SAP CRM Interview Questions

SAP CRM is one of the key module in an organization which deals with handling customer effectively and efficiently. Today’s competitive market environment, it is necessary that companies make changes in a dynamic environment and take care of all the key activities related to customer service.

SAP CRM is known as integrated customer relationship management module by SAP that helps organization to achieve their business goals and allows to perform all Customer Relationship tasks efficiently. CRM is one of key component for making business strategy for medium and large scale organizations and helps in understanding the customers, their needs and customer service effectively.

SAP CRM is part of SAP ERP business suite and is used to implement customize business processes related to Customer Relationship management CRM and to integrate with SAP and non-SAP systems. SAP CRM allows organization to achieve customer satisfaction by meeting the service expectation and providing products required by customers.

• SAP CRM Sales
• SAM CRM Marketing
• SAP CRM Analytics
• SAP CRM Service
• SAP CRM Web Channel (E Marketing, CRM Mobile, etc.)
• SAP CRM Interaction Center IC
• SAP Hybris

It allows you to use cross-industry and industry-specific end-to-end business processes.

You can use flexible and process-based deployment options.

It provides you an open adaptable technology platform powered by SAP NetWeaver.

SAP CRM 2008 (7.0) released in 2009 as part of SAP Business Suite 7.0.

SAP CRM 2007 (6.0) released in 2007.

SAP CRM consists of various components that allow you to integrate CRM module with other SAP and non-SAP modules, internet, mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and enterprise portal.

In the center, it has SAP CRM server which has sub components like −

• CRM Enterprise Functions
• CRM Middleware
• Adapters to communicate with hand held devices and internet

SAP ECC/R3 system is used for backend, SAP BI system is used for analytical reporting and SAP SCM is used to enhance the capabilities of SAP CRM module.

You can see SAP CRM architecture and all its key components −

• SAP ERM Server (CRM Enterprise, CRM Middleware, Adapter)
• SAP ECC as backend system
• SAP BI for Analytical Reporting
• SAP SCM
• Mobile and hand held devices
• Internet
• Enterprise Portal

SAP ECC and CRM are closely integrated with each other and they have to be synchronized in some configurational areas like Sales area, Customer master records, Organizational model, etc.

Example

An organization model defines the sales area you should use in CRM and check in SAP ECC system. Sales area contains below components −

• Sales Organization
• Distribution channel
• Divisions

You download the data from sales area to ECC system and this is performed when you configure CRM module. You need to verify the configurational data in ECC before setting up in CRM.

SAP GUI is used to perform administration tasks in SAP CRM. To perform customization and configuration of CRM activities, client tool is recommended by SAP known as SAP CRM WebClient User Interface.

You can login to SAP CRM WebClient via SAP GUI. To open login window, you can use below Transaction code −

T-Code: CRM_UI and press Enter key. If nothing happens, it shows that you are using older version of SAP CRM.

To perform the enhancements in SAP SRM WebClient, you can use Web UI configuration and application enhancement tools. These tools allow you to add new fields, change layout, add tables, etc. to the existing applications.

In general scenario, companies don’t prefer to use standard applications and some customizations are required. These tools can be used −

• Web UI Configuration Tool
• Application Enhancement Tool

SAP CRM Sales allows organization to manage their sales related activities like reducing sales cycle, increase productivity of sales team, increase revenue, and customer satisfaction and loyalty. It helps organization to manage end to end sales cycle across all sales channels.

Below are the key sales functions that are performed in SAP CRM −

• Organizations can perform sales planning and forecasting that helps them to forecast and plan their revenues and item quantities.

• SAP CRM is used by organizations to manage, monitor, capture and save all the critical details about customers, products, partners and prospects.

• Organization can perform territory management and assign sales managers to define the territories based on various criteria and also be allowing them to assign sales representatives for territories and identify prospects for each territory.

• To effectively manage travel and expense management for field sales personnel to record, review, and update travel information, enter receipts, and maintain time sheets.

• It is used by organizations to manage and assign different tasks to sales professionals.

• Organization use this for management of sales projects from the very start and track their progress to end.

• It help organizations to develop, implement, and manage compensation plans easily by defining incentives and commissions for sales agents.

• To configure, price, and create quotes for customers, as well as create sales orders, check product availability, and track order fulfillment.

• To perform contract management for customers by defining long term contract and renewing contracts, etc.

Account planning function in CRM allows organizations to manage planned revenues, costs and contribution margin. Organizations can strong decisions during planning and control the costs for spends and discounts. Planning function is integrated in account management functions and can be integrated with SAP ECC and BI and reduces the effort to maintain data and increase data accuracy.

In SAP CRM, the Master Data is basic data about your customer which can be shared amongst different modules.

As the name indicates partner function describes the organization and people with whom the business is done, which includes any kind of business transaction. Partner function includes information like −

• Sold to party
• Ship to party
• Bill to party
• Payer

Activity management in CRM is used to administer the activities assigned to employees in an organization. Data in an activity is important source of information for all the employees that are relevant for that information.

Activities in CRM are used to record sales activities. Common activities are email or a telephone call or a customer visit or a follow up call, request to set the status to complete etc. in CRM lifecycle. Appointments, interactions logs can be marked as private. You can also create activities as subsequent documents for a wide variety of other business transactions, such as opportunities, leads, sales orders, or contracts.

Activity management can be performed at any time during CRM life cycle. When a customer contract is about to expire, you can make a telephone call to customer (activity) as a follow up document to remind the employee to make follow up call to customer and to check if he is willing to renew the contract.

An Opportunity is defined as sales prospect, requested service or product, sales volume and a sales probability. Opportunity can be a possibility of sales of service or product and can result from a bid invitation, sales deal or from a trade fair.

Opportunity management is one of the integral part of CRM module and allows you to control sales process.

Opportunity management in Sales should be used in following scenarios −

• When Sales cycle in an organization spans for a longer time period.
• Many Sales representatives work in an organization
• Large sales order vales and they are distributed.

When your sales project is split into multiple sub projects and you want to keep track of all the subprojects and to link them to sales project, you can use complex hierarchies. You can connect different opportunities to each other and this allows you to connect sales projects and subprojects with each other.

Opportunities hierarchies can be used in following scenarios −

• To link an opportunity to sales project
• To link a sub opportunity to a product
• Combine several sales project connected with each other
• Structure sales project consists of several subprojects

A lead can be defined as first stage of sales process. It represents a person who has shown interest in buying a service or a product. A Lead can be generated from marketing lead generation processes like trade fairs, advertisement, direct marketing or can be from sales person activities like calling or an email.

Leads can be classified into categories: Cold, Warm and Hot by marketing department. If a lead look promising, then sales department can create an opportunity from this lead.

A Lead is different from an opportunity in a manner that it is predecessor of an opportunity. Opportunities are used for more complex and longer sales project cycles, Sales Rep use opportunities to control the sales project and maximize the chance of winning customers and minimizing the sales time.

Sales quotation is generated to ensure that a specific quantity of product will be delivered at specific time period and at specific price.

Quotation processing and order management involves following steps in SAP CRM and ECC system −

Create Quotation

A quotation is created in the system to provide the customer. Items are added for this quotation (Performed in SAP CRM).

Enter Product and configure

Next is to enter the products requested by customer. Products can be configured for every item of the quotation (Performed in SAP CRM).

Check Availability

Next is to check the availability of products for every item of the quotation (Performed in SAP CRM and ECC).

Pricing and Value

Next is to add the price of each product and the value of each item (Performed in SAP CRM).

Send Quotation

Next step is to send the quotation to the customer (Performed in SAP CRM).

An outline agreement is defined as an agreement that allows customer to release the products or services at previously agreed conditions. You can define conditions like price, terms of delivery, etc. and these conditions are true for all sales orders that customer creates with reference to sales agreement. These outline agreements are used for customer retention.

Some of the standard transaction types for sales are −

• LEAD - lead
• AG - Quotation
• Opt - Opportunity
• OPSM - Sales Methodology
• TA - Tele Sales, etc.

The BDOC classes or types are −

• Messaging BDocs
• Synchronization BDocs
• Mobile Application BDocs

Business transactions are structured as −

Header

Header contains the information relevant to complete transaction like BP number, Dates, status of transactions etc.

Items

This defines the product to which business transaction relates. Items and sub-items and their status.

Date rules

You can enter contract start date and end date and duration of contract. Dates can be entered manually or you can create date rules for determining start and end date of contract.

Completion rules

Here you define the completion rule like how the system will act on contract when customer release the full quantity of the product.

The availability check is used to validate if a product is available to be added in a Sales order. This allows you to perform a check if enough stock is available or can be produced or purchased for the sales order to be placed.

Availability check can be performed in different systems and information is transferred to production or purchasing.

The key factor which is used to calculate the tax and for tax determination is tax event. Applicable tax type, tax rate, locations and other factors are determined. It uses decision tree to make tax determination and calculation more simple and transparent. You can also use simulation tool in TTE for tax determination and for testing customizing settings.

Action Profile is a Post Processing Framework (PPF) it gives some output on given conditions.

IPC stands for Internet Pricing and Configuration.

The important components of IPC −

• Sales Pricing Engine (SPE)
• Sales Configuration Engine (SCE)
• Free Goods Engine
• Listing
• Free Goods Engine

Rebate processing is used to process the special discounts that are paid to a customer occasionally. Rebate discounts are based on specific terms and conditions and are defined in rebate agreements. The goal of rebates is to build long-term customer relationships.

Rebate processing enables you to define rebate agreements and perform accounting for rebates given during the validity period of a rebate agreement.

You can access Rebate processing in CRM WebClient UI. Or few of the features can be accesses via SAP Easy Access menu.

To activate the rebate processing, go to SPRO → IMG → Customer Relationship Management → Rebate Processing → Activate/Deactivate Rebate Processing.

Following is list of available transactions −

• CR100: CRM base customizing
• CR600: Marketing and Campaign management
• CR400: IC Winclient
• CR410: IC Webclient

You can use PIDE track or try transaction SMOEAC.

This can be maintained with the help of project profiles.

To delete business partner you can use BUPA_DEL and BUPA_PRE_DA.

CRM Marketing is one of the key component in Customer Relationship management and is used to plan all marketing related activities centrally and implement them successfully across organization. Marketing involves analyzing the market segments and identifying the valuable customers.

Marketing deals with demand creation, building long term customer relationships, creating brand awareness. Marketing also deals with marketing campaigns, lead generation, connecting with target customers, and success of all these activities.

A Market plan is one of the key component to implement market policy of an organization. They are known as top most element in market project hierarchy and used as a tool for planning of budgets and target in marketing strategy. Marketing plan elements are used to define structure of a marketing plan in form of hierarchies and you can assign campaigns to each marketing plan element.

You can assign marketing plans to each other and campaigns can be assigned to each market plan element but you can’t assign marketing plans to a campaign.

A Marketing calendar is known as integrated tool to manage information about marketing activities within a defined time period. You can create new activities, change or display existing activities directly from the calendar.

A Marketing calendar is suitable for all type of marketing roles if you are a marketing professional involved in product campaign or a trade fair promotion manager, you can use market calendar to improve the visibility of all marketing and promotional activities and increase coordination between teams for market campaigns.

Campaigns are created in an organization to improve the sales, to improve the image of products, create new opportunities for add on sales, etc. In SAP CRM, you can implement different inbound and outbound campaigns which are multichannel and they can be used to define and implement best possible marketing strategy by using constraint-based optimization techniques to determine the best marketing mix.

Campaigns can be created in CRM using multiple ways −

Using Campaign Wizard

You can create simple campaigns using campaign wizard that target to a single group and that doesn’t require full functionality of campaign management. You should have business function Campaign Wizard (CRM_MKT_CPG_WIZARD) activated to use this function.

• Using Campaign Templates
• Using Existing Campaigns

To perform campaign execution, you should have atleast one campaign created in CRM. You have created a campaign in Marketing → Campaigns and it contains the necessary information such as communication medium and target group.

Go to Marketing → Campaigns, you have to select the campaign or the campaign element you want to execute.

Next is to release the campaign by changing the status to Released in General Data. Next is to click Start on the Campaign Details page to start processing the campaign.

In today’s market, customers are expecting more in terms of service from the organizations. SAP CRM offers a complete end-to-end solution for your service business and helps you to increase customer loyalty and to boost profitability.

Using SAP CRM Service, you can manage your service cycle that starts with service agreements and contracts, service order management, complaints and returns and service confirmation in the service cycle.

Below are the key functions that can be performed from SAP CRM WebClient −

• Service Order Management
• Service Ticket Management
• Complaint Management
• Case Management
• Product Registration
• Knowledge Search

Service requests are used to fulfill the service requests submitted by the customer. Companies can use service requests internally where a different department delivers service and also for external customers. Customer can call service desk to open service requests or can be submitted directly by service personnel or by users after logging into the system.

Service Ticket was introduced in CRM 4.0 and was variant of IC interaction Center service order business transaction. Service ticket was introduced to provide add on industry service to support service desk scenarios.

Service Requests are available in CRM 7.0 and are introduced to provide functionality in service tickets and also additional features like multilevel categorization, knowledge articles, and master service requests.

Service contracts are defined as service agreements with customers for the specified scope of services and in a defined time frame. Service contract contains the scope of services, SLA’s, prices like annual maintenance contract details, cancellation conditions etc.

A Service contract consists of detailed information that has been agreed upon with the service recipient like −

• Regular service checks for devices that has been sold or rented.
• Expenses involved for the routine tasks in Service.
• All the objects that come under service agreement.
• Conditions under which the contract can be cancelled.

Complaints can be used both in service and sales. Complaints can be created for in-house repair, billing related, returns or any deliveries which doesn’t satisfy the customer.

Return can be used for the goods delivered to a customer. A customer can also return a service part for which was not used.