SAP CRM vs Salesforce

March 09, 2025 | Author: Sandeep Sharma
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SAP CRM
SAP CRM is designed for the way you sell today, giving you everything you need to work smarter, sell better, and win more. Win in the experience economy by differentiating and growing your business and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
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Salesforce
Most-popular CRM. Easy collaboration. Proven cloud platform. Salesforce.com offers everything you need to transform your business into a Social Enterprise, so you can connect to customers and employees like never before. With no software or hardware to install, you're up and running—and seeing a positive impact on your business—quickly.

SAP CRM and Salesforce are both, in their own way, attempts to bring order to the chaotic, swirling void of customer interactions. They offer a variety of tools to help businesses track, analyze and ultimately persuade people to give them money in a more structured and enthusiastic manner. Both operate in the cloud, both wield AI-powered analytics like a wizard with a particularly smug magic wand and both promise seamless integration with other vital business tools—assuming, of course, you can convince those tools to cooperate. They also both allow companies to engage with customers across multiple channels, meaning you can now be bombarded with sales pitches via email, social media and phone calls in a much more synchronized fashion.

SAP CRM, designed in Germany by the kind of people who take enterprise software very seriously, has been around since the year 2000 and prefers to cozy up with large corporations that have already pledged their undying loyalty to SAP’s vast ecosystem. It seamlessly connects with SAP’s ERP solutions, assuming your idea of "seamless" involves a few months of careful planning and expert consulting. Unlike its American cousin, SAP CRM offers on-premise and hybrid deployment options, presumably for those who like to keep their customer data locked away in a basement for safekeeping. It’s powerful, customizable and about as user-friendly as an interstellar navigation system with most of the labels in ancient Sumerian.

Salesforce, by contrast, was born in 1999 in the United States, which means it arrived on the scene just in time for the dot-com bubble to implode spectacularly. Unlike SAP CRM, which leans toward the "serious business tool for serious businesses" approach, Salesforce is all about accessibility, rapid deployment and an ever-expanding universe of third-party apps that may or may not do what they claim. It thrives in the cloud, avoids the messy world of on-premise solutions and comes with Einstein AI, a name that suggests unparalleled genius but, in reality, mostly helps predict which customers might be convinced to spend more money. It’s particularly fond of automation, no-code customization and making users feel like they’re doing something incredibly futuristic—at least until they realize they’ve just automated an email that starts with "Dear [First Name],".

See also: Top 10 CRM software
Author: Sandeep Sharma
Sandeep is a marketing expert with a wealth of knowledge in various domains: customer relationship management, social media management, advertising, search engine optimization, website building, Sandeep has established himself as a multifaceted professional. He honed his skills while working at Salesforce and Hubspot, where he gained invaluable insights into the industry. Now, as the proud owner of a small advertising consulting agency, Sandeep continues to provide innovative and effective strategies to businesses, helping them thrive in the competitive landscape of digital marketing. You can contact Sandeep via email sandeep@liventerprise.com