CRM Is Not SAP’s Forte

While SAP has made many acquisitions over the past year to foray into the broad customer relationship management (CRM) segment, integration of the individual solutions has fallen by the wayside.

SAP’s core competence is ERP, and it’s also proficient in connected or similar topics. CRM is not among them, though. Even e-commerce, something that SAP could win big in, is not a topic where the ERP company shines. There’s only Hybris (now SAP Commerce) in that direction, and there’s not much going on with it.

Qualtrics will be spun out. Hybris has yet to produce any breakthrough successes. C/4 Hana, former CEO Bill McDermott’s ultimate weapon against Salesforce, is dead – even though it has a nice new name now, SAP Customer Experience portfolio. SAP is apparently having a hard time with CRM and e-commerce.

SAP CEO Christian Klein tried his hand at an CRM acquisition as well last year, buying Vienna-based company Emarsys. Will it save SAP’s CRM ambitions? No, probably not. Emarsys is a great IT tool, but without seamless integration in core systems, it’s practically worthless for SAP customers. SAP has promised that it would integrate its acquisitions, but the necessary foundation is still lacking.

SAP can acquire all the companies it wants, but CRM (or even e-commerce) will never become its forte.