Times have changed. Orga­ni­za­tions are rethink­ing their mar­ket­ing strate­gies and how they’re man­ag­ing their cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Mar­ket­ing today is about using data to bet­ter under­stand your cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers so you can learn how to bet­ter engage with them. To meet this need, SAP intro­duced its SAP C/4HANA suite in 2018 to help orga­ni­za­tions build trust­ed rela­tion­ships with their customers.

ASUG News inter­viewed the SAP C/4HANA cloud lead­ers to learn more about each plat­form and how they work togeth­er to help build a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. We start­ed with SAP Com­merce Cloud and dis­cussed how it pro­vides cus­tomers with a com­plete dig­i­tal brand expe­ri­ence. We’ve also cov­ered SAP Sales Cloud and dis­cussed how the plat­form offers sales teams the tools they need to win trust and keep cus­tomers com­ing back for more.

Next, we caught up with Nicholas Cumins, gen­er­al man­ag­er of SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud to under­stand why it’s impor­tant to know your cus­tomer first for every­thing else to work effectively.

ASUG News: Could you walk us through how an SAP cus­tomer would use the SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud?

Nicholas: SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud is a com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket­ing solu­tion that pro­vides mar­ket­ing plan­ning and bud­get man­age­ment, cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing orches­tra­tion, and closed-loop mea­sure­ment and opti­miza­tion. Under­ly­ing all of these is cus­tomer data man­age­ment, which brings tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing pro­files togeth­er with data from across the enter­prise such as sales, ser­vice, finance, and even the voice of the cus­tomer to gen­er­ate deep insights, enable pin­point tar­get­ing, and con­sent-dri­ven engagement.

The SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud is typ­i­cal­ly used by the full mar­ket­ing team to sup­port the end-to-end mar­ket­ing process and, in B2B com­pa­nies, to sup­port mar­ket­ing and sales align­ment. The teams can seg­ment their cus­tomer base to bet­ter under­stand the accounts and the con­tacts that they need to go after, and to dri­ve inter­est in their prod­ucts and ser­vices on any channel.

ASUG News: Can you explain cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing orches­tra­tion in more detail?

Nicholas: We use the term ​“cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing orches­tra­tion” because our plat­form sup­ports both B2B and B2C mar­ket­ing, which is unique to SAP. This is usu­al­ly referred to as cam­paign man­age­ment in the B2C space or lead man­age­ment in the B2B space. 

In both B2B and B2C it’s about deliv­er­ing val­ue-based engage­ment with the cus­tomer, orches­trat­ing their expe­ri­ence accord­ing to their needs and expec­ta­tions. It’s also about mak­ing sure that expe­ri­ence is con­sis­tent and respon­sive across all chan­nels and that’s true regard­less of whether it’s a com­mod­i­ty or a con­sid­ered purchase. 

ASUG News: How does SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud work with oth­er mar­ket­ing tools and sales tools with­in an organization?

Nicholas: Of course, SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud is native­ly inte­grat­ed with our own CX suite, but cus­tomers can inte­grate SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud with third-par­ty sys­tems as well. It all ties back to cus­tomer data. In order to feed the SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud, it needs to inte­grate with as many sys­tems — whether they are oper­a­tional sys­tems or back-office sys­tems — to col­lect behav­ioral data as well as real-time data. Then it can pro­vide insights that will help dri­ve bet­ter decisions.

We know that the view of the cus­tomer is dis­trib­uted across an orga­ni­za­tion, which is pre­cise­ly why SAP recent­ly announced the Open Data Ini­tia­tive with Adobe and Microsoft. We all need to make sure that our sys­tems are open and can eas­i­ly inte­grate with one anoth­er to pro­vide the best under­stand­ing of the customer.

ASUG News: With­in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty, more peo­ple may rec­og­nize the name SAP Hybris Mar­ket­ing than SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud. How much of the DNA of Hybris is in the plat­form and how much is new and improved?

Nicholas: The SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud plat­form was devel­oped under the umbrel­la of SAP Hybris. Much of that foun­da­tion is still there, but what’s new is the focus on cus­tomer experience.

Some cus­tomers might still think of SAP Hybris Mar­ket­ing as an on-premise solu­tion. We now offer the solu­tion in the cloud. SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud is a more nim­ble plat­form because our cus­tomers receive inno­va­tions through quar­ter­ly updates, as opposed to annu­al­ly through the on-premise solu­tion. We are also invest­ing in a plug-and-play approach to the part­ner ecosys­tem, so that cus­tomers can ben­e­fit from addi­tion­al part­ner solu­tions with­out hav­ing to do heavy inte­gra­tion projects.

SAP Hybris Mar­ket­ing was always a plat­form for both B2B and B2C mar­ket­ing, and it still is. What’s new and improved is its abil­i­ty to sup­port account-based mar­ket­ing in the B2B world. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, B2B busi­ness­es use a vol­ume-based mar­ket­ing approach where you cast a big net and try and catch as many con­tacts as you can. This cre­ates a lot of waste and is not effec­tive. With SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud’s account-based mar­ket­ing capa­bil­i­ties, brands can seg­ment and tar­get a dis­crete set of high-val­ue accounts. Then the mar­ket­ing team can work togeth­er with the sales teams to dri­ve con­ver­sa­tions with those targets.

Anoth­er improve­ment is a focus on closed-loop per­for­mance man­age­ment. In 2016, SAP acquired Abakus, a mar­ket­ing attri­bu­tion com­pa­ny that mea­sures the customer’s jour­ney across all chan­nels to help mar­keters opti­mize their mar­ket­ing spend. Closed-loop mar­ket­ing allows a busi­ness to mea­sure the rev­enue impact of mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties and bet­ter under­stand what’s real­ly con­tribut­ing to growth. So when you plan your mar­ket­ing bud­get, you don’t do it based only on how much you spent on mar­ket­ing last year. You do it based on the poten­tial busi­ness impact now.

Last, but not least, is SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly inte­grate with SAP S/4HANA and SAP C/4HANA. These inte­gra­tions allow you to get a much clear­er vision of your cus­tomer. For instance, SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud pairs SAP S/4HANA data such as finan­cials and inven­to­ry togeth­er with the mar­ket­ing pro­file to pow­er per­son­al­iza­tion and rec­om­men­da­tions through SAP Com­merce Cloud, account-based insight and nur­ture through SAP Sales Cloud, and cus­tomer ser­vice insights and trig­ger-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions through SAP Ser­vice Cloud. 

SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud also helps to man­age con­sent along­side SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud to make sure every brand inter­ac­tion builds trust based on cus­tomer per­mis­sions and pref­er­ences. And we’re excit­ed to com­plete our inte­gra­tion with Qualtrics so that we can expand the mar­ket­ing pro­file with voice-of-the cus­tomer data. The impli­ca­tions for inter­pret­ing cus­tomer behav­ior and fur­ther refin­ing engage­ment and per­son­al­iza­tion are tremendous.

ASUG News: Let’s talk about data. How can SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud help cus­tomers solve chal­lenges with data? How can it help them more accu­rate­ly seg­ment their cus­tomers or main­tain their data pri­va­cy in the wake of GDPR and the oth­er data pri­va­cy reg­u­la­tions bub­bling up?

Nicholas: There are two impor­tant things worth not­ing here. First, I would argue that you can­not do prop­er mar­ket­ing with­out the prop­er under­stand­ing of your cus­tomer. The sec­ond is that you can­not do prop­er mar­ket­ing with­out embrac­ing con­sent-based marketing.

When it comes to cus­tomer seg­men­ta­tion, SAP offers a seg­men­ta­tion engine that is pow­ered by SAP HANA and is able to man­age seg­ments with thou­sands of attrib­ut­es. It can man­age data com­ing from oper­a­tional sys­tems, but also behav­ioral data from any source. You can use real-time ana­lyt­ics on that data to bet­ter under­stand your cus­tomers as well as the best way of engag­ing with them.

And then there’s GDPR and pri­va­cy. Some see GDPR as a con­straint, but I think it’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to do bet­ter mar­ket­ing. SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud (for­mer­ly Gigya) makes SAP C/4HANA a con­sent-based plat­form. It allows a busi­ness to cap­ture a prospect’s or customer’s con­sent and enforce it across their full cus­tomer infor­ma­tion system.

ASUG News: How can the SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud work with oth­er SAP offer­ings to help orga­ni­za­tions become intel­li­gent enterprises?

Nicholas: We’re mov­ing mar­ket­ing to the cen­ter of the busi­ness. When cou­pled with SAP’s invest­ment in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, this allows brands to real­ly focus on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. When we can detect a customer’s inten­tion, then we can trig­ger an activ­i­ty in SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Ser­vice Cloud, or SAP Com­merce Cloud. It’s a full cus­tomer expe­ri­ence solution.

Learn more about what to expect from SAP C/4HANA and how SAP C/4HANA can con­nect your cus­tomer jour­ney. You can also spend a day learn­ing how to use SAP C/4HANA at an ASUG Pre-Con­fer­ence Sem­i­nar pri­or to SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Conference.