Enterprise evolution disrupts CRM solutions

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have been around for over two decades, continuously evolving to better accommodate customer needs. Industry leaders such as SAP, NetSuite, and Microsoft offer enterprise CRM solutions; however, with the shift towards the cloud and cloud computing, these on-premises CRM solutions might not necessarily cater to the needs of businesses migrating to the cloud. As businesses shift towards cloud and hybrid integration, migration from an on-premises CRM system to one in the cloud is becoming a concern.

SAP CRM solutions

SAP is an industry-leading provider of ERP software solutions for various types of businesses. In addition to its well-known ERP solution, SAP offers customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help organizations obtain a 360-degree view of their customers. SAP’s CRM solution covers numerous lines of business, including sales, marketing, and services, is trusted by numerous large-scale companies to manage vital customer data and is supported by many well-known hardware vendors. Although SAP CRM is well-suited for medium to large businesses, it can be too large of an investment for smaller businesses. Moreover, as SAP specializes in other areas of enterprise software beyond CRM, other vendors that specialize in CRM, like Salesforce and MS Dynamics, are gaining a competitive advantage.

As organizations move more mission-critical applications to the cloud, they are less interested in heavyweight solutions with high upfront fees or CRM solutions from vendors who are not specialized in CRM. Deploying numerous best of breed applications to run business processes is becoming the norm. With this shift, organizations are looking to move from SAP CRM to other popular, more flexible CRM solutions. Additionally, an ideal CRM solution along with the valuable customer data residing within it should be accessible to all users throughout a company - regardless of if they are part of sales, services, marketing, or support - on any platform or device. Moreover, the information should be synchronized and accessible across other disparate applications and services used throughout the enterprise as well.

CRM experts step in

CRM SaaS providers such as Salesforce and MS Dynamics CRM OnDemand focus solely on providing a solid customer relationship management solution. These providers focus on designing a flexible, scalable and lightweight solution, frequently offering it as a subscription-based model, rather than one with high upfront costs. Moreover, these cloud-based CRM solutions are easy to integrate with other third-party SaaS providers, with pre-packaged connectors or integration apps, rather than through complex custom code. As the IT landscape evolves, businesses are moving their ecosystems to the cloud, either entirely or partially in a hybrid model, requiring quick and easy to implement integration throughout the enterprise, regardless of whether it resides on-prem or in the cloud.

Integration platform powers CRM integration

Businesses shifting to the cloud must also consider integrating existing solutions with newer ones. As a result, a powerful integration platform is necessary to create connectivity. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform, helps businesses create connectivity throughout the enterprise, from on-premises to the cloud. Moreover, these integration solutions aid businesses in their migration process as they move from one CRM solution to another.

As the business landscape evolves and companies adopt more cloud-oriented solutions, a flexible cloud-based CRM solution is crucial to keeping organizations connected and streamlined. When moving from one CRM solution, such as SAP CRM, to another such as Zoho CRM, businesses must do so carefully as to preserve existing customer information in databases. Moreover, they must seamlessly be able to migrate customer data from one application to another. With an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) or an ESB, businesses can automate processes and synchronize data easily, ensuring everyone who needs information has it.

MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform provides organizations a set of products to help with their migration from one system to another. With a library of connectors, businesses can create connectivity between SAP CRM and other CRM solutions, helping them sync data during migration from one platform to another. Moreover, as organizations transition from on-premises CRM solutions to those in the cloud, the existing databases and information residing in them need to be preserved and accessible. MuleSoft helps businesses wrap and maintain those legacy systems, while connecting them to numerous third-party SaaS applications, keeping the enterprise ecosystem connected. Whether your business is looking to migrate entirely to the cloud or looking to manage a hybrid model, MuleSoft has a solution for a variety of integration needs. 

Learn more

Check out best practices for SAP application integration projects.