There have been a lot of changes in the ways that com­pa­nies col­lect cus­tomer data, as well as how cus­tomers per­ceive the val­ue of shar­ing their data. When you lay­er that on top of recent reg­u­la­tions that con­trol how com­pa­nies can col­lect and use data, the need to man­age those process­es becomes crit­i­cal for a com­pa­ny to stay competitive.

That’s pre­cise­ly why SAP acquired Gigya and inte­grat­ed it with­in its SAP C/4HANA suite.

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 SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud to bet­ter under­stand how the plat­forms give the sales and mar­ket­ing teams the tools they need to know their cus­tomers and what to offer them.

Next, we sat down with Ben Jack­son, gen­er­al man­ag­er of SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud to under­stand how man­ag­ing your cus­tomer data well is crit­i­cal to your busi­ness strategy.

Sharon: Can you walk us through how a cus­tomer would use SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud?

Ben: The SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud is split into three dif­fer­ent prod­ucts — SAP Iden­ti­ty, SAP Con­sent, and SAP Pro­file — serv­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent use cases.

SAP Iden­ti­ty is like the front door to the appli­ca­tion. It col­lects first-par­ty, per­mis­sion-based data and stream­lines the onboard­ing expe­ri­ence. It’s a clas­sic cus­tomer and iden­ti­ty man­age­ment solu­tion that’s meant to make the user expe­ri­ence seam­less, but also to con­sol­i­date data through mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal touch points to col­lect rich­er profiles.

SAP Con­sent cov­ers enter­prise con­sent and pref­er­ence man­age­ment. While com­pa­nies are col­lect­ing this first-par­ty data, it’s now become very impor­tant to col­lect the right con­sent infor­ma­tion and put the con­sumer in con­trol of their own data. Com­pa­nies can do this by giv­ing the con­sumer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to view their data, down­load it, delete it, or freeze their account.

SAP Pro­file is about stor­ing data. So, once you’ve col­lect­ed that data, it’s about stor­ing it with the asso­ci­at­ed con­sent infor­ma­tion and cre­at­ing rich pro­files on that cus­tomer to cross-sell or upsell. Just as impor­tant­ly, SAP Pro­file allows orga­ni­za­tions to orches­trate and inte­grate that data into oth­er down­stream sys­tems. For exam­ple, you can inte­grate it with­in CRM solu­tions or mar­ket­ing automa­tion solutions.

It’s impor­tant not only to be able to share data across the infra­struc­ture, but also share the lev­el of con­sent that the con­sumer has agreed to. Part of SAP Pro­file solu­tion is that you can orches­trate both the data and the con­sent. For exam­ple, if a cus­tomer requests that data be delet­ed, it’s impor­tant not only to delete that data from the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud appli­ca­tion, but also from all oth­er sys­tems with­in the organization.

Sharon: How can data dri­ve bet­ter cus­tomer experiences?

Ben: I would ask, ​“how can you pro­vide bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ences with­out data?” My belief is that col­lect­ing the right data with the right per­mis­sions is instru­men­tal to pro­vid­ing bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. And cus­tomers demand it. But at the same time, they don’t want to make that data avail­able to com­pa­nies at all costs. So, it’s impor­tant that com­pa­nies be trans­par­ent about the val­ue exchange that they’re offer­ing to cus­tomers when they ask for that data. It’s also impor­tant to pro­vide tools that make it very easy for a cus­tomer to under­stand how their data is being used, what terms of ser­vice they’re sign­ing up for, and then what they can expect in return for offer­ing that data.

A sec­ond point is that I believe com­pa­nies are invest­ing a lot of mon­ey in redefin­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It’s about mak­ing expe­ri­ences more per­son­al­ized, and you can’t do that with­out feed­ing the best data into your sys­tems. SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud real­ly allows us to orches­trate that data into those sys­tems to stream­line that process.

Sharon: How can SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud help alle­vi­ate some of the pain points around main­tain­ing and shar­ing accu­rate and com­plete data?

Ben: The most valu­able data to an orga­ni­za­tion is the data that is offered by the con­sumer. It’s also the most accu­rate. It is much more valu­able than anony­mous or click­stream data. Or even prob­a­bilis­tic data, where com­pa­nies are guess­ing who I am as an indi­vid­ual, or what demo­graph­ic I fit into, or what prod­ucts I’m inter­est­ed in. Com­pa­nies need to get a bit clos­er to their cus­tomers and cre­ate more trans­par­ent rela­tion­ships with them.

If you’re get­ting that type of data into your e‑commerce sys­tems or into your mar­ket­ing automa­tion sys­tems, you are going to be able to pro­vide a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. And it goes with­out say­ing that data will become much more valu­able, and the rela­tion­ships that com­pa­nies are build­ing with their cus­tomers will become much closer.

Sharon: What did you learn as you built Gigya’s sales oper­a­tions that you were able to bring to the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud?

Ben: We’ve helped define the cus­tomer iden­ti­ty and man­age­ment access mar­ket, but we’ve seen a lot of changes. Many of our cus­tomers over the last six years have gone through this phase of using inter­nal­ly built sys­tems, which were designed per­haps for an era where they had few­er chan­nels, few­er brands, and few­er dig­i­tal prop­er­ties. And those types of do-it-your­self solu­tions do not fit today’s envi­ron­ment. We’ve also learned a lot about new leg­is­la­tion, and we’ve been work­ing with our clients to define how we need to change and adapt the prod­uct to pre­pare for those regulations.

Beyond the tech­nol­o­gy, we’ve got a team of pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices that have led hun­dreds of imple­men­ta­tions and learned a lot in terms of build­ing out thou­sands of inte­gra­tions over that peri­od as they’ve migrat­ed hun­dreds of mil­lions of iden­ti­ty records into the Gigya platform.

When we engage with com­pa­nies, before we even start to inte­grate or talk about prod­ucts, we need to under­stand what their objec­tives are in terms of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that they want to pro­vide. And then we can work back to fig­ure out what tech­nol­o­gy and what data they need to col­lect from their cus­tomers to pro­vide those types of experiences.

Sharon: How much of Gigya has SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud inte­grat­ed into today’s offer­ing? What’s the road map for bring­ing these together?

Ben: We’ve rebrand­ed, but SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud is effec­tive­ly the Gigya offer­ings. Even before the acqui­si­tion, we already had pre­built inte­gra­tions with sev­er­al of the SAP C/4HANA areas, such as SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud and SAP Com­merce Cloud. We’re cur­rent­ly enhanc­ing those inte­gra­tions and we’ve added SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Ser­vice Cloud.

The only way we can help a com­pa­ny pro­vide a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is by offer­ing an inte­grat­ed plat­form. And part of that is inte­grat­ing the cus­tomer records between each one of those func­tions. SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud can absolute­ly play a key role in doing that.

We can also help in terms of inte­grat­ing the front office with the back office. If we’re going to pro­vide that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, we need to be able to inte­grate oper­a­tional data from the back office with front-office data to stream­line processes.

Sharon: How does Cus­tomer Data Cloud work with oth­er SAP offer­ings to help an orga­ni­za­tion become an intel­li­gent enterprise?

Ben: Cus­tomers want to see inte­gra­tion with Mas­ter Data Man­age­ment (MDM) ser­vices they get from SAP. We’re cap­tur­ing a lot of data using SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud from the begin­ning of a user’s jour­ney. It could be as sim­ple as just col­lect­ing an email address for a newslet­ter sub­scrip­tion, but then start­ing to build a pro­file of that cus­tomer through­out that user jour­ney until they become a cus­tomer, and then mak­ing sure we inte­grate that pro­file data with the MDM solu­tion. You can dri­ve more intel­li­gence into that cus­tomer jour­ney, and that real­ly starts to ful­fill sup­port­ing your intel­li­gent enter­prise strategy.

We’re also look­ing to see how we can inte­grate the ear­ly user jour­ney data and authen­ti­ca­tion data that SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud is col­lect­ing with tools such as SAP Con­cur and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, as well as oth­er applications.

Part of the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud appli­ca­tion is about being able to inte­grate with any type of solu­tion — SAP or not. And under­stand­ing that we need to cre­ate an open ecosys­tem to allow oth­er appli­ca­tions, or oth­er areas of the busi­ness, to have access to that very valu­able data that we’re collecting.

And so, part of that is an SAP-wide ini­tia­tive, as part of the Open Data Ini­tia­tive, where SAP has part­nered with Adobe and Microsoft to cre­ate a com­mon data struc­ture to be able to share data with­in SAP, but also out­side of SAP as well.

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.