Basic use of Front Office and CIC

[Former Member]

Gurus,

Wht is the primary use of Front Office and Customer Interaction center. When I go through the help document, I understood both are helping in processing business process and providing customer support.

So I won't really understand the real difference between Front office and CIC. Do both the tools will exist together in a client? Wht basically differentiate Front Office and CIC?

Thanks-

James.....

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi James,

Let me explain you with an example.

My last project is for retailer in which it does not want to loose a customer. They have gone for the CIC of CRM winclient, where there are facilities to retain the customer(if he is ending his contract) by providing him different product or some discount so that he stay with the retailer and renew his contract.

But in my current project for a Distributor, we are using front end as EC70 where we are not giving any efforts to retain the customer. If he wish to take supply from us we do the Move In and if he wish to end the Contract then sinply doing the Move Out. No such offers are given to him as we are offering in case of Retailer.

Another example, if I am using services of Vodafone and I wish to end the Contract, they will try to give me offers to retain me. As simple as that.

Hope this will end your confusion.

Regards,

Manish

[FranziMickIT]

Hi James,

the front office is an application in the backend system (SAP IS-U, transaction EC20) helping you to handle customer processes. However, as it was covering the initial ideas of customer processes, it offers limited functionality compared to the CIC (any of the ones described below).

The name CIC is used very often. Let me try to explain and name the areas where it is used.

- CIC in the backend system (SAP IS-U, transaction CIC0 = WinGUI) offers a wide range of customer processes' functionality including very flexible enhancement possibilities. However, SAP is doing investments mainly in the SAP CRM Interaction Center WebClient (described below). You will not find alerts, interactive scripting, complaint management, extended activity management, or the cross-system customer fact sheet, u2026The IS-U CIC also does not include functionality to support cross-system processes or integrated customer service processes in a deregulated, open market.

- CIC in SAP CRM WinClient (SAP CRM, transaction CIC0 = WinGUI) offers a wide range of customer processes' functionality including very flexible enhancement possibilities. You will definitely find alerts, interactive scripting, complaint management, extended activity management, or the cross-system customer fact sheet, u2026The SAP CRM IC WinClient does include functionality to support cross-system processes or integrated customer service processes in a deregulated, open market.

However, SAP is doing investments mainly in the SAP CRM Interaction Center WebClient (described below) as they will not offer the SAP IC WinClient as of SAP CRM 2007 any more.

- SAP CRM Interaction Center (IC) WebClient (SAP CRM, WebClient application = WebGUI = BSP)offers a wide range of customer processes' functionality including very flexible enhancement possibilities (even more flexible for UI enhancements). You will also find alerts, interactive scripting, complaint management, extended activity management, or the cross-system customer fact sheet, u2026 and many more processes. The SAP CRM IC WebClient offers extended functionality to support cross-system processes or integrated customer service processes in a deregulated, open market.

SAP CRM 2007 is currently generally available. SAP CRM 7.0 (its successor) will be generally available as of next week. There are recommended product versions of SAP ERP to be combined with the SAP CRM product versions named above. Following the recommendation, our customers should implement

- SAP CRM 2007 together with SAP ERP 6.0 EhP2

- SAP CRM 7.0 together with SAP ERP 6.0 EhP4

As Manish described, there is more information needed in order to decide which interaction center application fits best. You should look at the market (liberalized or not liberalized) and at the market role your customer plays in this market (distribution company or retailer or integrated utility). The next thing is to look at the SAP product version (see description above).

My personal recommendation is to look at SAP CRM WebClient because it is the latest technology and SAP's investment will concentrate rather on IC WebClient than on IC WinClient solutions.

Best regards,

Franziska