By now, you may have heard the news about SAP acquir­ing the sur­vey soft­ware com­pa­ny, Qualtrics. But what does the acqui­si­tion mean for you, the SAP customer?

SAP Bill McDer­mott has explained it as a syn­er­gy that pro­vides a pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tion of SAP’s exper­tise in cap­tur­ing oper­a­tional data (o‑data) with Qualtrics’ abil­i­ty to cap­ture expe­ri­ence data (x‑data). Ryan Smith, Qualtrics’ CEO, adds that oper­a­tional data tells you what’s going on, where­as the expe­ri­ence data tells you why it’s hap­pen­ing. ​“It allows you to get human sen­ti­ment in the moment. The abil­i­ty to com­bine these and have one sin­gle view will trans­form the way we even think about CRM [cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment] as we know it.”

What is Qualtrics?

Qualtrics is a start­up com­pa­ny found­ed in Utah in 2002 that estab­lished itself by focus­ing on the aca­d­e­m­ic mar­ket. It has since grown from a sur­vey com­pa­ny that pro­vid­ed a plat­form for stu­dents and pro­fes­sors con­duct­ing research to one with a cus­tomer base of 9,000 across nine coun­tries on four continents.

“Qualtrics is the leader in sur­vey soft­ware when it comes to user expe­ri­ence data,” said Adam Page, ASUG’s mar­ket research specialist.

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from its com­peti­tors is that it can cap­ture and ana­lyze data from real-time sources, includ­ing social media and email. It also offers increased func­tion­al­i­ty on the back end for cus­tomized research and reports. ​“If you’re think­ing about it from the customer’s per­spec­tive, it allows a com­pa­ny that wants to mea­sure cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to do it at a much more sig­nif­i­cant lev­el,” said Page.

Why Mea­sure Cus­tomer Experience?

Mea­sur­ing your cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ence yields valu­able infor­ma­tion that can apply to every­thing you do as an orga­ni­za­tion, rang­ing from con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and engi­neer­ing a prod­uct, to man­u­fac­tur­ing, ware­hous­ing, and ship­ping it. Know­ing whether your end cus­tomer is sat­is­fied, and if not, why not, can influ­ence your strate­gies and deci­sion-mak­ing processes. 

Qualtrics’ expe­ri­ence man­age­ment soft­ware (XM Plat­form) col­lects feed­back and data across four areas of a busi­ness — cus­tomers, employ­ees, prod­uct, and brand. ​“The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is the moment of truth,” said Cheryl Par­sons, ASUG’s CMO, and a for­mer Qualtrics cus­tomer. ​“It pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty into what your cus­tomers want, which will ulti­mate­ly make you more effi­cient as an organization.” 

More Effi­cient at What Cost?

All of this sounds like­ly to be a need­ed tool to help orga­ni­za­tions deliv­er not only a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, but a more effi­cient orga­ni­za­tion. Yet there are still ques­tions that need to be answered. What does this acqui­si­tion mean for cur­rent SAP cus­tomers, both for those who already use Qualtrics and those who don’t? For those who already work with the sur­vey soft­ware, what will hap­pen to the prod­uct? Qualtrics is known for being high­ly cus­tomiz­able and scal­able. Will that remain the same?

For SAP cus­tomers who aren’t using Qualtrics, the ques­tion becomes, ​“What val­ue does it add for my orga­ni­za­tion?” Is this going to be includ­ed with exist­ing SAP con­tracts in the future, or will it be a stand-alone product?

Where Qualtrics Fits With­in SAP C/4HANA

Page added that orga­ni­za­tions look­ing to move to SAP C/4HANA should won­der how Qualtrics will fit into the entire suite. Clear­ly, Qualtrics aligns with the front end. ​“For exam­ple,” he said, ​“if an orga­ni­za­tion moves to the SAP C/4HANA suite to take advan­tage of hav­ing one pro­file for one cus­tomer on the mas­ter data plat­form across all these dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions — mar­ket­ing, com­merce, sales, ser­vice, and cus­tomer data — how does all of that fit in with the expe­ri­ence data?”

Tell Me About the Integration

McDer­mott was quot­ed as say­ing, ​“There are mil­lions of com­plaints every day about dis­ap­point­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. This is called the expe­ri­ence gap. Busi­ness­es used to have time to sort this out, but in today’s unfor­giv­ing world, the dam­age is imme­di­ate, dis­rup­tion is immi­nent. This has shift­ed the chal­lenge from run­ning a busi­ness to guar­an­tee­ing great expe­ri­ences for every sin­gle person.” 

It’s like­ly appeal­ing to orga­ni­za­tions to have data that will pro­vide clear insights about why its cus­tomers are mak­ing pur­chas­es (or not) and to gauge their sat­is­fac­tion lev­els. But what does this mean in terms of inte­grat­ing with the oth­er tech­nolo­gies in your envi­ron­ment, whether you are run­ning SAP ERP sys­tems or non-SAP sys­tems? How would some­thing like Qualtrics connect?

For Now, It’s the What and Why

If you are an SAP cus­tomer, how easy will it be to inte­grate? Will this be a sixth cloud offer­ing under SAP C/4HANA? ​“I think for now, it will remain some­what inde­pen­dent,” Page said. ​“I don’t quite see it tak­ing that shape because it’s not a spe­cif­ic func­tion like sales or mar­ket­ing. It’s about being able to col­lect sur­vey data in a more mean­ing­ful way.” The Qualtrics func­tion­al­i­ty could even find its way into oth­er prod­ucts like SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, which could ben­e­fit from its Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence surveys. 

Col­lect­ing data in a mean­ing­ful way is a step in the right direc­tion. The what and why are straight­for­ward. The how remains to be answered. Our goal is to seek clar­i­ty for both SAP and Qualtrics cus­tomers as the details get hashed out, so be sure to check back with ASUG News and ASUG’s First Five in the com­ing months.