity & optimise your budgets.
  
  Similarly, features like Einstein Vision (in-app image recognition, Einstein Language (helps understand customer emotions & intent), & Einstein Bot (creates bots that interact with your consumer, based on CRM data), can change the game for your business.
  
  SAP: SAP has a list of its AI-based features as well. The SAP Customer Retention helps you analyze your customer’s behaviour, the SAP Deal Intelligence helps you rate your leads and prioritises them on the basis of their purchase intent.

Moreover, functions like SAP Service Ticket Intelligence (prioritises tasks & suggests answers), SAP CoPilot (chatbot), SAP Brand measure (brand recall & influence), are at par with Salesforce.

1. Analytics
   
   Salesforce: The QlikView feature allows you to have a real-time customer analysis. The easy-to-use dashboard brings a cherry on the cake.
   
   SAP: SAP’s Business Objects system, it can deliver analytics and data without integrating any other business intelligence systems in place.

Advantages: Who Wins?

Now that we have gone through what the two CRM behemoths have to offer, let’s find out who wins, when there are specific advantages to be compared.

1. Salesforce turns out to be more user-friendly, flexible and easy to manage. Whereas, SAP’s user-interface does require a bit of time to get acquainted with.
2. SAP requires you to get acquainted with the platform and have a thorough background to get acquainted with. However, Salesforce’s user-friendly interface makes it easily adaptable.
3. Salesforce’s AppExchange platform allows app integrations a smooth process. However, with SAP, integrating third-party apps might become troublesome at times.

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing between the two CRM platforms, the final decision lies with the fact, what do you need it for.

Salesforce offers a large number of functionalities and an easy-to-use interface that makes it a favorite of many. However, when it comes to SAP, their plans might seem to be customer-friendly but their tools might not turn out to be as robust and agile as Salesforce.

Hence, what platform you should consider, depends on your business’ situation, your team’s requirements and adaptability & eventually the price that you pay.

CEPTES is a decade-old Salesforce SI, ISV, and PDO partner. Our experts will guide your team and partners through the critical stages of your implementation and let you address your business challenges more efficiently. Connect with us today.