The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is not a new con­cept. What has changed is the way in which busi­ness­es approach, man­age, and nur­ture the com­plete cus­tomer expe­ri­ence — from cap­tur­ing the point of inter­est, through the sale, and all the way through the life of the prod­uct or ser­vice and beyond. 

ASUG News sat down with the authors of ​“SAP C/4HANA: An Intro­duc­tion,” a book from SAP Press, to dis­cuss what makes the newest cus­tomer expe­ri­ence suite unique and what it brings to SAP cus­tomers. Sven Feur­er, senior direc­tor of prod­uct man­age­ment for SAP C/4HANA Suite, San­j­jeev Singh, man­ag­ing part­ner at ASAR Amer­i­ca, and Drew Messinger-Michaels, SAP cus­tomer expe­ri­ence expert ser­vices, helped us get to know SAP C/4HANA. They explained how, when it’s con­nect­ed with intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies, it can pro­vide end-to-end process­es to deliv­er the best cus­tomer experience. 

Sharon: Since its intro­duc­tion near­ly two years ago, how has SAP C/4HANA evolved? 

Sven: Since the announce­ment of SAP C/4HANA in June 2018, we’ve seen enor­mous inter­est in SAP Cus­tomer Experience solu­tions. More than 10,000 cus­tomers are using either the entire SAP C/4HANA suite, or parts of it today. About a third of new cus­tomers are imple­ment­ing a mul­ti­cloud solu­tion. They are real­iz­ing that, to tru­ly deliv­er on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, they need to look beyond a sin­gle-pil­lar application. 

Let me give you some updates on the cloud solu­tions, start­ing with the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud. We have more than 1.7 bil­lion iden­ti­ties and more than 2 bil­lion con­sent records stored in this cen­tral com­po­nent. This is quite sig­nif­i­cant as com­pa­nies lever­age SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud as a start­ing point to build trust­ed rela­tion­ships with their cus­tomers based on trans­paren­cy and per­son­al data control. 

With SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud, our cus­tomers can seam­less­ly con­nect to this cus­tomer data, build and fur­ther enrich their cus­tomer pro­files to ulti­mate­ly run omnichan­nel mar­ket­ing cam­paigns (more than 5 billing per­son­al­ized inter­ac­tions per year).

As more than 7 mil­lion sales­peo­ple use SAP Sales Cloud, we’re pro­cess­ing more than 1 tril­lion com­mis­sion cal­cu­la­tions through our sys­tems. We were recent­ly named a leader in three Gart­ner Mag­ic Quad­rant cat­e­gories, includ­ing sales force automa­tion; con­fig­ure, price, and quote; and sales per­for­mance management.

If you look at cus­tomer ser­vice, we have more than 6.1 mil­lion AI-assist­ed ser­vice tick­ets being processed in the SAP Ser­vice Cloud, where an embed­ded machine learn­ing algo­rithm can clas­si­fy and cat­e­go­rize tick­ets and pro­vide the right respons­es to cus­tomers quickly. 

And last, but not least, when it comes to the SAP Com­merce Cloud, Gart­ner has rec­og­nized SAP as a leader in the Mag­ic Quad­rant in Dig­i­tal Com­merce for the fifth con­sec­u­tive year. In the sec­ond quar­ter of 2019, we report­ed 32 mil­lion orders run­ning through our com­merce systems. 

Sharon: Can you dis­cuss how the five cloud solu­tions work col­lec­tive­ly to help an orga­ni­za­tion man­age the com­plete cus­tomer experience? 

San­j­jeev: Under the SAP C/4HANA suite, there are five cloud solu­tions, which include SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Ser­vice Cloud, SAP Com­merce Cloud, and SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud. 

The foun­da­tion­al piece is the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud. In today’s expe­ri­ence econ­o­my, an orga­ni­za­tion needs to win the trust of their cus­tomers first before any­thing else can hap­pen. The SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud allows orga­ni­za­tions to man­age all cus­tomer records, includ­ing where cus­tomers have con­sent­ed to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about them­selves. This is key in all oth­er inter­ac­tions an orga­ni­za­tion has with its cus­tomers. That’s where the jour­ney should start when­ev­er we are talk­ing about cus­tomer experience.

The next part of that jour­ney is under­stand­ing all the dif­fer­ent touch points your busi­ness will have with your cus­tomers, whether that’s through sales, ser­vice, or mar­ket­ing. SAP Sales Cloud helps inside and field sales orga­ni­za­tions effec­tive­ly engage with cus­tomers and proac­tive­ly man­age the demand around their day-to-day tasks such as sales force automa­tion; intel­li­gent sales exe­cu­tion; sales per­for­mance man­age­ment; con­fig­ure, price, and quote, etc. SAP Ser­vice Cloud offers a com­plete solu­tion for cus­tomer ser­vice and field ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions. You can imple­ment end-to-end ser­vice process­es right from cap­tur­ing ser­vice requests to sched­ul­ing resources, to ser­vice per­for­mance and so on. SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud pro­vides an orga­ni­za­tion the tools it needs to know its cus­tomers and when and how to mar­ket to them from cre­at­ing mar­ket­ing plans to exe­cut­ing end-to-end mar­ket­ing cam­paigns across all the chan­nels. It also mea­sures the effec­tive­ness of those campaigns. 

The last piece — SAP Com­merce Cloud — allows an orga­ni­za­tion to pro­vide a com­plete dig­i­tal brand expe­ri­ence and online store­fronts for both B2B as well as B2C organizations.

The key here is that each of these five cloud offer­ings are build­ing blocks toward enabling an intel­li­gent enterprise. 

Sharon: How does SAP C/4HANA fit with­in the intel­li­gent enter­prise? What busi­ness val­ue does it bring?

Drew: When we talk about the intel­li­gent enter­prise, fun­da­men­tal­ly we’re talk­ing about a vision for the future, even though we’re talk­ing about tech­nol­o­gy that exists today. This is true not just with­in SAP C/4HANA, but also with tech­nolo­gies such as SAP Leonar­do, machine learn­ing, and the Inter­net of Things (IoT).

The intel­li­gent enter­prise is not the cur­rent state for most busi­ness­es, as they are lag­ging in terms of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. SAP C/4HANA is the core of what can get peo­ple from a cur­rent state to the state they want to be in. It address­es the five main pil­lars of how busi­ness­es work right now and how they can real­ly dis­rupt dif­fer­ent industries.

The intel­li­gent enter­prise means being reac­tive to changes in the mar­ket, but also being proac­tive and real­iz­ing the vision over a longer peri­od. An orga­ni­za­tion needs to able to plug in more tra­di­tion­al solu­tions like com­merce, ERPs, sales, and ser­vice into intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies such as machine learn­ing and AI. 

SAP C/4HANA is what con­nects the past to the present to the future.

Sharon: Can you dis­cuss the attrib­ut­es that are con­sis­tent across the entire SAP C/4HANA suite? What are they and what val­ue do they bring? 

Sven: SAP has invest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the SAP C/4HANA suite attrib­ut­es over the last year and a half. The suite has sev­er­al attrib­ut­es that are con­sis­tent across all the indi­vid­ual solu­tions, but the most impor­tant ones can be divid­ed into the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: har­mo­nized user inter­face, end-to-end process­es, embed­ded intel­li­gence, reusable busi­ness ser­vices and mas­ter data ser­vices, and extensibility. 

In busi­ness today, very often cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is bro­ken into silos. Orga­ni­za­tions may have func­tion­al tools for spe­cif­ic tasks such as sales or ser­vice, but strug­gle with bring­ing every­thing togeth­er to have a con­sis­tent, 360-degree view of every­thing. SAP C/4HANA offers a har­mo­nized design lan­guage across all the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence solu­tions using SAP Fiori. It’s a uni­fied expe­ri­ence with a sin­gle login. 

End-to-end process inte­gra­tion is SAP’s key dif­fer­en­tia­tor in the mar­ket. His­tor­i­cal­ly, SAP has more than 40 years of exper­tise in 25 indus­tries and deep knowl­edge in core process­es, be it logis­tics, finance, or man­u­fac­tur­ing. We’ve tak­en that and pro­vid­ed an inte­grat­ed lead-to-cash process based on SAP C/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA. We basi­cal­ly start­ed apply­ing this process to dis­crete man­u­fac­tur­ing but will extend it to oth­er indus­tries and fur­ther process vari­ants as well. 

Third, with embed­ded intel­li­gence we con­tin­u­ous­ly deliv­er data-dri­ven cus­tomer expe­ri­ence sce­nar­ios, build rec­om­men­da­tions, use pre­scrip­tive ana­lyt­ics, and deliv­er per­son­al­ized con­tent and expe­ri­ences at scale. Today, SAP C/4HANA con­sists of more than 40 key sce­nar­ios across mar­ket­ing, com­merce, sales, and ser­vice using SAP Leonar­do Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, machine learn­ing, con­ver­sa­tion­al AI, advanced pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, and IoT technologies.

The fourth one — reusable busi­ness ser­vices and mas­ter data ser­vices — is about hav­ing a har­mo­nized view on mas­ter data and trans­ac­tion­al infor­ma­tion. For a true end-to-end process, data must be shared among all dif­fer­ent sys­tems rather than being repli­cat­ed. As a result, you’ll get one source of truth and always-syn­chro­nized data across the SAP C/4HANA front office and the SAP S/4HANA dig­i­tal core.

And final­ly, it’s about hav­ing a con­sis­tent exten­si­bil­i­ty approach for the entire suite. We pro­vide this through the SAP Cloud Plat­form Exten­sion Fac­to­ry. It allows cus­tomers and part­ners to devel­op event-dri­ven exten­sions for SAP appli­ca­tions using microser­vices and server­less func­tions in the cloud.

Sharon: What are the inte­gra­tion options for each of the five solu­tions with­in SAP C/4HANA with oth­er prod­ucts with­in the SAP prod­uct port­fo­lio? What about with third-par­ty applications?

San­j­jeev: What’s key is to first under­stand that all the indi­vid­ual solu­tions with­in SAP C/4HANA are designed so that they can be used on their own with­out any oth­er SAP solu­tion. So, for exam­ple, if you need to stand up a com­merce store, you don’t need to have an SAP ERP. You can sim­ply use SAP Com­merce Cloud and con­nect it to any (SAP or non-SAP) back-end sys­tem. The same is true for any of the five cloud solutions. 

You can inte­grate with the APIs avail­able in SAP C/4HANA. SAP has done a won­der­ful job of pro­vid­ing SAP Cloud Plat­form Inte­gra­tion, which is mid­dle­ware you can use to not only inte­grate all these dif­fer­ent cloud solu­tions, but also back-end solu­tions such as SAP S/4HANA or any oth­er application.

Sharon: What are the intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies dri­ving dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions across SAP solu­tions and how do they work with­in SAP C/4HANA?

Sven: Gen­er­al­ly, there’s a mix of intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies — like AI/​machine learn­ing, con­ver­sa­tion­al AI, pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, IoT, or blockchain — which are embed­ded in SAP C/4HANA through SAP’s cloud platform.

For exam­ple, SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud helps you under­stand and ana­lyze data, as well as pro­vide pre­dic­tions based on that data. For instance, baked into SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud, SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud empow­ers mar­keters to make intel­li­gent deci­sions using data visu­al­iza­tion tools, from audi­ence dis­cov­ery to cam­paign per­for­mance analysis. 

Anoth­er intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy is machine learn­ing with SAP Leonar­do. Embed­ded in SAP C/4HANA it helps track the cus­tomer pulse and pro­vide insights in cus­tomer behav­ior; cre­ate rec­om­men­da­tions for prod­ucts, offers and prices; or auto­mate tick­et pro­cess­ing in cus­tomer service. 

The third intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy is SAP Con­ver­sa­tion­al AI, which allows you to inter­act with a sys­tem using nat­ur­al lan­guage. We’ve inte­grat­ed this tech­nol­o­gy with SAP Com­merce and Ser­vice Cloud and are now look­ing into voice-enabled sce­nar­ios for SAP Sales Cloud. 

Anoth­er promis­ing tech­nol­o­gy we are plan­ning to apply in the future is SAP’s Intel­li­gent Robot­ic Process Automa­tion. It helps auto­mate repet­i­tive process­es by watch­ing a busi­ness user per­form­ing a cer­tain task and automat­ing those steps on behalf of the user in either an attend­ed or unat­tend­ed way. 

Final­ly, IoT. SAP rec­og­nizes this as an intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy that allows an orga­ni­za­tion to con­nect to the phys­i­cal world. Take com­merce, for exam­ple, with auto­mat­ic pre­dic­tive order replen­ish­ment based on IoT events. 

All of these can be con­nect­ed and used through­out the SAP C/4HANA suite to cre­ate a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and improve over­all busi­ness outcomes. 

Sharon: What key points would you high­light in a busi­ness case to adopt the SAP C/4HANA suite? 

San­j­jeev: It all depends on the busi­ness and what it is try­ing to accom­plish. What is your goal? The answer to that ques­tion must be the fun­da­men­tal way of look­ing at the SAP C/4HANA solution.

Busi­ness­es must iden­ti­fy that crit­i­cal area where they want to make impact in their cus­tomer expe­ri­ence jour­ney. Then, from there, build your busi­ness case, whether it’s for one cloud solu­tion, mul­ti­ple cloud solu­tions, or the entire suite. 

Sharon: What are the first steps need­ed to adopt SAP C/4HANA?

San­j­jeev: The first step is to edu­cate your­self. Under­stand what SAP C/4HANA and each cloud solu­tion has to offer you. When you start look­ing at dif­fer­ent options, it can real­ly get con­fus­ing. So, talk to experts, talk to part­ners, and ful­ly under­stand the offer­ings before you pick what’s right for you. 

The sec­ond step is to iden­ti­fy which of the five cloud solu­tions can real­ly lead to the goal you want to accom­plish. Where do you see the most impact in your orga­ni­za­tion around cus­tomer expe­ri­ence? That’s where you should start, and then grow from. 

Last, but not least, start build­ing the exper­tise with­in your orga­ni­za­tion so that you can remain agile with how the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence will con­tin­ue to change. Your cus­tomers are con­stant­ly chang­ing, your mar­ket­place is con­stant­ly chang­ing, so your solu­tion will also con­stant­ly change. Hav­ing in-house exper­tise will help you take full advan­tage of SAP C/4HANA solu­tion as you deploy new capa­bil­i­ties and new process­es to deliv­er bet­ter cus­tomer experiences. 

Sharon: Can you sum­ma­rize the book in a cou­ple of sentences? 

Drew: When you’re look­ing into the intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies with­in SAP C/4HANA, most peo­ple are intrigued. Most peo­ple see a lot of val­ue. But most peo­ple don’t know where to begin, don’t know how these terms fit togeth­er, or don’t under­stand where one tech­nol­o­gy begins and anoth­er ends. This book tells you that, but then goes beyond that to put those tech­nolo­gies in the larg­er con­text of how your enter­prise can become an intel­li­gent enter­prise. When you read the book, you’ll under­stand why it’s called SAP C/4HANA, and why the cus­tomer real­ly is at the center.

Learn more about what to expect from SAP C/4HANA and how SAP C/4HANA can con­nect your cus­tomer jour­ney. ASUG Mem­bers can reg­is­ter for a road map webi­nar on SAP C/4HANA.