For the first time in ASUG his­to­ry, ASUGFOR­WARD offered SAP cus­tomers a vir­tu­al way to expe­ri­ence a week’s worth of cus­tomer pre­sen­ta­tions, meet­ing its mem­bers wher­ev­er they are. Every orga­ni­za­tion, large or small, must adapt to the chang­ing busi­ness land­scape and find new ways of reach­ing and con­nect­ing with customers.

“Com­pa­nies have had to rethink how they’re going to reach their cus­tomers,” said track emcee Kel­ly Dowl­ing, who is also senior man­ag­er of enter­prise con­tent at ASUG. ​“Sales process­es have been trans­formed, and the demand for some of the prod­ucts and ser­vices that these brands offer has sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed.”

For two days, atten­dees of the Sales and E‑Commerce ses­sions at ASUGFOR­WARD learned about how they can use their SAP port­fo­lio to adjust to their cus­tomers’ new real­i­ty, as well as cre­ate new rev­enue streams and busi­ness strate­gies for a post-COVID-19 world. 

Data Helps Track and Cus­tomize Con­sumer Engagement 

On the first day, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott had a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with the Chief Expe­ri­ence Offi­cer for Under Armour, Paul Fipps. The two dis­cussed the impor­tance of remain­ing agile dur­ing a time of uncer­tain­ty because it is what will allow any busi­ness to align with con­sumer demand. 

Fipps echoed that sen­ti­ment, point­ing to exam­ples of Under Armour’s flex­i­bil­i­ty as well as its will­ing­ness to quick­ly change some­thing already in motion. As the pan­dem­ic swept across the nation and the world, the Under Armour mar­ket­ing team had to act quick­ly to shape the right mes­sage. ​“We were in the midst of one the largest mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in our company’s his­to­ry and it was going very well,” Fipps said. ​“When the coro­n­avirus hit, we had to stop and rethink the mes­sag­ing to the con­sumer because the world had changed so dramatically.” 

The team suc­cess­ful­ly shift­ed its mes­sag­ing with­in three weeks, which it was able to do because of the data it had avail­able. For Under Armour, the change was in the air — or on the ground so to speak, back in Jan­u­ary. ​“We were deal­ing with the impacts of the coro­n­avirus in Chi­na, and then more broad­ly in APAC, and then we watched it go across the globe. We learned a lot dur­ing this time, and we start­ed to apply those learn­ings here. This data helped us learn how con­sumers were mov­ing through this pan­dem­ic — both lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. ​“This gave us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage, as well as show our cus­tomers that we care about their health and well-being.” 

CIO Pan­el Cov­ers Con­ve­nience as the New Currency 

This pan­dem­ic has forced orga­ni­za­tions to rein­vent or reimag­ine how, and where, they do busi­ness. The sta­tus quo is no longer viable. Those who have risen to the chal­lenge are now bet­ter posi­tioned for future dis­rup­tion, as well. Atten­dees heard a pan­el con­ver­sa­tion on how com­pa­nies have had to change their busi­ness mod­els in order to cre­ate new rev­enue streams, retain their cus­tomers, as well as pro­vide bet­ter expe­ri­ences for them. Steve Shan­der of SAP mod­er­at­ed the con­ver­sa­tion between Glenn Pin­nel, CIO of Ben­jamin Moore, and Gary Desai, CIO of Dis­count Tire. He asked both, ​“How has COVID-19 changed your busi­ness model?”

Dis­count Tire fell into the cat­e­go­ry of essen­tial busi­ness­es that were allowed to stay open across the coun­try dur­ing the cri­sis. ​“Our first pri­or­i­ty was to keep our cus­tomers safe,” Desai said. ​“But we also had to meet their new expec­ta­tions. Our process­es had to change, and we had to shift 4,000 ter­mi­nals in our show­rooms overnight.” Desai dis­cussed chang­ing busi­ness mod­els to accom­mo­date cus­tomer expec­ta­tions of curb­side pick­up. ​“That com­plete­ly changed the way IT had to do things,” he added. 

Like­wise, Ben­jamin Moore was deemed essen­tial, which allowed the com­pa­ny to keep its man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion facil­i­ties up and run­ning. ​“We were in the mid­dle of a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion when the pan­dem­ic hap­pened,” Pin­nel said. ​“It cre­at­ed a need to go live much faster than we had planned because we didn’t want to miss any oppor­tu­ni­ties.” The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will allow the com­pa­ny to meet cus­tomer expe­ri­ence demands so that the buy­ing jour­ney no longer requires mak­ing a trip to a store. ​“We are see­ing buy­ing behav­iors change, where cus­tomers are much more com­fort­able going online and nav­i­gat­ing their options that way.” 

COVID-19 has forced a shift in people’s mind­sets. Busi­ness­es need to be ready to meet them where they are — whether that’s online, at the curb, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two. It’s con­ve­nience that is dri­ving strat­e­gy, and orga­ni­za­tions need to be pay­ing atten­tion. ​“To be able to meet cus­tomers where they are,” Desai said, ​“you have to have your dig­i­tal sys­tems and strate­gies in place.” 

Mov­ing the Sales Rela­tion­ship to a Conversation 

On day two of the Sales and E‑Commerce ses­sions, atten­dees learned about the peo­ple, process, and tech­nol­o­gy deci­sions they’ll need to make going for­ward. SAP Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer for Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Este­ban Kol­sky talked about how cus­tomers con­tin­ue to have grow­ing con­trol over con­ver­sa­tions with brands and that ulti­mate­ly, that con­trol will dic­tate how orga­ni­za­tions make impor­tant decisions. 

“We’ve been inno­vat­ing in cus­tomer inter­ac­tions for a while,” Kol­sky said. ​“We’ve gone from sin­gle chan­nel to mul­ti­chan­nel inter­ac­tions, and about 10 years ago, we start­ed this con­cept of omnichan­nel.” He added that the rea­son this mod­el hasn’t worked is because there are just too many peo­ple con­trol­ling too many chan­nels and it lacks the abil­i­ty to pro­vide an equal expe­ri­ence for all cus­tomers. ​“In the next 10 to 20 years, he said, ​“you’re going to see us get to a mod­el that we call head­less, which means the right infor­ma­tion at the right time.

Kol­sky remind­ed atten­dees that we are in a post-dig­i­tal time and that at this point, the focus for orga­ni­za­tions should not be on col­lect­ing more data, but rather on how to use the data they already have. ​“You need to use that data to gain insights that will dic­tate how you cre­ate expe­ri­ences,” he said. He empha­sized that the expe­ri­ence needs to be a place where the cus­tomer and the com­pa­ny can co-exchange val­ue, poten­tial­ly lead­ing to cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty. ​“It’s time to lever­age infor­ma­tion to build rela­tion­ships. Cus­tomers don’t want to have life cycles, they want to have con­ver­sa­tions as part of a con­tin­u­um,” he added. 

How Lead­ers Are Cre­at­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Customers 

Dur­ing the last Sales and E‑Commerce ses­sion, atten­dees lis­tened in as the Ask the Experts pan­el on cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for cus­tomers while also dri­ving effi­cien­cy. The pan­el includ­ed Sumi­ta Jayara­man, senior direc­tor of prod­uct mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at SAP; John Goetz, glob­al prac­tice direc­tor of SAP cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at Bir­la­soft; and Seema Vish­noi, VP of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at SAP. 

The audi­ence was asked to answer the poll ques­tion, ​“Has your company’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy been impact­ed by COVID-19?” It’s not sur­pris­ing that the major­i­ty indi­cat­ed that COVID-19 has, in fact, had an effect on their over­all strat­e­gy, with 46% say­ing they have seen a sig­nif­i­cant impact, and 29% say­ing they’ve seen at least a min­i­mal impact. ​“We are in a state of unrest,” Vish­noi said. ​“We are in an unpre­dictable and unprece­dent­ed envi­ron­ment and each and every busi­ness has been affected.”

As far as technology’s role in cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, ​“The abil­i­ty to sup­port the whole end-to-end process is key,” Goetz said. ​“From a tech­nol­o­gy per­spec­tive, SAP does a nice job in pro­vid­ing that, but tech­nol­o­gy is just one side of it.” He added, ​“You need agili­ty in the orga­ni­za­tion, as well. You need the abil­i­ty to lis­ten to the cus­tomer and under­stand where the oppor­tu­ni­ties are, as well as where you have to improve. And you have to be able to quick­ly imple­ment that.” 

In the end, atten­dees learned that sus­tain­abil­i­ty, trust, and empa­thy are the keys to suc­cess­ful cus­tomer experience.

If you missed our Sales and E‑Commerce ses­sions at ASUG­FOR­WARD, you can catch up by view­ing them on demand. ASUG mem­bers will have unlim­it­ed access to all of the week’s ses­sions on-demand, while non­mem­ber reg­is­trants can view them until Sun­day, June 28 at 11:59 p.m. CT/​Monday, June 29 at 12:59 a.m. ET.