The SAP CRM applications have been initially an integrated on-premise customer relationship management software manufactured by SAP SE which targeted business software requirements for marketing, sales and service of midsize and large organizations in all industries and sectors. The first SAP CRM release 2.0 has been made generally available in November 2000. The current release 7.0 is being updated with quarterly enhancement packs since 2012. In 2007 SAP started to develop a cloud based CRM which has been renamed from Sales on Demand to SAP Cloud for Customer in 2013. Since 2018 SAP has consolidated all of its cloud based marketing, sales, service and commerce applications as SAP C/4HANA suite.
Overview
After the acquisition of Hybris in 2013, SAP has gradually realigned their CRM strategy mainly to take on the market leader Salesforce.com which is a cloud-based software. In a bid to be more competitive and future focused, SAP has been shifting towards cloud based CRM applications since 2011 rather than traditional on-premise software. Still SAP CRM is being used by thousands of companies and there are according to SAP no plans to sunset the product. SAP has consolidated its CRM applications under the terms "Customer Engagement and Commerce" and since 2018 under "Customer Experience". SAP offers a variety of applications:
SAP started working on CRM related capabilities in the early 1990s as embedded CRM modules of the SAP R/3 ERP. The "Sales and Distribution" module of SAP R/3 ERP covered functionalities for:
Pricing, tax and billing including credit management
SAP offered its first stand-alone CRM software in 2000. The initial release of "SAP CRM" 2.0 had been pushed by the acquisition of the German salesforce automation specialist Kiefer & Veittinger with its "Mobile Sales" application. In parallel to the new focus for stand-alone SAP CRM, SAP continued to invest in the embedded CRM scenarios as part of its ERP software in 2005. This allowed SAP in 2007 to copy the CRM codeline from the newly developed cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign and to create the independent "Cloud for Sales" and "Cloud for Service" applications. Another example for this copy and paste approach was the decision to move the SAP CRM codelines for service and sales into the S/4HANA ERP which allowed SAP to offer the new "S/4HANA for Customer Management" option. Major milestones of the SAP CRM development:
SAP R/3 Sales and Distribution was initially released as part of R/3 Enterprise Edition 1.0 A in 1992
