SAP Sales Cloud vs. S/4HANA Cloud Sales

SAP Sales Cloud is a cloud-based sales and marketing solution that helps companies manage their sales and customer relationships more effectively. As customers evolve in their expectations, companies are under increasing pressure to deliver seamless, personalized, and engaging customer experiences. SAP Sales Cloud helps meet expectations by providing comprehensive tools and capabilities

for lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, analytics, and more. With SAP Sales Cloud, companies can gain deeper insights into their customer base, streamline sales processes, and improve collaboration between sales teams - all while delivering an exceptional customer experience.

SAP Sales Cloud is becoming highly relevant. With the rise of e-commerce and digital channels, customers have more choice than ever before, and companies need to find new and innovative ways to stand out from the competition and build strong relationships with their customers. SAP Sales Cloud gives companies the tools they need to succeed in this environment, enabling them to deliver personalized and engaging experiences across all channels, from mobile to social media to the web.

Using the latest technologies and innovations, SAP Sales Cloud helps companies stay ahead of the curve and meet changing customer needs.

SAP Sales Cloud and S/4HANA Cloud Sales are two different solutions from SAP for managing sales processes. While both solutions offer similar functionality, SAP Sales Cloud offers several advantages as a front-office solution over S/4HANA Cloud Sales, and especially in conjunction with S/4HANA Cloud as a back-office solution.

Here are some of the key benefits:
  • Comprehensive sales functions
  • Improved customer engagement
  • Greater flexibility
  • Faster implementation
  • Constant innovation

Comprehensive sales functions

SAP Sales Cloud, like S/4HANA Cloud Sales, offers a comprehensive set of sales capabilities. These include lead and opportunity management capabilities, sales forecasting, analytics, and more. However, SAP Sales Cloud also offers sales automation capabilities that can help companies automate sales processes, streamline operations, and increase efficiency. In the area of opportunity management, SAP Sales Cloud offers additional features such as opportunity scoring, pipeline analytics, and the ability to assign sales teams to specific opportunities by territory or contact, for example.
To enable salespeople to work efficiently with this mass of information, SAP provides a native Sales Cloud app for smartphones that also enables mobile working offline, so that sales teams can maintain and view opportunities on the move. KPIs can be displayed directly per sales team in an individualized overview.

Meanwhile, AI-powered opportunity scoring ensures that salespeople pursue the most promising sales opportunities, and for full transparency, notes can be recorded on the opportunities via app.
These steps can be tracked in what is known as Guided Selling. The sales staff receive suggestions for necessary to-dos and can execute them with just a few clicks. Meanwhile, the back office in the form of S/4HANA Cloud provides background processes for material procurement, finance and controlling. The focus of both solutions is therefore very different, which means that a favorite emerges depending on functionality and need.

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

Improved customer engagement

SAP Sales Cloud provides tools for creating personalized and engaging customer experiences, including social media, mobile, and e-commerce capabilities. This enables companies to engage with their customers across multiple channels and touchpoints, and create a consistent experience across all channels through template management and data visibility within the solution.
S/4HANA Cloud offers no such touchpoints to the customer compared to SAP Sales Cloud. Computer telephony and social media integration stand out, especially in SAP Sales Cloud. Customer feedback can be obtained via social media and service hotlines can be covered via computer telephony. These individual interactions can be followed up with follow-up documents within Sales Cloud, so leads or opportunities can be created from a phone call all the way to customer orders without leaving the interface or program.
The integration of AI-powered features, such as SAP Conversational AI, with the help of the Business Technology Platform, enables the deployment of custom chatbots that provide an all-around worry-free experience for both customers and Sales Cloud users. Questions such as "Have we already been in contact with company XY and who is the appropriate contact person?" thus no longer have to be clarified internally by phone or mail, but can be answered quickly via chatbot.

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

SAP Sales Cloud also uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized recommendations and offers for customers. This improves the relevance and effectiveness of marketing and sales campaigns and promotes customer engagement, while a 360° view of the customer stores all customer interactions and data in one central location. From this 360° view, it is even possible to jump into S/4HANA, where the data located there can be quickly viewed.

Greater flexibility

SAP Sales Cloud offers more flexibility than S/4HANA Cloud Sales in certain areas, as companies can easily customize the solution to meet their specific needs. This is because SAP Sales Cloud is designed to integrate with a greater number of third-party applications, giving companies more options for customization and integration. In addition, custom HTML-based mashups for external data and content can be quickly incorporated. For example, JavaScript can be used to implement custom logic in these mashups that subsequently work with SAP Sales Cloud data.

In addition, reports can be quickly created by any application user through the report configuration. No development is required for elaborate reports. This can be compared with the S/4HANA Cloud CDS query builders, whereby SAP Sales Cloud enables easier entry through solution specialization and all data within SAP Sales Cloud can be evaluated flexibly and easily. Using various data source joins, even complex queries can thus be assembled, from the telephone call to the visit report to the top customer and their highest-revenue orders.

Similar to the S/4HANA Cloud System, workflows can be set up and customized in the SAP Sales Cloud. However, as described in the previous point, these are configurable for each user themselves due to their specialization and low complexity. This means, for example, that sales cycles, workflows, and approval processes can be configured and automated to increase efficiency.

Faster implementation

SAP Sales Cloud is a cloud-based solution that can be implemented significantly faster than S/4HANA Cloud Sales. This is because it requires less configuration and infrastructure setup, so companies can start using the solution sooner and realize the benefits faster. Configuration is done via guided guides with simple questions and intuitive interfaces.

In addition, SAP Sales Cloud has an application-friendly customization mode that allows the solution to be extended with custom fields or logics in a very short time. In the process, translations, OData services, forms and code lists can be extended per customer-specific field. In the S/4HANA Cloud, a comparable implementation can also be achieved via UI customization. Here, too, such customization is preconceived via the architecture of SAP Sales Cloud and can thus be used intuitively in any interface with drag-and-drop functionality.

An SAP Sales Cloud project, including implementation and S/4HANA integration, can be implemented by a small team within half a year, depending on the requirements. SAP Sales Cloud can be connected upstream to SAP ECC or downstream to SAP S/4HANA. An S/4HANA project, on the other hand, requires significantly more time. Accordingly, an SAP Sales Cloud standalone approach is also conceivable, in which the Sales Cloud acts as a strong CRM and sales tool. In this case, the implementation time is around 6-8 weeks.

Constant innovation

SAP Sales Cloud is a cloud-based solution that is constantly being developed and improved, with new functions and features - for example, Microsoft Teams integration - being added on a regular basis. This means that companies can benefit from the latest technology and innovation without the need for a major upgrade or investment. At the same time, the OData-based interfaces always remain up to date and can also be customized to connect additional systems.

The microservice architecture of SAP Sales Cloud also offers the option of booking add-ons as required.For large sales volumes, for example, the Intelligent Sales Cloud add-on is ideal, which provides Guided Selling, Relationship Intelligence or a dedicated pipeline manager.In this context, SAP has introduced a new version of the SAP Sales Cloud called "Intelligent Sales Cloud", which already includes these add-ons in part. However, this new Sales Cloud is still in the development phase. In this respect, it is worth staying in touch with us so as not to miss out on the latest information on the new SAP Sales Cloud. SAP's decision in favor of the Intelligent Sales Cloud shows once again how strong the focus is on cloud solutions such as the Sales Cloud. This is also evidenced by the heavily populated feature roadmap for the next few years.

Comprehensive sales functions

Comprehensive sales functions

SAP Sales Cloud, like S/4HANA Cloud Sales, offers a comprehensive set of sales capabilities. These include lead and opportunity management capabilities, sales forecasting, analytics, and more. However, SAP Sales Cloud also offers sales automation capabilities that can help companies automate sales processes, streamline operations, and increase efficiency. In the area of opportunity management, SAP Sales Cloud offers additional features such as opportunity scoring, pipeline analytics, and the ability to assign sales teams to specific opportunities by territory or contact, for example.
To enable salespeople to work efficiently with this mass of information, SAP provides a native Sales Cloud app for smartphones that also enables mobile working offline, so that sales teams can maintain and view opportunities on the move. KPIs can be displayed directly per sales team in an individualized overview.

Meanwhile, AI-powered opportunity scoring ensures that salespeople pursue the most promising sales opportunities, and for full transparency, notes can be recorded on the opportunities via app.
These steps can be tracked in what is known as Guided Selling. The sales staff receive suggestions for necessary to-dos and can execute them with just a few clicks. Meanwhile, the back office in the form of S/4HANA Cloud provides background processes for material procurement, finance and controlling. The focus of both solutions is therefore very different, which means that a favorite emerges depending on functionality and need.

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

Improved customer engagement

Improved customer engagement

SAP Sales Cloud provides tools for creating personalized and engaging customer experiences, including social media, mobile, and e-commerce capabilities. This enables companies to engage with their customers across multiple channels and touchpoints, and create a consistent experience across all channels through template management and data visibility within the solution.
S/4HANA Cloud offers no such touchpoints to the customer compared to SAP Sales Cloud. Computer telephony and social media integration stand out, especially in SAP Sales Cloud. Customer feedback can be obtained via social media and service hotlines can be covered via computer telephony. These individual interactions can be followed up with follow-up documents within Sales Cloud, so leads or opportunities can be created from a phone call all the way to customer orders without leaving the interface or program.
The integration of AI-powered features, such as SAP Conversational AI, with the help of the Business Technology Platform, enables the deployment of custom chatbots that provide an all-around worry-free experience for both customers and Sales Cloud users. Questions such as "Have we already been in contact with company XY and who is the appropriate contact person?" thus no longer have to be clarified internally by phone or mail, but can be answered quickly via chatbot.

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

SAP Sales Cloud also uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized recommendations and offers for customers. This improves the relevance and effectiveness of marketing and sales campaigns and promotes customer engagement, while a 360° view of the customer stores all customer interactions and data in one central location. From this 360° view, it is even possible to jump into S/4HANA, where the data located there can be quickly viewed.

Greater flexibility

Greater flexibility

SAP Sales Cloud offers more flexibility than S/4HANA Cloud Sales in certain areas, as companies can easily customize the solution to meet their specific needs. This is because SAP Sales Cloud is designed to integrate with a greater number of third-party applications, giving companies more options for customization and integration. In addition, custom HTML-based mashups for external data and content can be quickly incorporated. For example, JavaScript can be used to implement custom logic in these mashups that subsequently work with SAP Sales Cloud data.

In addition, reports can be quickly created by any application user through the report configuration. No development is required for elaborate reports. This can be compared with the S/4HANA Cloud CDS query builders, whereby SAP Sales Cloud enables easier entry through solution specialization and all data within SAP Sales Cloud can be evaluated flexibly and easily. Using various data source joins, even complex queries can thus be assembled, from the telephone call to the visit report to the top customer and their highest-revenue orders.

Similar to the S/4HANA Cloud System, workflows can be set up and customized in the SAP Sales Cloud. However, as described in the previous point, these are configurable for each user themselves due to their specialization and low complexity. This means, for example, that sales cycles, workflows, and approval processes can be configured and automated to increase efficiency.

Faster implementation

Faster implementation

SAP Sales Cloud is a cloud-based solution that can be implemented significantly faster than S/4HANA Cloud Sales. This is because it requires less configuration and infrastructure setup, so companies can start using the solution sooner and realize the benefits faster. Configuration is done via guided guides with simple questions and intuitive interfaces.

In addition, SAP Sales Cloud has an application-friendly customization mode that allows the solution to be extended with custom fields or logics in a very short time. In the process, translations, OData services, forms and code lists can be extended per customer-specific field. In the S/4HANA Cloud, a comparable implementation can also be achieved via UI customization. Here, too, such customization is preconceived via the architecture of SAP Sales Cloud and can thus be used intuitively in any interface with drag-and-drop functionality.

An SAP Sales Cloud project, including implementation and S/4HANA integration, can be implemented by a small team within half a year, depending on the requirements. SAP Sales Cloud can be connected upstream to SAP ECC or downstream to SAP S/4HANA. An S/4HANA project, on the other hand, requires significantly more time. Accordingly, an SAP Sales Cloud standalone approach is also conceivable, in which the Sales Cloud acts as a strong CRM and sales tool. In this case, the implementation time is around 6-8 weeks.

Constant innovation

Constant innovation

SAP Sales Cloud is a cloud-based solution that is constantly being developed and improved, with new functions and features - for example, Microsoft Teams integration - being added on a regular basis. This means that companies can benefit from the latest technology and innovation without the need for a major upgrade or investment. At the same time, the OData-based interfaces always remain up to date and can also be customized to connect additional systems.

The microservice architecture of SAP Sales Cloud also offers the option of booking add-ons as required.For large sales volumes, for example, the Intelligent Sales Cloud add-on is ideal, which provides Guided Selling, Relationship Intelligence or a dedicated pipeline manager.In this context, SAP has introduced a new version of the SAP Sales Cloud called "Intelligent Sales Cloud", which already includes these add-ons in part. However, this new Sales Cloud is still in the development phase. In this respect, it is worth staying in touch with us so as not to miss out on the latest information on the new SAP Sales Cloud. SAP's decision in favor of the Intelligent Sales Cloud shows once again how strong the focus is on cloud solutions such as the Sales Cloud. This is also evidenced by the heavily populated feature roadmap for the next few years.

Conclusion:

Overall, SAP Sales Cloud offers several advantages over pure S/4HANA Cloud Sales, including comprehensive sales capabilities, improved customer engagement, greater flexibility, faster implementation, and continuous innovation. A choice between solutions depends on specific business requirements, and it is therefore important to consider the options carefully. However, a choice does not usually arise, as Sales Cloud can be used as an ideal extension of S/4HANA Sales. Both systems can be seamlessly integrated with each other via the SAP Business Technology Platform and thus the added values of both solutions can be fully exploited. In terms of architecture, S/4HANA forms the powerful back-office ERP, while SAP Sales Cloud acts as the front-office CRM directly at the customer.