SAP CRM vs SuiteCRM

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Our analysts compared SAP CRM vs SuiteCRM based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CRM Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

SAP CRM Software Tool
SuiteCRM Software Tool

Product Basics

SAP provides a cloud-based customer experience suite built on the SAP C/4HANA framework, delivering marketing, sales, e-commerce, customer data and service capabilities. Features include sales automation, ABM, augmented intelligence, real-time data, multichannel campaigns and inventory management. Organizations can choose specific products for more focused functionality or implement all five to gain a comprehensive ecosystem.

Analyst’s Note: 

In addition to SAP’s cloud products, it also offers SAP CRM, a well-established solution for clients looking to deploy on-premise. While SAP currently supports the on-premise version for thousands of customers, has continued to release product enhancements and hasn’t yet indicated any plans to sunset the product, it’s possible that may change.

As of November 2019, SAP’s Director of Product Management stated that SAP may choose to forego extension of mainstream maintenance beyond the current guarantee of 2025. Assuming that remains the case, he recommended new customers avoid looking into SAP CRM and instead consider S/4HANA (for those in need of ERP functionality as well) or C/4HANA (for those interested specifically in customer experience capabilities).

In light of this, our analysis focuses solely on C/4HANA’s cloud products.
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SuiteCRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that helps businesses of all sizes manage customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. It's a great choice for businesses wanting to improve customer relationships and integrate their CRM with other business applications. SuiteCRM is known for being easy to use, flexible, and affordable, making it a popular choice for businesses with varying levels of CRM experience.

Some of the popular features of SuiteCRM include contact management, lead management, opportunity management, and sales forecasting. SuiteCRM also offers integrations with other business applications such as email, marketing automation, and accounting. Users appreciate the flexibility and dependability of SuiteCRM, often using it as a central hub for customer care and sales automation. While SuiteCRM offers many useful features out-of-the-box, it's highly customizable to meet specific business needs.

SuiteCRM is open-source and free to use, with no limitations on users. This makes it a cost-effective alternative to other CRM solutions on the market. However, businesses should consider the potential costs of implementation, customization, and ongoing support when evaluating the total cost of ownership.

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Cloud
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Mobile
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Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
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Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
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24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Single Customer View: Create personalized experiences by leveraging data from multiple channels and continuous updates for new interactions. A dashboard displays information from sources such as CRM, ERP, social media and more. Conduct granular analysis for sentiment engagement, customer journey insights and more via filtering. 
  • Budget Planning: View graphical budget totals for different regions, analyze historical data and drill into specific budgets to make adjustments. Summarized campaign views allow detailed planning for marketing spend. Integration with procurement and finance tools provides a status overview in real time. 
  • Audience Identification: See which contacts are best to target with campaign targets and which are ready to buy immediately. Assess the locations and interests of various customer segments with a global map and tag cloud. Easily create segments using a drag-and-drop interface. 
  • Multichannel Campaigns: Leverage trigger-based campaigns across social media, paid search and more with a range of messages to more accurately target audience interests and stages. Real-time metrics give insight into campaign performance, enabling in-campaign adjustments that improve ROI. 
  • Centralized Inventory View: Receive a comprehensive view of inventory and track all new orders and their accompanying details, such as delivery mode, pickup location and status. Give customers the ability to buy online and pick up or return in-store. 
  • Unified Customer Experience: Drive 24/7 support across all channels with AI-based chatbots that have advanced language processing to facilitate natural conversations. Customer service agents have access to the chat thread for full context in case of a query transfer, as well as a single UI to simplify activities. Integrate with SAP Commerce Cloud to provide chat, email, video chat and phone tools for online shops. 
  • Real-Time Insights: Cut costs and focus efforts on the most profitable campaigns via campaign performance analysis. Out-of-the-box reports show KPIs for key channels including email and Facebook, with a rich set of metrics available. 
  • Extensive Integrations: Extend functionality using the SAP Cloud Platform, which comes with over 150 pre-built connectors and an extension factory. Build and deploy apps or use the 1,000+ apps developed by SAP partners. 
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  • Reduced Costs:  Add-ons are available for extra charges. The premium plan can cut costs by over 80% when compared to other CRM software available in the market. 
  • 360-Degree View:  Get complete visibility business operations, important customer information and insightful data to improve selling, marketing and service. 
  • Customer Self-Service:  SuiteCRM offers a premium customer service package. The free version offers a community-based customer support forum and documentation for troubleshooting. 
  • Flexible Modeling of Business Processes:  Businesses can create flexible and customizable process models to help employees adhere to tested execution and decision-making methods. 
  • Integrations:  RESTful API allows third-party integrations as required. 
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  • Lead and Account-Based Marketing: Offered in SAP Marketing Cloud and caters specifically to B2B environments. 
    • Includes visual tools such as a shared calendar for campaigns and a dashboard that displays budgets and costs in real time.
    • Provides intelligent scoring, profiling and geospatial data, showing which accounts to focus on.
    • Syncs account interactions with SAP Sales Cloud.
    • Uses machine learning to analyze contact behavior, classify and rank contacts, as well as spot segments with similar behavior.
  • Experience Management: This WYSIWYG tool supports web page creation and editing, as well as enables the creation of one design suitable for use on mobile devices, tablets and desktops. Includes the option to embed banners and promotions, along with personalizing different elements. 
  • Product Content Management: Offers a central interface for managing products and catalogs that can serve as a master product database. Equipped with bulk editing, support for multiple product attributes and multilingual functionality. 
  • Sales Automation: Provides a central platform for account and opportunity management that stores data in a single place for easy availability and increased visibility. Capabilities include quarterly revenue forecasting and lead scoring. 
  • Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ): Handles complex quotes via an intuitive interface. 
    • Allows sales reps to generate quotes quickly and supports a variety of price books for offering the most effective discounts.
    • Assists with onboarding via embedded intelligence and can guide reps toward products that customers are more likely to buy.
    • Includes margin protection guardrails and automatic approval triggers.
  • Sales Performance Management: Includes: 
    • Simple setup with a drag-and-drop interface.
    • Built-in rules library to compare, test and launch promotions and plans from one interface.
    • Calculations for a range of criteria, territories, teams or verticals.
    • Automatic calculation of bonuses and commissions.
    • A mobile app for reps, with a range of functionalities such as accelerators and a what-if calculator.
    • Augmented intelligence tool that prescribes recommendations for compensation plans.
  • Augmented Intelligence: Can be deployed without requiring the help of data scientists. Leverages AI and machine learning to automatically detect outliers, make selling suggestions that boost revenue and more. 
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  • Contact and Account Database:  Store details of all contacts, including leads, opportunities and customers centrally. Contacts can be grouped, segmented and searched using tags, custom fields and filters. Contacts belonging to a single organization can be organized as Accounts. 
  • Document Management:  Store, review, revise and share documents for internal references and client-facing usage. 
  • Call Management:  Schedule, log and record inbound and outbound calls associated with any contact. Call records can be used to review and improve customer communications. 
  • Email Management:  Teams can leverage shared inboxes and integrate individual email accounts to compose, send, receive, view and store emails. 
  • Campaign Management:  Manage, track and evaluate marketing campaigns at each stage of the pipeline. Get a detailed view of all marketing campaigns related to a contact, along with engagement rates. 
  • Catalog and Quote Management:  Create catalogs with product prices and availability of all products and services. Catalogs can be used to create, share and track professional quotes, including product specifications and estimated delivery times. 
  • Invoice Management:  Create, issue, share and track invoices using quotes as a baseline. 
  • Workflow Automation:  Set up flexible and customizable rule-based workflows that automate activities and tasks. Reminders and notifications can be set wherever required. 
  • Activity Management:  Managers can assign tasks to team members and track their execution. Users can also maintain to-do lists to ensure tasks are completed. 
  • Contract Management:  Create, share and manage contracts related to an account or a case, with details about SLAs, warranties, and renewals. 
  • Case Management:  Record and manage customer interactions regarding product or service issues, bugs and other concerns to improve customer experiences. 
  • Knowledge Base Management:  Create, store and share support documents, guides and template responses for use with the Case Management module. 
  • Reports:  Standard reports for all modules help keep users on top of business activities. With data-based insights, users can evaluate their strategies, goals, and execution in an informed manner. 
  • User Access Control:  Admins can define organizational hierarchies and configure role-based access. 
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Product Ranking

#52

among all
CRM Software

#59

among all
CRM Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 516 reviews
Great User Sentiment 93 reviews
76%
of users recommend this product

SAP CRM has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 76% when considering 516 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

84%
of users recommend this product

SuiteCRM has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 93 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (14)
n/a
3.5 (204)
n/a
n/a
4.2 (44)
4.1 (167)
4.2 (44)
4.4 (21)
n/a
3.6 (110)
4.2 (5)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Reporting: It’s possible to create high-quality micro and macro reports for all customers and for internal control, according to 63% of users mentioning reporting.
Integrations: The ability to leverage operational reporting and seamless, intelligent integration with ERP and a business warehouse aids productivity, as observed by 66% of users referring to integrations.
Tracking: All user reviews of this feature indicated the software offers flawless tracking for high volumes of sales transactions.
Configuration and Customization: It’s possible to customize and configure according to business needs, as noted by 75% of reviews referencing these features.
Automation: It’s easy to automate and integrate customer contact activities, sales, marketing, and customer service, according to 83% of users who wrote about automation.
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Open-Source Flexibility: SuiteCRM's open-source nature empowers users to tailor the platform to their specific workflows and preferences, fostering greater control and customization compared to proprietary solutions.
Cost-Effectiveness: As a free and open-source CRM, SuiteCRM eliminates licensing fees, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious businesses and startups seeking a robust CRM solution without significant upfront costs.
Community Support: SuiteCRM boasts a vibrant and active community of users and developers who contribute to its ongoing development, provide support, and share knowledge, fostering a collaborative environment for troubleshooting and optimization.
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Not Budget-Friendly: The platform’s implementation is costly compared to competitor products, and 63% of users who mention cost suggested maintenance is also expensive.
Not User-Friendly: The software isn’t very flexible and is difficult to learn, as observed by 58% of reviews mentioning this aspect.
Inefficient Workflow: The workflow is not very clean and efficient, and it takes considerable effort, time and money to implement actions, according to 63% of users who reference this feature.
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Usability Challenges: The user interface can feel outdated and clunky, leading to a steeper learning curve compared to more modern CRM solutions. Navigating through the various modules and features may require additional training or support, especially for users who are accustomed to intuitive interfaces.
Customization Complexities: While SuiteCRM offers extensive customization options, implementing these changes often requires technical expertise or the involvement of developers. This can be a barrier for small businesses or teams with limited technical resources who need to adapt the CRM to their specific workflows.
Mobile App Limitations: The mobile app's functionality is not as comprehensive as the web-based version, which can hinder productivity for users who rely on mobile access to manage customer relationships and access data on the go.
Reporting Limitations: Generating complex or customized reports may require additional plugins or integrations, as the built-in reporting tools might not offer the level of flexibility and depth needed for advanced data analysis and visualization.
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SAP’s CRM products provide a rich set of features to aid the customer lifecycle. Users highly approve of its seamless integration, tracking and reporting features. Additionally, automation makes work easier and enhances productivity. However, using workflows can be time-consuming, and the software isn’t very intuitive. It’s also very pricey to implement. It’s best suited for companies, particularly enterprises, with heavy sales, marketing and delivery usage, as well as advanced, complex needs.

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SuiteCRM has garnered a reputation as a robust and adaptable CRM solution, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses seeking an affordable alternative to pricier options like Salesforce. Users frequently highlight its open-source nature, extensive customization capabilities, and active community support as standout features. The ability to tailor the platform to specific business needs without breaking the bank is a major draw for organizations with unique workflows or industry requirements. However, some users note that the learning curve can be steeper compared to more user-friendly interfaces like HubSpot, and the lack of seamless integration with certain third-party applications can pose challenges. Additionally, while SuiteCRM offers a solid foundation, achieving advanced automation or complex reporting may require additional modules or custom development. SuiteCRM's sweet spot lies with businesses that value flexibility and cost-effectiveness over out-of-the-box simplicity. Its open-source architecture empowers organizations to mold the platform to their exact specifications, fostering a sense of ownership and control over their CRM system. The active community and readily available resources further contribute to its appeal, providing a support network for troubleshooting and knowledge sharing. However, for businesses prioritizing ease of use and seamless integrations, exploring options like Zoho CRM or Pipedrive might be a better fit. Ultimately, SuiteCRM's value proposition hinges on its ability to empower businesses to build a CRM solution that aligns perfectly with their unique needs and budget.

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