SAP Africa brings pre-packaged CRM solution to mid-market

With the appointment of E-Prime Dynamix as a mySAP All-in-One business partner, SAP Africa has given South African medium-sized businesses affordable access to specialist customer relationship management (CRM) consulting and implementation capabilities.

An established SAP enterprise solution provider, E-Prime Dynamix is one of six companies within the black economic empowerment E-Prime Group that provide complementary niche services ranging from human resources consulting and recruitment to networking solutions and data quality management solutions - all using best of breed technology.

Says SAP Africa's small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) channel manager, Patricia Martins: "Our range of pre-packaged mySAP All-in-One solutions covers quite specific industries, such as manufacturing, professional services or human resources, and are marketed and implemented by business partners who specialise in those fields.

"Although the mySAP All-in-One solutions they're selling include comprehensive CRM functionality, they don't necessarily have any insight into CRM as a business discipline. They need help in unlocking that functionality in the package they're providing to the customer.

"Also, the primary reason for most mySAP All-in-One customers buying the package is to improve their core business and not, initially, their CRM. But, once they've bedded down their operational systems, they see the need to improve their customer relationships. In fact, more and more SMEs are finding that effective CRM is essential in helping them differentiate themselves from competitors.

"All of which means, we needed a business partner that could help mySAP All-in-One customers exploit the CRM functionality they've paid for but are not switching on. And that partner needed to be able to work across industries and in close collaboration with our other, industry-focused business partners. At the same time, we needed a partner who could implement standalone CRM solutions where customers required that. E-Prime Dynamix can do both."

E-Prime Dynamix managing director, Kenneth Clucas, says a collaborative approach is a time and a cost saver for customers. "We make use of operational functionality already included in the customer's mySAP All-in-One solution, so his licence fees are reduced. In cases where another mySAP All-in-One implementation partner has the primary contact with the customer, we work as part of that partner's team - keeping the customer's supplier relationship direct and uncomplicated. Also, naturally, a CRM solution that is already built into a broader solution is much less time-consuming to implement. And, by working closely with the primary implementation partner, we can ensure the customer gets exactly what he's looking for from an integration perspective and therefore very quickly derives value from his CRM functionality."

As Martins puts it: "We integrate our channel as tightly as we do our products - for the benefit of both customers and the channel."

E-Prime Dynamix has reduced implementation time further by pre-selecting and pre-testing in its version of the mySAP All-in-One CRM functionality those best practice options most relevant to South African circumstances. "It's not unusual to achieve an 80% fit out of the box for customers - and an implementation time that rarely goes beyond three months, even when some customisation is called for," Clucas says.

E-Prime Dynamix implementation teams, based in Johannesburg and Cape Town, are also fully qualified enterprise resource planning (ERP) specialists who have had both international and local exposure to combined CRM and ERP implementations. "They are therefore always able to fully optimise strategic and operational integration between the two disciplines," Clucas says.

mySAP All-in-One CRM functionality is focused on the three areas important to SMEs. The first is segmenting the customer's client base in order to help him better understand the value of each client to his business and more accurately target clients with appropriate marketing and sales activities.

The second focus area is help-desk and service management, enabling companies to be proactive in relation to their clients and, therefore, more competitive.

The third area is analysis and reporting of internal and external trends - enabling executives and operational staff to make better-informed decisions about how to refine products, services and performance.