Lead Management in SAP CRM Marketing

What are Leads?

In marketing or sales lead is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business.Both customers and prospects can be considered as Lead.

Leads facilitate your companys chance to make business. With leads, you can provide a streamlined link between marketing and sales so as to accelerate the process between first interest and sales. Leads can help you to find out more about a potential business. Leads can be generated on the basis of activities or can be the basis for follow-up activities. Leads can also be generated by various channels - Interaction channel, telemarketing, Internet Sales or External Lists. 

Lead Management 

To create a lead, go to customizing transaction types. Use the tcode - crmc_process_ma

Select transaction type "Lead" which is standard sap crm for lead. Copy As and edit the name to make your entry. 

Create your own lead transaction type. 

Make sure you have these entries like 'Web Ui', 'IC' in Channel list. Otherwise this transaction type wont be visible in CRM Marketing Web UI. 

Now go to Marketing Professional, Select Marketing - Create - Lead.

Select your transaction type for lead which you have just created.

The general data field is pretty much simple. Enter an ID, Description, Prospect. 

You can add this list to the campaign type which you have created. 

Under classification type you can choose three important classification of leads i.e Priority, Origin and Group. Priority is nothing but what is priority level of your lead. Origin is from where you have acquired this lead. Lead Group is category where your lead belongs to.

Under general data, there is a qualification level. These qualification level should be entered manually or through the surveys in lead. 

There can be many other data field under Leads like Partner involved, Notes, Assessment etc. These can be either maintained manually or can be customized according to the needs. 

Lead Priority, Origins and Groups.

Setting up Lead Priority 

Go to SPRO > CRM > Transactions > Settings for Leads > Define Lead Priorities 

There are lead priority available in the system, you can choose from them or make your own entry. to do so click on New Entry.

Give a new name for your priority and save it.

Your new priority has been created. 

Setting up Lead Origins 

Go to SPRO > CRM > Transactions > Settings for Leads > Define Lead Origins 

Just like lead priority, you can either select from the one avialable in the system or just make a new entry by clicking on New Entry button. 

Setting up Lead Group

Go to SPRO > CRM >  Transactions > Settings for Leads > Define Lead Groups

Just like the lead priority and origins, you can either select from the one available in the system or can make a new entry by clicking on New entry button. 

I am making a new entry in lead group as 'My Important List'.

Now check the entries again in Marketing professional.

Go to Marketing - Create - Lists, and check whether our newly created origins, groups and priority are avialble in the system.

It is available there. Similarly you can check for Lead origins and priorities. 

That was all about basics of Lead Management. We will learn about Surveys or Assessments in Lead Management in next post. 

Mail Forms

What is a Mail Form

Mail Form

The mail form is the template for the mail that is sent. Personalized emails can be used to send marketing information to the target group of customers. Through mail form, we can create mail and send it to our preferred target groups.

For configuring mail form, go to Marketing - Create - Mailforms.

Mailform uses BTF Editor. The editor provides a design view for maintaining and formatting emails. This is how mail form editor looks like.

Now if we closely look at the header, there is a mail form id, in which you can give the new id for mail forms. In subject, you personalize the subject by providing attributes for first name or last name of whatever attribute you want to appear in the subject of your mail. I have chosen here Name as attribute. To choose attribute, Click on Insert Attribute - Variables - Attribute - Select your attribute from list of attributes.

The final format of the subject looks like this. It is a personalized mail where "%SAP_A1" will be replaced by the name of business partners.

The body of mail looks like this. With the help of tools available like pictures, attributes and hyperlinks you can personalize your email.

For sending this personalized email, click on Test Send and preview.

Select the business partner, sender and receiver emails and click on Send button. 

Once the test send function is used the mail is sent to the outbound Q and can be checked in transaction SOST. This was all the basics about Mail forms.

In next post we will see about how to configure Marketing Plan. 

External List Management

External List Management.

External List Management.

For external list management, we upload a list provided by third party to crm database and then map the data. Steps for External list management are 

Suppose we have to upload a list with xyz file name containing list of prospect customer with whom company wants to interact. We will first fetch that excel file containing all the information.

Save that excel file with tab delimited extension.

Now go to marketing professional. Under Marketing, Select create mapping format.

Give a new ID and name to your mapping format. Upload the excel file which you have.

Choose the option Tabulator Delimiter, In Target field filter select Person and hit Refresh button.

Field mapping will be populated.

Now, Map the all the attributes according to their names. Like First name should be mapped to the First Name target field. For mapping, select both the field and click on the Map button.

Now mapping is completed. Click on back button.

Save this mapping format.

Your newly created mapping format is saved. 

External List Management 

To create a external list, Go to Marketing, Create - External List.

Give a new Id and description. Select your mapping format. Select End of use of date for this data. 

In Process steps, upload the same excel file which you used during mapping of the external data. Select "Add to new target group" so that a new target group is created. Select the options for processing of steps. You can schedule it for later or select Start Intermediately.

Click on Start button.

Your new External list is created and a target group is also set. 

Now in the next post we will see how we create a mail form. 

Product Master in SAP CRM

In SAP CRM, product master is used to manage different types of products an organization uses for its business transaction. Products are goods which are the object of a company's business activities. Products can be tangible, such as a PC, or intangible, such as services like PC maintenance.
There are 5 types of product in CRM, which are -

1. Materials - Materials are any tangible trading goods like television, laptop etc.  In ERP system it is known as Material Master(goods). Materials are basically created in ERP and then replicated to CRM system. But it is also possible to create materials in CRM and then replicate it to ERP system.
2. Services - Any thing related to service industry like maintenance or repair or providing need based service belong to this category.
3. Warranties - Warranty are generally product specific. It is a guarantee, issued to the purchaser of an article by its manufacturer, promising to repair or replace
4. Financing - Any finance related or renting objects like taxi hire belong to this category.  This is industry specific materials.
5. IP (Intellectual Properties) - Like financing, IP is also industry specific. It is mainly used in media industry for example - copyright.

Structure of CRM product master

Basically CRM product master is a collection or arrangement of various set types that contain specific data. The structure of SAP CRM can be understood by following figure.

Relationship of products

Accessories relationship plays a very big role in CRM product catalog. Product proposals can be made to the customer to boost internet sale. If a customer adds a product to shopping cart, additional product can be suggested to the customer via the relationship "has accessories". Some of the other relationship types are - Financed by
Content provider
Vendors
Component
Customers
Manufacturers
Warranty
Service

Creating a product in SAP CRM

Tcode for product master in sap crm is - commpr01

We will be creating a new product in the material category. So, we will select material.There are many set of base categories available. We will select one of them as click on continue.

Give a short name and description for your product. In basic data for category, Select "Norm" in Item category. "Norm" is used for sales item. Select Division for the product. Select a base unit for measure..here we are EA which stands for 'each'.

In Sales and distribution tab, assign the name or sales organization and division for your product.

For pricing and condition, go to Conditions tab. In condition tab, click on the price conditions button and select Price.

Select the Sales organization, price for the product and currency. Save the entry.

Your new product has been created in SAP CRM.

Now, we can define relationship for the product also. There are many relationship you can maintain. In this example I have provided a simple example of manufacturer.

This way you can create and maintain a product and its relationship.

Enhancing The Product Master

Various elements needed to enhance the product master are -

Hierarchies
Categories
Set Types
Attributes

The following picture explains these elements used in enhancing the product master.

Let's know in detail about these elements.

Categories and Product Hierarchies -

Categories and hierarchies are used to group products and individual objects according to different criteria. The purpose of a hierarchy will depend on the business criteria involved and your company's requirements.

A hierarchy can be multi-level and be used for control or informative purposes.

Categories are arranged in hierarchies. All lower-level categories inherit the product type and the set types of the higher-level category. Additional set types can be assigned to lower-level categories.

An example is shown below:

Set Types and Attributes 

Attributes are used for describing a product or individual object. They are combined in set types and saved there. A set is a specific instance of a set type. Set types are stored in the system as database tables. Using set types makes possible a detailed modeling of products and individual objects in the system.

Certain set types (SAP standard set types) are predefined in the standard system. If these are not sufficient for your purposes, you can also define your own set types and assign attributes to them. You can use both the attributes predefined in the standard system for this, as well as attributes you have defined yourself (including your own value ranges). However, it is not possible to assign your own attributes to the standard set types delivered by SAP.

Set types are defined for use in product and object maintenance. A set type is only permitted for a product or individual object if it assigned to the category that you subsequently assign the product or individual object to.

In product / object maintenance, the permitted set types appear in the individual views (that is, tab pages) of a product / individual object as shown in the following graphic:

Maintaining Set types and attributes.

Go to tcode - comm_attrset 

Select Attribute first, give it a short name. and click on "create" button.

Make two or three attributes for your single product, like your product number and model number of laptop could be the two attributes.

Now, select Set type. Set types are used for grouping the attributes together. Give a name and then click on create button. In the definition section of set type, give a description, select material.

Go to Assigned attribute tabs, select the attributes you have created earlier. Save the entry.

Now your set types and attributes has been created. 

Configuration of Categories and Hierarchies. 

Use the tcode - comm_ hierarchy for hierarchies.

Give a new name and description for your hierarchy.

Create a new category with a name and description.

Under category data, maintain all the relevant field. Add your set type created earlier in this field. View Id should be Basic.

Now your new category and hierarchy are maintained.

If you want to use this category and hierarchy in Product Master, you can do so by going to that particular product. Under Product Categories field, search for the hierarchy and save the entry.

Once you have saved the entry, under General tab the new category will be visible.

This was all the basics about Product master in SAP CRM