Customer Relationship Management

It is also an act of courtesy to (potential) customers to obtain information in advance. The dialog should be transparent, open and respectful.

Manipulative attacks, such as those made public by Facebook, must be rejected. It is a matter of convincing and not persuading. CRM is too important a function to be abused for short-term profit maximization.

SAP is very active in CRM when it comes to selling CRM licenses, implementing CRM Fiori apps using cloud computing, and buying or attacking other CRM vendors.

Where SAP fails, on the other hand, is in transparent and comprehensive relationship management with its existing customers that benefits both sides. A relationship for the purpose of mutual success is alien to SAP.

Of course, SAP also has its own CRM system and collects data on its existing customers. Relationship management is essentially limited to two areas: In contact with existing customers, the aim is to gather as much business information as possible in order to calculate the maximum possible IT investments in SAP software and services.

And the company's own CRM system is used to influence selected personalities - a grassroots information policy no longer exists.

Data is the new gold: SAP's CRM database is unique. For each existing customer, there is a comprehensive dossier that contains not only classic CRM data, but also a business assessment of the customer.

This comprehensive database can be used to determine the sales quotas for the sales department every year. The database contains a holistic analysis of the IT and corporate structure of the existing customer, from which the key figures are calculated as to how much the customer can contribute to SAP's sales target as a maximum.

Because SAP has been conscientiously feeding this database with countless data for many years, the forecast is more and more often a precision landing, which SAP Sales then has to realize.

The existing customer is almost helpless in the face of this Big Data attack because SAP uses not only official, generally accessible balance sheet figures and statistics for analysis, but also the results from internal ERP measurement logs. Most existing customers are a transparent license and service customer for SAP.

CRM has another task: locating opinion leaders and early adopters. It is legitimate in the context of the general and social media zeitgeist to use influencers to handle part of one's own mass communication.

Long before the social media community invented CRM via influencers, SAP invited people to an annual Influencer Summit. Here, selected analysts and journalists met with the SAP Executive Board.

There was an open and friendly atmosphere. The mechanisms were transparent, with no secret agreements. In the meantime, SAP has discontinued this "service", which does not mean that a CRM incentive program will not continue to be offered to important people from the SAP community.

CRM should not be manipulative, however, but should reflect an open relationship that can be perceived and classified by outsiders.