SAP C/4HANA vs. Salesforce: Does it deliver on promises?

IT service provider Axians has evaluated SAP's new C/4HANA customer relationship management (CRM) suite to determine if it lives up to market expectations and can compete effectively with Salesforce.

SAP introduced the C/4HANA cloud suite, encompassing SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP Revenue Cloud. This rebranded offering consolidates SAP's previous cloud-based CRM solutions, formerly known as Hybris, along with recent acquisitions like Gigya, Callidus Cloud, and Core-Systems. The stated goal is to provide the best customer experience in the CRM market and directly challenge industry leader Salesforce.

The CRM market has seen significant growth, becoming the largest software market globally in 2017 according to Gartner. While C/4HANA integrates various modules, Axians notes that SAP faces the challenge of creating a unified user experience and seamless integration across these components. The company's prior attempts to gain significant traction in the CRM space were outpaced by Salesforce, and lingering customer skepticism about SAP's CRM capabilities persists.

Axians points out that SAP does possess distinct advantages. C/4HANA features a more modern architecture, enabling better offline handling of large data volumes, a potential weakness for some Salesforce solutions. A crucial benefit for existing SAP customers is the seamless integration with SAP S/4HANA, significantly reducing integration costs and effort for companies already using SAP's backend systems. Furthermore, SAP can offer more competitive licensing by leveraging the existing S/4HANA integration.

While Salesforce currently benefits from a more mature ecosystem of partner solutions due to its longer market presence, SAP is working to build a similar ecosystem for C/4HANA. Ultimately, SAP's success will depend on its ability to overcome past perceptions and demonstrate the ongoing development and long-term reliability of C/4HANA.