Working with CRM SOA - A look at Composite Applications Timothy Faugh

The excitement around the myriad of Enterprise Services delivered with CRM 7.0 has not abated. However, the difference between excitement and real concrete plans for SOA are two entirely different things.

In our ramp-up program we had a high percentage of customers tick off the "we will be using SOA" box, however a more moderate number have actually been able to share with us exactly what they plan on doing.

The intent of this blog is to help customers who are interested in SOA, but not sure what to do with it, consider one of the powerful scenario possibilities.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, presentation, and papers, there are essentially two major sub categories of scenarios for SOA.

1. System Integration - This is where two systems talk directly to each other with Enterprise Services and there is no user interface in between (can be internal or with external partners).

2. Composite Applications - This is where a user interface allows a user to communicate with the backend application directly through Enterprise Services.

Today I want to shed some light on composite applications. A composite can take many forms, but the golden rule is that it must have a user interface. This user interface is usually created to serve a special niche interface that is not available in our core CRM application. This could be a special reduced or tailored UI for sporadic, geographically diverse, or external users. It could also be used to incorporate data and functionality from multiple applications in a single UI.

Composite applications can of course be programmed in any way that a User Interface can be programmed. However today we will look at an application from SAP CRM called Visual Composer that is built to help people "model" composite applications. Modeling essentially means programming without actually writing code.

My intent is to quickly show you the capabilities of modeling a composite application to get your creative juices flowing. Once you have fully absorbed that you now have the ability to create user interfaces on the fly, I hope it will kick off a brainstorming session at your company, eventually producing many scenarios where a composite application can bring about a quick and meaningful ROI.

I hope you enjoy the video! You can acces the full screen version using the link below:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/50c02221-adfa-2b10-009f-e402c9eec7

New opportunities in economic crisis - how does the current economic crisis change the Chemical Industry sector? Thorsten Wenze

The economic crisis has also reached the Chemical Industry. The current situation will, therefore, accelerate change beyond consolidation and classical cost savings in purchasing, logistics and general sustainability. Product and technology cycles will continue to be reduced and innovation is and remains a pivot for successful development.

If we think about Research & Development in Chemicals throughout the last two centuries, we will find very few joint development approaches in the past. Since a couple of years this is changing. It started via co-operations within the chemical ecosystem between different chemical producers, also promoted via demerger and out-sourcing activities. A few chemical producers are ahead of this development. They are entering into the so called Hybrid Innovation Area, which can be described by joint or custom development activities crossing industry boundaries, developing new products and applications including stakeholders like universities, research institutes, other industries, customers and even competitors.

Especially the role of the sales representative is changing from a classical sales function towards a more customer process oriented application engineer. Appropriate IT infrastructures and processes are required to cover the need to exchange information and data between all parties involved.

Based on Service Oriented Architecture, product innovators are able to orchestrate alliances and intellectual capital. SAP is actively working on this topic together with our customers in order to shape a solution able to cover these complex IT requirements beyond the company boundaries.

We would be glad to welcome you for these discussions and opportunity to share experiences and expectations. Please contact me or simply provide a description of what you would like to see in this type of application on this site.

Thorsten Wenzel Director Business Development IBU Chemicals

SAP CRM 7.0 Integration of ERP BOM Information in the CRM Product Proposal Sarah Ann Minge SAP Employee Business Card Company: SAP AG

Customers have long been able to create and use bills of materials within the ERP system. A bill of material (also known as a BOM) basically groups together the set of components that make up a product or assembly.

Prior to release CRM 7.0, the sometimes vast amounts of BOM information that customers had maintained for their materials, equipment, and functional locations remained "isolated" within the ERP system. Now that the replication of BOM information is supported, it is possible to see this additional component information within CRM.

This video blog shows an example of how the service order creation process can be considerably accelerated when BOM information is made available via the Product Proposal function. Simply click on the screenshot to view…

Sarah Ann Minge is working in CRM Service Product Management, Walldorf.

SAP CRM 7.0 – How to sell Solutions using Product Package Capabilities Bernhard Teltscher SAP Employee Business Card Company: SAP AG

We see a clear trend in several industries that products are increasingly offered together with corresponding services.

A basic example of a package that everyone knows: You don't just buy a cell phone; you buy a telephone contract and get the cell phone for a cheaper price!

A more complex example of a package: A hospital needs a new X-ray machine. Nobody from the hospital will put the X-ray machine on their truck and install it later themselves. Usually these kinds of products are offered together with accessories, installation services and maintenance contracts. The installation service could be divided into several tasks like the onsite set-up, the start-up or installation acceptance by the customer. The maintenance contract could contain service level agreements like service and response profiles or a service plan for scheduling technicians at recurring intervals.

Click on the screenshot below and watch the video for details:

Bernhard Teltscher is Product Manager with SAP CRM Service

IT Service Desk with SAP CRM 7.0 Bettina Giese SAP Employee Business Card Company: SAP AG

With this blog I would like to make you familiar with the new IT service desk solution we offer with the latest SAP CRM release, SAP CRM 7.0.

Service Desk Types

Generally speaking, a service desk is an organizational unit made up of employees responsible for providing services. Requests towards the service desk are usually made via telephone calls, e-mails, or self-service. Typically the service desk is the first and main entry point for all service requests of a specific type. This is true for IT service desks as well as for any other service desks, for example service desks which take care of employee-related requests ("Employee Interaction Center"), accounting-related requests ("Accounting Interaction Center"), or any other request types.

With the latest SAP CRM release, SAP delivers three pre-defined processes for the mentioned types of service desks as part of the Shared Service Centers (SSC) scenario, but of course all these processes can also be used outside of a SSC organization:

• Employee Interaction Center
• Accounting Interaction Center
• IT Service Desk

IT Service Desk in SAP CRM 7.0

In this blog I want to focus on the new IT service desk process and the functions it offers.

First of all, a new default business role is available, which is called "IT Service Desk Agent". This business role runs in the interaction center application. As with all interaction center business roles, it provides access to all sorts of channels, like telephony, e-mail, fax, chat, etc. And also like in other interaction center business roles, you can make use of further interaction center related features like account identification, interaction history, alerts, scripting, etc.

The IT service desk process is of course not restricted to Shared Service Centers, but it can be used for all sorts of IT service desk scenarios, for example in

• Internal scenarios, where the IT department is delivering IT support to other departments
• External scenarios, where IT service providers offer services to their ('external') customers
• And of course in Shared Service Center (SSC) scenarios, where the SSC offers IT-, HR-, and accounting-related services globally for one corporate group

With SAP's IT service desk, you have access to all new features of SAP IT Service Management which are relevant for an IT service desk agent, for example:

• pre-defined process types for incident, problem, and request for change management, which are defined along the IT Infrastructure Library ® (ITIL) best practices
• integrated knowledge article search and provisioning
• a pre-defined interface to SAP Solution Manager for exchange of incidents

Let me point out some of the highlights in the following paragraphs.

Incident Management

An incident is an exception to standard IT operations that interrupts or reduces the quality of a service, whereas a service request is a customer inquiry for provisioning of a pre-defined service.

With the IT service desk solution, the first level employees (= IT service desk agents) can easily identify the customer or employee who is reporting the incident, as well as any affected configuration item, which is mapped in the CRM application as an object or installed base. When creating an incident (or service request), the first level can categorize the incident document with five different categorization trees as well as according to impact, urgency, and priority information. Based on service level information, the system automatically determines requested start and end as well as further dates. It calculates the work and total duration of the incident automatically, and it offers access to a lot of further functions, such as rule-based dispatching, solution search and e-mailing, search for related problems, access to incident templates, and so on.

A pre-defined interface to the SAP Solution Manager Service Desk allows you to transfer incidents from SAP CRM IT service desk to SAP Solution Manager service desk. With this integration you can make sure that those incidents related to a SAP application issue are processed and solved in SAP's application management platform, the SAP Solution Manager.

Problem Management

A problem (document) is usually created if an issue in the IT environment needs to be investigated, and it can refer to multiple incidents related to the same cause.

The problem is a type of "master service request", which offers very similar functions as the incident, and in addition can be used to bundle incidents and close the linked incidents automatically once the problem is closed. In addition, if a solution or workaround has been found for the problem, the engineers usually want to publish the investigation's result to other colleagues. In those cases they can easily create a knowledge article as a follow-up of the problem, which can then be used by other IT service desk employees to resolve similar issues more easily.

Request for Change Management

As ITIL requires that each change in the IT infrastructure is documented and – if it is not a standard change – approved, IT service desk agents also have access to the new request for change functionality.

The request for change is based on the SAP CRM service process, so that the IT engineers can make use of all the in-detail planning features available for this process type. In addition it offers ITIL compliant categorization options as well as a pre-defined, multi-step approval function to make sure that only approved requests for change are implemented. During the request for change's life cycle, status updates are reflected automatically in any assigned reference IT object.

Recommended Links

For more information around this topic, please also have a look here:

SAP Service Marketplace: http://service.sap.com/crm > SAP CRM 7.0 > SAP IT Service Management

SAP IT Service Management Overview blog: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/12086

Knowledge Article blog: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/11999

ITIL Overview blog: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/12368

Accounting Interaction Center blog: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/12079

Bettina Giese is a product manager for SAP CRM.

Skinning the CRM Mobile Laptop application

A seldom used feature of the SAP CRM Mobile Applications is the customization of the standard look of the application. Skinning the application is easier than most people think - SAP infact ships a standard tool to do this.

The tool is available via a commandline parameter /styleeditor. So, if the CRM Mobile Laptop application is installed in the usual path of C:\Program Files\SAP\Mobile\Bin.Net, the commandline would be
C:\Program Files\SAP\Mobile\Bin.Net\MobileClient.exe /styleeditor.
This would launch the SAP UI Style Editor, using which you can customize the look of the application.

The Style Editor lets you easily change the fonts, color schemes and other miscellaneous aspects of the UI. As an exercise, I chose to try and mimic the Signature skin present in the new CRM Web UI.

You can try playing around with the Style Editor, changing most of the visual elements and save and load the application to see your changes immediately. The editor also provides a Load SAP Default function, which loads the default Mobile Client style back - incase you want to get back the default look.

The skin is stored as a file called StylesRepository.dat in the
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\SAP AG\CRM Mobile Sales Application\5.0.0.0 directory on Windows XP clients and in
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\SAP AG\CRM Mobile Sales Application\5.0.0.0 directory on Windows Vista clients. Deploying the new look is easy - just copying the files onto other clients is sufficient to put the UI changes onto other clients.

Here are a couple of screenshots for comparision from before and after using the SAP UI Style Editor to get the Signature skin look.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

The tool can be used to skin the application to match the look and feel your end users want, and to match your corporate branding as well. Further changes to the splash screen, images and resources used within the application is also just as easy - changing the respective image files in a specific directory is sufficient, but this would be the topic of another post.
If you are interested in getting the skin file with the look above, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Ankan Banerjee is a Product Manager with SAP.