The document outlines a case study on the successful implementation of SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at Asian Paints, detailing its challenges and the strategic choice of SAP for a comprehensive solution. The CRM system enabled better integration of customer data, improved complaint handling, and enhanced customer engagement through a variety of strategies, including personalized home consultancy services. Asian Paints plans to further leverage SAP CRM to optimize loyalty management, real-time offer management, and online sales for its dealers.

1. Customer
Relationship
Management
Asian Paints
Success study of Asian Paints CRM Implementation
Group 2
SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

2. Contents
– Company Overview
– Key Challenges
– Business Need
– Why was SAP CRM selected
– Strategy for the Implementation
– Business Process Transformation & Value Realized
– Results
– Future Roadmap of SAP CRM Implemented
– Some other initiatives for customer engagement

3. Company Overview
 Since its foundation in 1942, Asian Paints has come a long way to become
India’s largest and Asia’s third largest paint company, with a turnover of Rs
109.70 billion. The group has an enviable reputation in the corporate world for
professionalism, fast track growth, and building shareholder equity. Asian Paints
operates in 17 countries and has 25 paint manufacturing facilities in the world
servicing consumers in over 65 countries.
Industry
Consumer Products
Revenue
US $1.1 Billion
Employees
5000+ (worldwide)
Headquarter
Mumbai, India
Website
www.asianpaints.com
SAP© Solution and
Services
SAP© Customer
Relationship Management
application (functionality for
marketing, interaction
centre, sales, service and
partner channel
management), SAP Ramp-up
program
Implementation
Partners
Mahindra IT Consulting Pvt.
Ltd., a unit of Mahindra &
Mahindra Group; SAP
Consulting

4. Need & Key Challenges
– Asian Paints Limited, India’s largest paint company, has a reputation for
professionalism and fast-track growth and needs to sustain it. Asian Paints help
line had received requests from the consumers expressing a need for a more
complete solution to their home painting needs
– Putting the pieces together
 The sales leads and customer data gathered from these and other interactions
arrived via many different channels.
 CRM software was required that allowed AP to manage multiple engagements
with all the stakeholders.
 CRM would help AP to consolidate all the important information, bring it into one
platform, and give a 360-degree view

5. Need & Key Challenges
– Reaching the limit
 Challenge was the lack of integration between the company’s telephony system and its
CRM application.
 Wanted agents to be two or three steps ahead of the customer so they can get a head
start.
 Reduce the amount of time needed to configure CRM functionality
– Realizing a new vision
 To overcome these challenges – and to reduce IT-related costs – Asian Paints concluded
that it needed an enhanced CRM platform.
 An application that was easier to use, easier to configure, and capable of giving business
users the information they needed to improve marketing, sales, and service efforts.

6. Need and Key Challenges
 Asian Paints help line had received requests from the consumers expressing a
need for a more complete solution to their home painting needs
 Customers wanted Product+ service where a Paint expert understands their
needs, interacts with them to guide on Paint related activity so that customers
make right decisions in choosing the color
 Company wanted to integrate all stakeholders in order to support multiple
engagements– Suppliers , Customers, Employees
 Need for Information Gathering to understand more about their customers
 To match their growth along with increased customer experience

7. SAP CRM Solutions: Why SAP?
– Introduction
 Asian Paints was well aware of the advantages of SAP applications and technology.
 Asian Paints had been using the SAP ERP application to support financials,
procurement, supply chain management, and other key processes.
 AP also uses SAP NetWeaver to solve integration issues and support custom
development.
 The need for a more robust and comprehensive CRM application
 SAP CRM was capable of giving Asian Paints required 360-degree view of its
stakeholders

8. SAP CRM Solutions: Why SAP?
– Leveraging new functionality
 The new release of SAP CRM included a number of features & functions that could help the
company become more agile and efficient.
 Powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, SAP business applications like SAP CRM
enable companies to take full advantage of prebuilt enterprise services when modifying or
enhancing business processes.
 Enabled sales reps to suggest relevant products or services based on specific customer
preferences or experiences.
– Improving User Productivity
 The new release of SAP CRM was considerably easier for end users to learn and master.
 With role-oriented interfaces and improved screen layouts, the software could help increase
user productivity and reduce training duties for IT personnel.
 Newer SAP CRM application would be much easier to configure and takes much less time to
add or enhance functionality and set it rolling.

9. Strategy for Implementation
Each stage of a project life cycle (PLC) must provide
one or more than one deliverable. The five stages or
phases of Project Life Cycle are:-
– Define the goal of the project
– Plan the Project
– Execute the project plan being made
– Close the project
– Evaluate the project – The success or failure of
the project is measured in this phase. The final
deliverable is the lessons that are learned from
the project that can then be added to the
knowledge repository for future projects.

10. Business Process Transformation &
Value Realized
With SAP CRM implementation, Asian Paints was able to improve the quality of customer
oriented activities.
– It enabled the company to maintain a personalized relationship with each of the customers
who are in millions
– The customer service personnel now knows why a customer is calling as soon as a call comes
into a service facility
– In case of a complaint, staffers can see what progress has been made toward resolution.
– The software also displays a list of past interactions, giving call centre personnel an accurate
picture of each customer’s habits, preferences, and history.
– “Having all the customer information in one place is very important, It makes our customers
aware that we value their business and understand their issues.” - says Mr. Deepak Bhosale.

11. Adding functionality to build stronger ties
– After the new release of SAP CRM, Asian Paints turned its focus to improve the complaint
management processes
– The goal was to track progress from the time of an initial complaint until the problem has
been resolved
– For this, the company integrated the software with Asian Paints’ e-mail and mobile-phone
text-messaging gateways, boosting the overall responsiveness and efficiency of complaint
handling activities
– In addition to providing better visibility, the software also helps Asian Paints take the steps
needed to fix problems, routing exceptions to appropriate manufacturing, technology, or
marketing teams.
– SAP CRM also allows Asian Paints to capture complaints related to the machines and route
them up an escalation matrix
Business Process Transformation &
Value Realized

12. Process Area Challenges Results after SAP® Software KPI Impact
Customer complaint handling Inability to easily track complaint status
Limited scalability, hindering efforts to
roll out complaint handling processes
regionally
Lack of built-in business intelligence
functionality
Transparent view of complaint status for
all stakeholders
Scalable complaint-handling processes
Integrated analytics
Faster complaint resolution (by 35% to
50%) in comparison to manual systems
Ability to disseminate complaint status
information to stakeholders 3 times
faster
Greater process efficiency
Dealer complaint handling Inability to manage multiple vendor
relationships
No easy way to monitor service-level
agreements (SLAs)
Inability to manage dealer asset
inventory efficiently
Automatic routing of complaints to
appropriate vendor without manual
intervention
Visible and accessible SLA data
Ability to track asset inventory
Support for all 10,000 dealers, due to
scalable functionality
Improved complaint resolution
Increase in dealer loyalty and
satisfaction
Better adherence to SLA guidelines
Better maintenance of dealer equipment
Software deployment Long turnaround times (up to 3 to 4
months needed to configure
functionality)
Too much time to train end users
Less time spent on configurations
Faster deployments; easy integration
with other applications
Simple more intuitive user interfaces
Shorter deployment cycle (by 20%)
Reduced IT cycle
Increase in end-user productivity and
motivation
More time for IT personnel to spend on
added-value tasks
Customer experience Cumbersome sales and service
processes, affecting customer
Visibility of customer data, improving
interactions
Greater customer satisfaction
Effects of
Implementing
SAP CRM in
Asian Paints

13. Future Roadmap
– The release of SAP CRM is viewed by Asian Paints as the future platform that will support all customer activities
and interactions, including those that are currently managed with the custom built solution
– The SAP Customer Relationship Management application will help Asian Paints improve its operational efficiencies
and sharpen its strategic edge, thereby gaining competitive advantage
– As part of the drive to create innovative strategies using the SAP CRM application, Asian Paints is currently
working on the following initiatives:
§ Loyalty management: Asian Paints works closely with dealers, contractors, painters, interior designers, and
architects to promote its services and offerings. In future, the company intends to use the new release of SAP CRM to
manage the diverse loyalty programs that reward and motivate these partners.
§ Real-time offer management: Asian Paints runs a multitude of special offerings and promotions. To help agents
and dealers make informed decisions about which product or service to offer, the company intends to deploy an Offer
Management Tool that makes recommendations based on relevant customer information. The tool, which uses
optimization analytics, will support up-sell and cross-sell activities.
§ Dealer Internet sales: To boost sales for its 25,000 dealers, Asian Paints is currently building a portal that will help
these channel partners manage sales, marketing, ordering, and fulfilment processes.

14. Engagement with customer using
Home consultancy
 The company wanted to move beyond just selling the Paints and wanted to become a complete décor
provider which Changes the entire experience of how a customer understands Paints
 The idea was to make Painting the home Fun and a more engaging activity
 For this, the company set up Home consultancy for Paints.
– Customer is given an option to set up an appointment with the color expert
– Experts visit the home at a time convenient to customer, understand the personal tastes and
preferences; and then recommend color and design solutions customized especially for the customer
– Color consultancy is also available Online, where the color experts answer all painting-related queries

15. Benefits achieved with Home
consultancy
– Benefit 1 – Risk Free Experimentation : The color specialists refer to the existing décor,
furniture, lighting, and space in the home and accordingly suggest colors that customer
can preview and experiment with on a tablet
– Benefit 2- Insights into Trends : Experts share the latest insights and answers to the
most recent design trends, which can be used to transform home Décor
– Benefit 3- Digital Preview : Preview what the walls in each room look like with the
shades and textures the customer has chosen. After that, customer receives a color
prescription via email with all the details for references
This program was highly successful and is operational in More than 20 cities currently

16. Setting it up with Signature Stores
To support the initiative of color consultancy, the company also established the signature
stores, where a complete Home décor experience is provided
The customer brings the pictures of the home which are used to simulate the colors
combination for that particular customer, visualizing the effects using digital display and see
impact of lighting, furniture etc. on the Paint
This also helped the company to achieve a right balance of color specialist consultants and a
self-servicing kiosks in the signature store.
Video LINK : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8AdRsLcuvE