SAPMarkets INTERNET

SALES 2.0

Copyright 2001 SAPMarkets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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CONTENTS
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Making the most of the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Internet as a strategic sales channel with SAPMarkets Internet Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
SAPMarkets Internet Sales: Your Step into the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Internet revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Internet Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Critical success factor Customer Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Key element of mySAP e-Business solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Global solution for global businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
One-step business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
SAPMarkets Internet Sales Business Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Using SAPMarkets Internet Sales The Complete Selling Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Customer satisfaction through integrated sales processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Customer Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Searching for and selecting products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
One-to-one marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Product Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Ordering products with a shopping basket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Flexible and secure payment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Order processing and Order Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Reporting, Sales Intelligence and Web Shop Fine-Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Components and Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Making the most of the Internet
The Internet opens up new markets and sales potentials, can
drastically cut sales costs, and bring about stronger, longer-lasting
customer relationships. Companies of all sizes and from all
industries are moving forward to reap the benefits of this new
sales channel. At the same time the Internet is an opportunity to
redefine business processes and to gain a much stronger focus on
customer requirements. Customers whether businesses or
consumers expect any webshop solution to be extremely userfriendly and simple, with strong personalization and interactivity.
Also they expect their orders to be processed efficiently and
reliably, with an integrated service proposition meeting them
whenever they commit to a vendor.
The Internet as a strategic sales channel
with SAPMarkets Internet Sales
SAPMarkets Internet Sales is a cutting-edge e-commerce solution
for companies that wish to develop the Internet as a strategic
sales channel. The flexibly utilized SAPMarkets Internet Sales
components enable your company to streamline and optimize
all related Internet sales processes, reduce processing times
significantly, cut transaction costs, effectively intensify customer
contacts, and strengthen customer relationships permanently.
This is achieved by the unique interplay between an open, striking,
customer-friendly Internet front-end, and excellent deep reaching
back-end business integration. Scenarios include selling directly
to consumers, to business partners, or indirectly via marketplaces or high-end reselling models along the supply chain and
variations including third parties. The key benefits are:
Streamlined business processes: Automated sales processes
(from order entry in the front end through to business
execution in the back-end system) make for extremely reliable
order processing, while minimizing transaction costs and
processing times. Built on the mySAP Customer Relationship
Management platform additionally means that you can
synchronize all touch points with your customers supporting
multi-channel strategies in an encompassing CRM strategy.

A Flexible, Fully Integrated, High-Performance Solution.

SAPMarkets Internet Sales has been designed to give the high
performance and fast response times you need for an effective
e-commerce Website. The solution typically runs on a
distributed software platform to spread the processing load
and prevent bottlenecks. The Internet front-end is entirely
separate from the business logic back-end, so that changes to
the look and feel of your browser-based applications need not
interfere with the underlying business processes. The tight
integration between SAPMarkets Internet Sales and your backend enterprise systems allows highly efficient one-step sales
transactions, saving time and cutting administration overhead.
Marketing and Personalization. In SAPMarkets Internet Sales,
focus is placed on fulfilling customer requirements. A multitude
of tools are included to show the specific profile product set,
information, prices of your company to the customer (segment) it is intended for. Sophisticated and attractive product
catalogs can be maintained for specific target groups and even
be customized for multiple views for one business partner.
Online questionnaires allow you to categorize customers in
target groups and to prominently position the most popular
products. Customer data can also be leveraged to make
proactive product recommendations or to optimize cross-selling
and up-selling offers.
Interactive sales dialogs: Whether by utilizing state-of-the-art
search algorithms, a multitude of multimedia files on product
related information, product accessories, online product
configuration, available-to-promise information at time of
sale, status check of orders and invoices, or by offering a choice
of payment options, SAPMarkets Internet Sales offers a wide
range of opportunities for customers to interact with the
webshop offering and to become loyal users of the value-added
services rendered.

Creative Web design: The new SAPMarkets flow logic

technology gives your Web designers the creative freedom
they need to design a striking Web shop. It forms the basis for
a flexible approach to your front-end environment, tying in
needed third-party components while enabling you to control
the interaction between the customer, Web shop and business
applications.
Supply-chain compliant. SAPMarkets Internet Sales is truly at
home in the supply-chain environment offering the necessary
functionality and sophistication to deal with high-end automated solutions. Additionally, the inclusion of third parties for
logistics and financial services as well as the ability to represent
reselling or vendor-managed inventory scenarios are key
refinements to the standard solution. Scalability, a high level
of security and the flexible platform to integrate or communicate with other applications via open interfaces are traditional
SAP strengths and guarantee current and future success.
Marketplace ready: With the advent of aggregated multi-vendor,
multi-buyer business hubs, it is essential to be able to play a
strong role in positioning the enterprise in any of these new
environments. In this case, the SAPMarkets Internet Sales is
used as an on-ramp, with special functionality allowing to
push content (product, pricing, product availability and configuration information) to these marketplaces, while easily
connecting to their routing backbones for incoming purchase
orders and outgoing confirmations or advance ship notices.

SAPMarkets INTERNET SALES: YOUR STEP INTO

THE INTERNET

The Internet revolution

The breakneck pace at which the popularity of the Internet is
spreading is giving rise to massive and even revolutionary changes
in the way business is done worldwide. Geographical and temporal
restrictions have disappeared to form a truly global, constantly
pulsing business environment. New business models have forever
changed the ways that goods and services are exchanged, while
new forms of inter-enterprise collaboration are emerging and
realigning value relationships.
Specifically, the Internet serves to intensify networking options
for all market participants not only accelerating business
processes and making them cheaper and more effective, but also
strengthening relationships with suppliers and customers.
Unlike the reengineering wave of the 1990s, where the focus was
on optimizing internal processes, the challenge currently facing
companies involves redefining, harmonizing, and making crosscompany processes more efficient with the help of information
and communication technologies. This gives companies the
ability to assert themselves in the face of more aggressive, more
global competition, and enables them to remain profitable in the
long term.
Especially when it comes to using the Internet as a strategic sales
channel for interacting with customers, it is essential that
companies rethink all of their customer-related processes in a
holistic approach. Advantages of using the Internet as a sales
channel are clear:
Unrestricted market presence 24 hours a day, all over the world
Faster sales processes due to automated process flows
Lower transaction costs due to the automation of the entire
process chain associated with selling via the internet
Lower personnel costs as a result of a decrease in customer
service calls

Customers can be targeted and addressed directly since

extensive information on customers needs and wants is available
More customer satisfaction and higher customer retention as
a result of better customer services
Higher sales due to new customer groups and exploitation of
cross-selling/up-selling potential

These benefits are already being made reality. E-Commerce is

profoundly changing the business world as we know it. Electronic
purchasing and selling on the Internet is the trend of the future.
Recent studies show that companies with a well-thought-out
e-commerce strategy have been able to increase revenue by
around 10 to 20 percent, to cut costs by 20 to 45 percent, and to
reduce working capital and infrastructure requirements by up to
60 percent. Commerce conducted by the Internet is widely
projected to grow to $500 billion by 2002 (Andersen Consulting,
1999). More than $6 trillion in online B2B trade is expected by
2005, representing 42 percent of total US B2B non-service spending,
according to research by (Jupiter Communications, 2000).
Internet Challenges
If the Internet is to provide companies with strategic, lucrative
opportunities, then these companies must ensure that they are
offering their customers real benefits based on this new httpinfrastructure. In a first wave of webshop implementations it was
sufficient to simply put a business process on the Web without
having it fully integrated into the existing business processes.
Customers often had to deal with complicated ordering procedures, incorrect or no information on the availability of products,
goods delivered late or not at all, invoices not matched up to the
goods delivered, and many other problems, when they had purchased products on the Internet. So already today to compete on
the Internet, any Web-based business system must also be fully
integrated into the fulfillment system in order to guarantee the

follow-up services that customers demand which carry the same

high priority. As such the level of service, responsiveness, and
speed of delivery to your Internet customers have to be the same
or surpass those of the traditional sales channels.
Critical success factor Customer Orientation
In the e-commerce era, attaining a competitive edge requires
much more than a virtual shopping cart. If an e-commerce solution is to succeed, customers must feel that they can immediately
benefit from using it. This means focusing on your customers
with:
An intuitive interface and powerful search engine
Comprehensive multimedia information on products
An offering tailored to the needs of a particular market, target
group or individual
Configurable products
Up-to-date, accurate information on prices and (real-time)
product availability
Easy-to-use and fast ordering procedure
Transparent view of order status
Reliable and on time deliveries
Correct billing
From these requirements, sellers can derive the factors that are
critical to the success of their e-commerce solution. In the
e-business world, companies that manage to identify and react
to the needs and wishes of their customers more effectively,
more personally, more quickly, and at lower costs will gain a
long-lasting competitive edge. Based on sound business intelligence,
successful e-commerce solutions are characterized by customerfocused strategies, integrated processes and solutions, and genuine
customer benefits. This is what enables a company to set itself
apart from its competitors who are just a mouse-click away on
the Internet.

Key element of mySAP e-Business solutions

SAP is the leading provider of inter-enterprise software solutions
that integrate business processes across company borders.
E-commerce with mySAP.com encompasses both buying and
selling scenarios. Within mySAP.com, SAPMarkets Internet Sales
is the selling side of the equation. The SAPMarkets Internet Sales
solution covers the entire process chain for selling products on
the Internet. Core components include product catalog & content
management, a sophisticated shopping basket engine, an engine
for pricing and configuring products, one-to-one marketing,
payments handling, and online order status tracking.

SAPMarkets Internet Sales will actively incorporate your customers into the value chain activities, as it supports the reengineering of inter-enterprise business processes that take place
beyond the virtual shopping cart. This means that both you and
your business customers can benefit from integral, optimized
processes, more transparency, and lower costs. The quality of
your relationships with your customers will also move into an
entirely new dimension. The unique symbiosis between the
attractive Internet front end and the proven operational
excellence of the back-end SAP business systems guarantees
integrated processes and efficient transactions, thus increasing

return on investment. The fact that SAPMarkets Internet Sales is

integrated with other SAP applications plays a key role here: It is
possible to incorporate customers via the Internet into processes
that used to be primarily intra-enterprise processes, and to optimize these processes in their entirety.

Internet Sales as part of a CRM strategy

SAPMarkets Internet Sales builds on the mySAP Customer
Relationship Management solution. mySAP CRM supports all
channels of interaction with customers, and its modules cover
all customer-related areas in marketing, sales, distribution and
services. mySAP CRM and SAPMarkets Internet Sales form an
ideal basis for successfully implementing a multi-channel strategy.
Regardless of whether your customers are visited by a sales
representative, phone in their queries, or order products on the
Internet, all information is passed on to the CRM system together
as all touch points with the customers are synchronized. Key
CRM components such as Marketing Management can be used
for all kinds of interaction with customers including the

interaction over the Internet. SAP is setting standards with this

unique combination of e-commerce and Customer Relationship
Management, allowing your company to look after its customers
personally and effectively.

Internet Sales and mySAP Supply Chain Management

SAPMarkets Internet Sales actively incorporates customers into
supply chain management via the Internet. The ATP check
(available to promise) in the Advanced Planner and Optimizer
(APO) enables customers to retrieve real-time information on
availability and delivery dates. The check can be run for production capacity and stocks in all warehouses and plants worldwide
these can be replanned immediately, if required. Working with
SAPs APO means that you can provide binding information on
your ability to deliver at the point in time when a customer
submits a query via the Internet. This increases customer
satisfaction, and means that you can plan internal resources
early on, and deploy these resources more efficiently.

Fig. 2: CRM Interaction Channels

Internet Sales and mySAP Business Intelligence

The Business Information Warehouse (BW) is the central data
warehouse of mySAP, and is responsible for collecting internal
and external data, and preparing analyses and reports. Used in
conjunction with SAPMarkets Internet Sales, SAP BW can be
used for conducting marketing analyses and drawing up sales
statistics. You can draw up bestseller lists for specific target
groups, run multi-layered evaluations for sales figures, or conduct
click-stream analyses of the Internet communication. The BW
plays a key role in collecting and using business intelligence to
focus on customers.
Global solution for global businesses
Unlike most other software vendors, SAP has the necessary experience in all relevant areas to make your vision of e-commerce a
reality, and to turn your Internet strategy into corporate success.
Many years of experience in business application software, a
thorough understanding of integrated business processes, and
unique industry expertise mean that SAP is ideally equipped for
providing successful e-commerce applications.
As such you can use SAPMarkets Internet Sales to sell your products all over the world. SAPMarkets Internet Sales can handle
multilingual catalogs, multiple currencies, different price formats
and different decimalization conventions. You can deploy and
manage different catalog versions for different countries or
markets. SAPMarkets Internet Sales is a global solution that
enables you to reach out to every customer who has access to
the Internet, no matter where he or she is.
One-step business
In one-step business, realtime business transactions involving
several business partners can be processed entirely with the
click of a mouse. This is where the integration capabilities of
SAPMarkets Internet Sales with e-procurement software come

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into their own. In one-step business, the purchasing and sales

processes are merged into a single process, triggered by the buyer.
When a buyer submits an order, a purchase order is created in
the system of the company doing the buying and, at the same
time, a quotation is created in the system of the company doing
the selling. Both order processing on the one side (right through
to delivery and billing) and the remaining procurement activities
on the other side (right through to goods receipt and payment)
can be fully automated. One-step business enables everyone to
exploit the Internets potential for streamlining business processes
to the fullest. The fact that SAPMarkets Internet Sales is fully
enabled to do one-step business with any MarketSet (the joint
solution of SAPMarkets and CommerceOne for B2B exchanges)
powered exchange is an invaluable bonus. As such any selling
enterprise utilizing Internet Sales can immediately conduct
one-step business with most of the current e-procurement
solutions and also most of the B2B exchanges, opening huge
opportunities for new customers and joint efficiency gains.
SAPMarkets INTERNET SALES BUSINESS SCENARIOS

SAPMarkets Internet Sales is an e-commerce solution that supports a whole range of scenarios and business models. Regardless
of whether you plan to sell your products directly to consumers,
do business with other companies, or are looking to offer your
products via marketplaces, SAPMarkets Internet Sales provides
you with the functionalities and flexibility you need to support
your sales processes efficiently.

Business-to-Consumer Scenario (B2C)

In this scenario, SAPMarkets Internet Sales provides you with the
tools you need to set up an eye-catching, interactive e-shop to
sell directly to consumers. The product catalog is multimediaenabled so that you can present your products on the Internet,
and provides the relevant information and data that consumers
require, whether it be in the form of texts, image documents,
sounds, or videos, etc. Powerful search engines enable your
customers to find the products they are looking for quickly
and accurately.

You can also use the one-to-one marketing functions to turn

your website into a viable marketing channel. Since information
on the preferences and needs of your customers can be captured
automatically, this enables you to draw up diverse customer
profiles and use these as a basis for defining target groups. On
your website, you can then propose personalized offers tailored
to the specific needs and tastes of the customers in these target
groups (personalized product recommendations, for example,
or cross-selling/up-selling offers).
It is easy for new customers to register online at your website
and to maintain their personal customer profiles and address
data themselves.

Business-to-Business Scenario (B2B)

This scenario is designed specifically for selling goods and
services to business partners. It takes into account special
factors for business-to-business exchange, especially the ability
to build on established business relations concerning common
understandings on involved users, pricing, product range,
shipping and payment terms.
In the SAPMarkets Internet Sales business-to-business scenario,
it is possible to register several users who are allowed to place
orders for a company. The business partner is identified automatically when the customer employee is authenticated, and
the software ensures that only the prices and conditions
defined for this business partner are displayed right from the
start. It is also possible to specify different delivery addresses
for business customers, and different requested delivery dates
for the individual order items.
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SAPMarkets Internet Sales also addresses important business

partner requirements. For example, there is a fast order entry
function where professional purchasers can enter article and
order numbers directly. It is possible to create and store order
templates for placing recurring orders that are similar. The
request for more transparency in order processing has also been
addressed: it is possible to track the status of all orders at any
time via the Internet, and to retrieve information on open items,
as well as the status of outstanding orders and invoices. This
results in a reduced workload for the companys sales department,
since the number of telephone queries is reduced to a minimum.
Of course, the B2B scenario has an interface to the SAPMarkets /
CommerceOne Enterprise Buyer applications. The advantages of
one-step business where purchasing and selling are integrated
into a single process apply to sellers and buyers alike.

Business-to-Marketplace Scenario (B2M)

In the networked economy it is essential to be flexibly able to
follow enterprise goals even in distributed or aggregated scenarios.
SAPMarkets is a strong player in powering these business
exchanges (with the above mentioned SAPMarkets MarketSet
suite), and has played a significant role in influencing common
standards
necessary for business processes spanning a multitude of enterprise
borders. SAPMarkets Internet Sales is firmly embedded in this
environment, and can either be used as an on-ramp, with special
functionality allowing to push content (product, pricing, product availability and configuration information) to these marketplaces and easily connect to their routing backbones for incoming purchase orders and outgoing confirmations or advance ship
notices. Or the functionality of SAPMarkets Internet Sales can be
hosted on the marketplaces facilitating market commerce for
any seller (SAPMarkets MarketSet Order Management).

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USING SAPMarkets INTERNET SALES THE COMPLETE

SELLING SOLUTION

Customer satisfaction through integrated sales processes

The entire customer interaction cycle of e-Selling is ideally a
seamless complement between the customers procurement
process and the suppliers sales and logistics processes. The entire
purchasing/sales (see figure 4) process can be broken down into
the following activities:
Customer registration
Searching for and selecting products
involving one-to-one marketing
Configuration
Available-to-promise checks
Ordering products
Payment,
Order processing,
Order status checks, change orders, and
Reporting, sales intelligence and web shop fine tuning
SAPMarkets Internet Sales supports all of these activities.
Individual functional modules are used for specific parts of the
overall process. The modules and overall process flow selected
can then be modeled to meet requirements on both the seller
and buyer sides, and integrated into the back-end systems. This
enables you to map a complete, ideal sales process involving
different parties both within and outside of your company.
As the following section walks through this succession of shopping
phases, the SAPMarkets Internet Sales functionality is explained
in more detail. This includes detailing the tools available to
compose such a web buying experience for each step.

Fig. 4: The Sales Process (Form Customers and Suppliers Perspective)

Customer Registration
If you wish to determine customer-specific prices or use the
one-to-one marketing functionalities, your customers will have
to register with you. Registration is also a security measure
because you can use it to prevent unauthorized users from
accessing your shop, or specific information stored in it. All
personal data is transmitted in encrypted form.
The customer registration procedures in the business-to-consumer scenario and business-to-business scenario are different
this is because the customer plays a different role in each case.

Consumer Registration
In the B2C scenario, prospective customers register themselves
directly at your website. Customers only have to enter their
name, postal address and e-mail address (or a special user ID)
and also a password to place orders right away. A business partner
master record and access authorization are created automatically
in the SAP CRM on the basis of the data entered. Once customers
have registered, they can reenter the Internet shop at any time
simply by entering their e-mail address (or user ID) and password.
Once customers have logged in, they can conduct business transactions, and maintain their own user data. To allow anonymous
browsing customers can access the catalog without logging in.

13

Registration of business partners

In the B2B scenario, you have the ability to manage which part of
your business offering is seen and accessed by each business
partner. This can be in the form of customer-specific information
(prices, for example) being displayed in the catalog and on other
Web pages as part of this customer portal. Your business customers
can name several employees who are then each given their own
access authorizations. Each of these registered users is given a
user ID and a password which they can use to log into the online
shop. Of course, users can change their own password at any time.

14

Searching for and selecting products

Ease of use is very important when customers find their way
through the products on offer, as such powerful search functions
are key. Generally speaking, a product catalog is used for selecting
or finding products. It is also possible to select products from
personalized product recommendation lists, bestseller lists, order
templates, and past orders. An electronic product catalog offers
obvious advantages over traditional hardcopy catalogs: it costs
less to produce, can be distributed more easily and at lower costs,
is a more attractive way of presenting your products, contains an
easier-to-use search engine, and the information it contains is
more up-to-date.

Catalog and content management

Your product catalog is set up and its contents defined in the
Product Catalog Maintenance. Depending on your situation,
you can design a catalog that is either more functional or more
marketing-oriented. Catalog areas are used to structure your
catalogs to meet specific requirements and needs. Usually you
will structure these catalog areas hierarchically, assigning products
and/or further catalog areas to each catalog area. Products are
assigned simply by selecting them from the product master. The
product master is supplied automatically with data from the
material master of the SAP R/3 System. Changes in the R/3
material master are passed on automatically and immediately
this means that your catalog is always completely up-to-date.
You can, however, include much more than just master data in
the product catalog. Indeed, from a marketing point of view, it is
often essential that you complement the product information
contained in the catalog with texts, documents and attributes of
your choice, options are:
Product characteristics that make it easier for customers to
find the products they require, and the product information
they need.
Explanatory texts in different languages for individual products
and catalog areas.
Graphics, thumbnail images, sound files, video sequences, and
many other types of documents to product and catalog areas.

Customer-specific catalog views

The contents of a catalog often have to be tailored to the needs
of individual customers, particularly in business-to-business
scenarios. That is why SAPMarkets Internet Sales allows you to
set up and publish customer-specific catalogs on the Internet.
When a customer logs into your online catalog, they will see
only the products that are of interest to them, and the prices
that apply specifically to them.
Intuitive navigation and powerful search functions in the
Web catalog
The catalog structure makes it easy for Internet users to navigate
around the Web catalog so that they can find the products they
are looking for quickly. Besides browsing through the catalog
hierarchy, customers can also use the powerful search engine
that directly takes them to the product they require. The search
functions access all product data, attributes and texts that are
stored on the index server. It is possible to combine search criteria,
and to set price limits. This makes searching for products particularly fast and effective, and helps increase customer satisfaction.
One particularly attractive search option involves using checkboxes to specify desired product characteristics. The customer
selects the characteristic values required, and the system then
displays all products that fulfill these criteria.

You are completely free to design your Web catalogs as you

please there are no special restrictions as to how your site
design should look. This applies both to the page layout (HTML
design) and to the information you intend to display at your
website. You can tailor the standard HTML catalog templates to
meet your design requirements. You also freely decide the
sequence in which the Web pages should appear. In other words,
SAPMarkets Internet Sales provides you with the conditions you
need for presenting striking, customer-oriented catalogs on the
Internet. You can publish one or more catalogs, or different
versions of a catalog (different language versions, for example)
on your website. Release and staging functions are used to
support the publishing process of specific catalog contents.

15

If customers find a product they wish to purchase they place it

into their shopping basket simply by clicking their mouse. They
can then decide whether or not they would like to shop for
other products, or order the product which they just had placed
in their shopping basket.
One-to-One Marketing (Personalization)
In e-commerce, and in business-to-consumer scenarios especially,
particular value is placed on personalizing website contents and
the products on offer. This direct interaction with customers
complements conventional marketing and traditional advertising
in the mass media. The SAPMarkets Internet Sales marketing
functionality allows you to leverage the Internet as a one-to-one
marketing instrument.

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Defining customer profiles and target groups

Informative customer profiles drawn up from customer purchasing
characteristics (hobby, age, income, product preferences, gender,
and so on) form the basis for successful one-to-one marketing.
These customer profiles can then be used to define target groups
(for example, men aged between 30 and 40 who work out in their
leisure time, and earn more than $5,000 a month).
SAPMarkets Internet Sales allows you to create an online
questionnaire so that you can collect this information on the
Internet. All customers who match up to a specific profile are
automatically assigned to a target group. This means that you
can target your marketing to specific target groups (for example,
by recommending specific products for these groups). This functionality is available in both the B2C and the B2B scenarios.

Personalized product recommendations and

target-group-specific bestseller lists
Effective marketing strategies supported by SAPMarkets Internet
Sales further include personalized product recommendations
and bestseller lists aimed at specific target groups. Personalized
product recommendations are lists of products that are drawn
up for specific customer profiles. They could, for example,
contain new products that are deemed to be of particular interest
to customers with a specific profile.

Target-group-specific bestseller lists provide invaluable information.

They are based on analyses of the products sold in a target group.
The idea is that products purchased frequently by customers
with the same profile will be of particular interest to customers
who have not yet purchased this product. These bestseller lists
can also be offered as a service to B2B customers so that they can
display the products they have purchased most frequently in a
separate list in the online shop (in this case, the customer profile
shows only the customer number as a characteristic).

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E-mail marketing
The CRM Promotion & Campaign Management component
allows you to generate personalized e-mails aimed at specific
target groups. The contents of these mails are generated on the
basis of the customer profiles discussed above. The emails can
contain hyperlinks to specific products in the webshop catalog.
Higher sales with cross-selling and up-selling
A feature of SAPMarkets Internet Sales that is of particular interest
from a sales and marketing point of view is the automated
product proposal feature. After a customer has selected a product,
additional products with higher-quality and higher prices can be
displayed in the shopping basket (up-selling), or additional
products such as accessories or complementary services listed
(cross-selling). The corresponding relationships between the
products are maintained in the product master. When a customer
clicks a product proposal, it is placed in the shopping basket (in
an up-selling scenario, it replaces the product previously selected).
The aim of this is to encourage customers to purchase more
expensive products and additional products, thus generating
higher sales volumes.
Product Configuration
Customizing products online - configure-to-order
The Internet poses a particular challenge to companies that
manufacture configurable products. Customers will often place
a value on being able to configure or influence the design of
the products they are buying. In SAPMarkets Internet Sales,
interactive product configuration is made possible by the
Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC). It allows to identify the
various product variants, dependencies, and restrictions, and
automatically calculates the correct price for the components
and options selected by the customer.
The IPC can be used for product models of varying degrees of
complexity. If customers select a configurable product, the IPC
walks them through the configuration process. The options that
are possible are displayed (as are the corresponding additions or
deductions to the basic price), and can simply be selected by the

18

customer. Detailed descriptions and images can be provided to

help customers decide which options to choose. The IPC checks
the consistency of the configuration constantly, and the price is
updated online.
It is essential that the configuration uses the same conditions
and rules that are defined in the back-end application. This is the
only way of ensuring that the configuration variant drawn up by
a customer can actually be manufactured, and that the price
that is displayed on the Internet is the same as the price that
appears on the invoice. The IPC guarantees this configuration
integrity by the configuration models defined in the R/3 System.
It also saves you time and money since you do not have to model
products again for your website. When a customer orders a
product that he or she has configured, the configuration data
is passed on to the back-end system along with the order for
further processing.
The IPC provides a unique configure-to-order scenario that
involves customers (and customer requests) actively in valueadded activities early on. This scenario is complemented by the
integrated ATP check of the Advanced Planner and Optimizer,
which enables customers to retrieve accurate information on
availability and feasible delivery dates at the same time.

Accurate, consistent pricing

Pricing often represents a major problem on the Internet. Time
and time again, online customers are upset when they see that
the amount for which they have been invoiced does not correspond
to the price listed in the Web shop. Here SAP again utilizes the
IPC. The IPC uses the same conditions and pricing procedures as
the R/3 back-end system. The pricing elements defined in the
R/3 System are downloaded constantly to the IPC and kept
completely up-to-date. This means that Internet users can take
advantage of the powerful pricing functionality of the R/3
System. It also ensures that the prices in the front end are always
consistent with the prices in the back-end system. Since pricing
models and conditions are maintained at one location, you do
not need to enter the same data twice.

The standard R/3 condition types (such as individual prices,

discounts, or scale conditions) are automatically taken into
account when a sales price is determined online in a shopping
basket. The net price, gross price, shipping costs and tax are all
displayed separately both for the individual items in the order,
and for the total price of the order. The IPC can handle multiple
currencies and units of measure. In the B2B scenario, customerspecific prices are even displayed in the product catalog.
Available-to-Promise (ATP check)
Accurate availability check and reliable deliver dates
SAPMarkets Internet Sales allows you to provide your customers
with reliable realtime information on availability and delivery
dates. An ATP check (available-to-promise check) is run for every
order item in the shopping basket (including configurable
products). Unlike other online shopping solutions, which provide
a less reliable average delivery time, SAPMarkets Internet Sales is
fully integrated with Supply Chain Management. The ATP check
is run in the SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO), and
the result is passed on to the SAPMarkets Internet Sales shopping
basket. In this way, SAPMarkets Internet Sales via the SAP APO
can calculate a precise delivery date on the basis of the current
stocks and production capacity in all plants as well as the
throughput times for picking and shipping. Customers also have
the option of specifying a requested delivery date (in the B2B
scenario, they can even request a different delivery date for every
item). This requested delivery date is then taken into account
during the availability check and delivery scheduling.
The importance of accurate availability checks and reliable delivery
scheduling should not be underestimated. They play a key role in
increasing customer satisfaction especially in a business-tobusiness scenario, where customers will often only place an order
if they can be certain that the goods will be delivered on a specific
date. As web-based commerce turns to the trading of directly
production-related goods and services, this capability will be a
strong differentiator compared to other web-shops.

For customers who do not choose to implement SAPs APO an

ATP check in R/3 System is available.
The Order process
The shopping basket
The procedure for ordering products in SAPMarkets Internet
Sales revolves around a virtual shopping basket, as customers
select products and place them into their shopping basket in a
single step (point and click). They can then order all products in
the shopping basket at once. SAPMarkets Internet Sales also gives
your customers the option of saving the contents of their shopping
basket provisionally. If customers decide to interrupt their
shopping, this does not pose a problem. They simply save their
shopping basket under a name of their choice, and then call it up
at a later point in time to continue ordering.
To make it easier for customers to select products and to place
them into their shopping basket, the point-and-click technique
can be used not just in the product catalog, but on all pages of
your Web shop where products are displayed. These include the
detailed information views for products, the configuration pages
(which are retained even if the configured product is placed into
the shopping basket), the bestseller lists, and the lists of recommended products. It is also possible to use the point-and-click
technique in saved shopping baskets, quotations, past orders, and
order templates. In the B2B scenario, it is even possible to enter
article numbers directly in the shopping basket.
Prices and other cost factors (shipping and tax, for example) are
displayed in the shopping basket, as are accessories and delivery
dates. Customers can enter order quantities, configure products,
specify a requested delivery date, add comments on the order
and, if necessary, change delivery addresses. Your customers can
also save, load, clear (either entirely or partially), or delete their
shopping baskets.

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Ordering with order templates

SAPMarkets Internet Sales enables your customers to create
their own order templates (called shopping basket templates or
notepads). Customers can select products that they frequently
order and place them into a template shopping basket, which
can be saved under a self-explanatory name. This order template
can then be called up at any time from a list of templates. The
customer only needs to enter the quantities required (if this is
not already specified in the template), and the order is ready.
All of the shopping basket functionalities are available for
these templates.

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Fast order entry

You can also provide your business customers with a fast order
entry option. All they have to do is enter the product number
and order quantity in the shopping basket, and the order is ready.
This means that you can fulfill the wishes of many professional
purchasers who often know article numbers by heart by
providing them with a fast, efficient ordering procedure.

One-click ordering
As soon as customers have selected the products they want, have
entered the appropriate quantities, method of payment, and the
corresponding prices and delivery dates determined by the system,
customers can order the contents of their shopping basket simply
by clicking once. If required, customers can enter a specific
delivery address (in the B2B scenario a different address can be
entered for each individual order item). Customers also have the
option of attaching comments to their orders. In the B2B scenario,
it is even possible to enter a separate order text for each item.
This means that even orders that deviate from the norm can be
processed smoothly.
In SAPMarkets Internet Sales, it is possible to create a quotation
instead of actually placing an order. Customers can call up all of
the quotations they have saved at any time. If they wish, customers
can then later create an order that references this quotation,
or they may transfer individual items from the quotation to
the order.
Flexible and secure payment
SAPMarkets Internet Sales allows companies to take advantage
of automated payment options on the Internet. Companies can
offer their customers different methods of payment. For example,
customers can pay by credit card, and have payment authorized
immediately online. Alternatively, a customer can decide to pay
upon receipt of the goods, or request that an invoice be sent. In
this case, billing is performed automatically in the R/3 back office.
The integration with a back-end system also ensures that discounts
are taken into account, invoice amounts are calculated correctly,
incoming payments are posted correctly, and reminders are sent
out at the right time.

Automatic confirmation of orders

As soon as a customer submits an order, the order number is
passed on from the back-end system and is displayed on the
Internet. Written confirmation of the order is also e-mailed to
the customer. Of course, this also applies to quotations that
customers have created themselves on the Internet.
Order processing and Order Status
If customers are to remain satisfied, then the Internet order
must be processed efficiently and reliably right up to the point
when the goods are delivered to the customers. A powerful backend system is required if this efficiency and reliability are to be
ensured. And it goes without saying that the Internet shop must
be integrated seamlessly with this back-end system to allow a
high degree of automation. Online order tracking enables
customers to track the progress of their order online at any time.
This is an invaluable customer service, which on the one hand
increases customer satisfaction, and on the other hand has great
cost-cutting potential.

Efficient order processing

The seamless integration of SAPMarkets Internet Sales (as a CRM
component) with the R/3 back-end system ensures that the
orders received via the Internet are processed smoothly right
up to the point in time that the goods are delivered and billed.
This means that, thanks to the proven efficiency of the R/3 back
end, you can really keep the promises you make at the front end.
This results in increased customer satisfaction and long-term
customer retention. The entire process is automated from the
placing of orders in the Internet front end right through to the
processing of orders in the back-end Logistics Execution System.
This high degree of automation speeds up the entire sales
process, and reduces transaction costs drastically.

Payment transactions conform to the strictest safety standards

currently available to increase reliability and reduce risk factors
to an absolute minimum. State-of-the-art security mechanisms
ensure a high level of security for transmitting sensitive data.

21

Online order status and order tracking

SAPMarkets Internet Sales enables your customers to view their
order templates, quotations, orders and invoices on the Internet
at any time, and also allows them to track the status of individual
orders and order items. Hyperlinks can take customers to the
tracking systems of your carriers so that they can monitor the
shipping progress of the goods they have ordered.
Changes are not a problem
If one of your customers changes their mind about an order,
they have the option of canceling this order either entirely or
partially (they can cancel individual items). They can also order
new or different products at the same time. Of course, the degree
to which the order has been processed in the fulfillment system
will determine whether or not this is possible.
Reporting, Sales Intelligence and Web Shop Fine-Tuning
Gaining e-Business Intelligence
Through the use of the SAP Business Information Warehouse
(BW), a full evaluation of the success of the Internet Sales channel
is possible. The information in SAP BW is gathered from orders
placed through Internet Sales, click-stream analysis of customer
behavior, as well as all other touch-points to your customers
which are managed in the CRM system. This encompassing
information base can then be built upon for key business analysis,
webshop fine-tuning and marketing functions.

22

Evaluation of the Internet Sales channel can be categorized into

attraction, conversion, and retention. Customer attraction is e.g.
evaluated by determining how customers find out about your
site and whether or not they register once they reach it. Conversion
e.g. analyzes how effectively browsing customers are turned into
buyers. CRM data is important in analyzing channel revenue,
customer segmentation, and buying patterns of your customers.
Click-stream data provides the means to determine e.g. which
products are viewed but not purchased, or at what point customers
choose to drop out of the shopping process. Retention measures
the stickiness of your site, including the number of visits of
your active customers versus the visits of your inactive customers.

Clickstream Analysis and Web Shop Tuning

Much of the success of your web shop is based on how quickly
and easily your customers can navigate your site, find relevant
product information, and place orders. The customer experience
of your site cannot only be measured by the orders that are
placed. It is critical to find out how customers behave on your
site, e.g. to know whether or not they are looking at products
and not purchasing them, or whether or not they are abandoning
a shopping basket prior to making a purchase. With the use of
click-stream analysis, provided by TeaLeaf Technology and fully
integrated into SAPMarkets Internet Sales, this information is
captured and can be evaluated.

This click-stream information assists the marketing, business

analysis, service, and IT departments within your organization.
Click-stream data allows you to optimize your look-to-buy ratio
and configure your catalog, product location and supplemental
information based on actual customer behavior and expectations.
Another important feature is the trouble-shooting of customer
problems by replaying their sessions, and in general measuring
the technical health of your site. Customer behavior on the web
site can be combined with other CRM-side information on involved
business partners, products, and buying history, for a complete
picture of your customers wants and needs.

COMPONENTS AND ARCHITECTURE

SAPMarkets Internet Sales is a modular solution. Various

components each perform specific tasks, as such there are:
Internet components, Business Services and Business Execution
components (see figure below).
In this multi-level architecture all functions that are not directly
relevant to business processes (catalog search engine, browsing,
pricing, and configuration) are located at the Internet front-end
level. This means that you have a large degree of flexibility in

Fig. 9: SAPMarkets Internet Sales Architecture

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scaling your systems, and high performance is guaranteed even if

there is a heavy system workload. This architecture also meets
stringent security requirements since it is possible to build in
mechanisms that protect your internal network at several points.
Additionally, since presentation, interaction and business processes
are all kept strictly separate, you have a large degree of creative
freedom to design an Internet shop that meets your needs.

Internet front end Runtime Environment

Behind the Internet front end, you will find the components
that make up the customer experience. The customer sessions
are held together by the Internet Transaction Server (ITS), which
mixes together the relevant information from the dedicated
components allowing to create unique customer experiences.
The following modules are used at the Internet front-end level:
Internet Transaction Server (ITS): The ITS is the key component
at the Internet layer as it connects all business components
with the Web server. In other words, it regulates communications between the Web server and the back-end systems (via
CRM), the index server, the IPC and any other Internet
applications. The flow logic for regulating interaction between
the application components and the customers browser is
controlled by so-called flow files.
Index Server: The catalog data that is presented on the
Internet is stored on the index server. This index server ensures
that product information can be accessed quickly. It is used
principally for catalog browsing and speeding up searches in
the product catalog, as well as for reducing the workload in
the CRM System.
Knowledge Provider (KPRO): All of the multimedia documents
used in conjunction with the product catalog are stored automatically in the Knowledge Provider and replicated on the
Web server. The required documents are then called up
from the Web server so that they can be displayed in the
customers browser.

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Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC): The IPC enables

customers to interactively configure products on the basis of
the product models defined in the R/3 System. This means
that customers can access powerful R/3 pricing and variant
configuration functionalities on the Internet without actually
accessing the R/3 System directly.

Business Services
The Business Services for SAPMarkets Internet Sales provide the
basic functions that are essential for setting up and running an
Internet shop. They are provided by the SAP CRM System (SAP
CRM) and, optionally, by the SAP Business Information Warehouse
(SAP BW) and the SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer (SAP
APO). These functions do not necessarily have to be Internetspecific. They can, in principle, also be used for other sales
channels (e.g. call center).
The main function blocks include product catalog management,
marketing management, the business partner master data, and
the sales order component all of these are located in SAP CRM.
The SAP APO component is responsible for running availability
checks (ATP checks). The SAP BW can be used as an analysis tool
for conducting sales and marketing analyses (for example,
generating bestseller lists for specific target groups).

Business Execution -Internet Sales and ERP

SAPMarkets Internet Sales is based on SAPs Internet business
framework architecture, and combines SAPs established client/
server technology with forward-looking Internet technologies
that have been tried and tested. Thanks to its architecture,
SAPMarkets Internet Sales is exceptionally reliable, scalable and
secure, and boasts a balanced workload distribution.

The various Business Execution components (R/3) and the

Business Services components (CRM, APO, BW) are linked to
each other via CRM Middleware. This middleware regulates the
real-time synchronization of product, business partner and order
data in CRM and R/3. It also controls the exchange of data with
the SAP BW and APO applications. This means that accurate,
real-time product and price information can be made available
to the website. Orders that customers have submitted on the
Internet are passed on for processing to the R/3 System automatically and without delay. The R/3 System processes these orders
with ease right through to delivery and billing. It is this seamless
integration between SAPMarkets Internet Sales and R/3 that
makes it possible to automate processes fully, at high speed and
low costs.
In this interchange, the R/3 back-end system should be seen as
the system in charge, although it also receives changes in the
customer master and, of course, orders from CRM. Material
master records and data relating to pricing and variant configuration are maintained in the R/3 System and are passed on via
the middleware to the CRM system. R/3 conditions and procedures
for pricing, as well as bills of material, characteristics and
dependencies for configuration are written directly to the
Internet Pricing & Configurator (IPC).

Automated B2B Communication

The SAPMarkets Internet Sales solution fully builds on the SAP
Business Connector (BC) for seamless XML communication (BC
not shown in the architecture diagram). With this additional EAI
component the SAPMarkets Internet Sales solution is open to
any marketplace communication based on XCBL Standards
(following the XCBL 3.0 specification, see www.xcbl.org). The
below XCBL messages are currently supported out-of-the-box,
many others can easily be added over time to reflect related
business processes:
Purchase Order inbound
Order Change inbound
Order Response outbound
Shipping Notification outbound
Invoice outbound
For the integration with other XML standards the SAP
Business Connector is able to map between XCBL and the other
XML format.

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New flow logic provides more flexibility

The new flow logic technology involves a strict separation
between the presentation of information on websites using HTML
templates, and the actual business processes themselves (for
example, pricing, creating orders, or changing a customers
address). Separate flow files are used to link the presentation
layout with the business applications. These flow files define the
interaction logic, which determines the information that is
displayed and the business processes that are triggered. This
opens up an exciting range of new opportunities for influencing
the interaction with your customers even without strong previous
programming experience. It also gives you a large degree of
freedom in designing the visual appearance of your Internet site
since there are no restrictions imposed on the page layouts in the
HTML templates. You can use any HTML editor to rework the
HTML templates. As such you can use Internet Sales to make
your online shop an integral part of your entire Internet presence,
so there is nothing to stop you from exploiting your corporate
design to the fullest.

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AVAILABILITY

Any customer with an existing R/3 (releases 3.1H and upward)

can use SAPMarkets Internet Sales today. Starting in the third
quarter 2001, any company will be able to deploy SAPMarkets
Internet Sales, and position it within their own specific backoffice environment for all of their outbound business needs.
For further information, e.g. on functions in detail or customer
references, please consult the SAPMarkets homepage at
www.sapmarkets.com or contact your SAP sales representative.

27

SAPMarkets Headquarters,
SAPMarkets Inc.
3475 Deer Creek Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Tel. +1 (650) 849.4100
Fax +1 (650) 849.4101
www.sapmarkets.com

50047951 June 2001

Copyright 2001 SAPMarkets, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAPMarkets and Business Beyond Boundaries are trademarks of SAPMarkets, Inc. MarketSet and Enterprise Buyer are joint
trademarks of SAPMarkets, Inc., and Commerce One Inc. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.