SAP CRM On-Demand

April marks the month in which the SAP CRM On-Demand Solution goes up against the Salesforce.com and Oracle’s new acquisition, Siebel CRM OnDemand. Along with partner in hosting IBM, the SAP CRM sales module will cost would-be purchasers $75 per month, more than a bit of a disadvantage when compared with the established salesforce.com rate of $65 per month.

Company press material itself states that, as modules are added piece by piece, SAP CRM could carry a price tag of as much as $125 per month. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to calculate that this figure is nearly double the going rate. AMR Research analyst Robert Bois opined that “customers [running back-end systems] should stick with salesforce.com until SAP has further fleshed out the complete CRM offering. Today, salesforce.com has a much more elegant user interface, broader full-suite CRM functionality, and better customization and administrative tools.”

Bois also said that the salesforce.com emphasis on businesses small- and medium-sized indicates that back-end systems are employed in a minority of cases, going on to note that “salesforce.com has enjoyed some good success recently in moving into larger enterprises where SAP sits on the back end.” For a contrast, the website www.sap.com features a myriad of successful implementation stories with excellent results. After posing the rhetorical question, “Can you reduce the costs associated with the products and services that build stronger customer relationships?” The SAP site goes on to promise that their “mySAP CRM allows companies to cut the costs of front-end transactions, increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and anticipate customer needs better – all of which contribute to a significant return on a solution investment.”

The company’s promise of “true financial success” is demonstrated in ROI reports for adidas-Salomon; Adobe; Audi; Avid Technologies; BKW; Boots; Brother; Butélé; Canada Post Cardinal Health, Medical Products, and Services; CJ Corporation; C. H. Beck; Day & Zimmermann; Energie AG; IPSOA; Mascot International; Molex; Pacific Coast Feather; Perdigão; Philips Consumer Electronics; RWTÜV AG; Schering do Brasil; Schwan’s Food Service; Sterling Group; Tallard Technologies; Tata Telecom; Villeroy & Boch; and the Waters Corporation.