How the inter­net has changed the dai­ly flow of busi­ness is stag­ger­ing. One per­fect exam­ple is the way com­pa­nies pur­chase expan­sive pieces of enter­prise soft­ware. Busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) soft­ware pur­chas­es used to involve a lot of mov­ing parts and were typ­i­cal­ly done in-per­son. Now, there is demand to sim­pli­fy and speed up the process. 

As tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion con­tin­ues to increase, com­pa­nies aren’t inter­est­ed in jump­ing through the hur­dles of buy­ing ERP plat­forms in-per­son. Instead, they want to eas­i­ly com­pare vital infor­ma­tion about the soft­ware — like price, func­tion­al­i­ty, and licens­ing — and quick­ly make an informed deci­sion. Cus­tomers want the soft­ware they need when they need it. Soft­ware providers are cater­ing to this shift by mak­ing plat­forms avail­able for demos and pur­chas­es via online marketplaces. 

SAP Dig­i­tal Com­merce offers cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers dig­i­tal solu­tions to pur­chase and add to SAP, includ­ing SAP Store, SAP App Cen­ter, and SAP​.com. ASUG had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down with Aman­da Moun­tain, glob­al VP of mar­ket­ing for SAP dig­i­tal com­merce, to talk about these changes, how SAP is respond­ing to shift­ing cus­tomer demands, and how cur­rent and future SAP cus­tomers can make the most of these online marketplaces. 

ASUG: Cus­tomer expec­ta­tions con­tin­ue to change, and com­pa­nies look to pro­vide an expe­ri­ence that match­es those expec­ta­tions. How will this con­tin­ue to evolve at SAP? 

Aman­da: It will con­tin­ue to become more con­sumer-like. We’ve seen the rise in busi­ness-to-con­sumer (B2C) orga­ni­za­tions, and that has set the bench­mark for cus­tomer expec­ta­tions of what online busi­ness should be like. How­ev­er, I think we all know that a B2B sale is much more com­plex than most B2C sales, and even more so for enter­prise software.

Pur­chas­ing will also con­tin­ue to evolve as we’re able to find more ways to mask that com­plex­i­ty and pro­vide the sim­plest pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence. It will con­tin­ue to become more con­sumer-friend­ly and, at the same time, more enter­prise-grade. There are still some lim­i­ta­tions around the size and com­plex­i­ty of the deal that you can han­dle in a dig­i­tal chan­nel, but that won’t be the case forever.

The SAP Dig­i­tal Com­merce team is work­ing with some of the biggest SAP accounts to under­stand real enter­prise-grade needs for dig­i­tal buy­ing in an effort to evolve the plat­form. By work­ing close­ly togeth­er, I think we’ll have a more ubiq­ui­tous dig­i­tal chan­nel, rang­ing from very small deals to very large deals for a wider swath of the port­fo­lio. I think it will con­tin­ue to move in that direc­tion. It’s going to be impor­tant because the B2B buy­er wants that same lev­el of assur­ance and trust in the dig­i­tal buy­ing expe­ri­ence that they have grown used to in tra­di­tion­al enter­prise-buy­ing methods.

ASUG: That makes sense. It’s a very com­plex process and a lot goes into the deci­sion-mak­ing. Hav­ing that con­nec­tion to help guide you through those deci­sions is essen­tial. What type of soft­ware is being pur­chased dig­i­tal­ly? And what does it mean for SAP and its offerings?

Aman­da: Accord­ing to the 2019 B2B Dig­i­tal Buy­ers’ Jour­ney report, which SAP Dig­i­tal Com­merce worked with Futu­rum Research on last year, com­pa­nies make a strate­gic move to the cloud as part of their tech­nol­o­gy and trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy. That means they’re also trans­form­ing or dig­i­tiz­ing their pro­cure­ment process, and they’re no longer want­i­ng to wait for cal­en­darized or annu­al pur­chas­ing cycles. They want the solu­tion that they need when they need it. They’re look­ing for speed and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy from the dig­i­tal purchase.

In terms of spe­cif­ic cat­e­gories of soft­ware being pur­chased dig­i­tal­ly, our full ana­lyt­ics port­fo­lio from SAP is avail­able for online pur­chase. That cat­e­go­ry is one of our top sell­ers online. There’s also the SAP Cloud Plat­form port­fo­lio, includ­ing devel­op­er tools like SAP Web IDE, some of the add-ons and tools that sur­round that plat­form, and edu­ca­tion offer­ings like SAP Learn­ing Hub. Those are some of the most pop­u­lar SAP solu­tions pur­chased digitally. 

The study bore out our expe­ri­ence and added some new answers. The peo­ple sur­veyed weren’t just SAP cus­tomers — they includ­ed any­one who pur­chas­es enter­prise soft­ware dig­i­tal­ly. The types of soft­ware most pur­chased includ­ed CRM plat­forms as well as ana­lyt­ics and busi­ness intel­li­gence soft­ware, with 46% and 42% already pur­chas­ing that soft­ware dig­i­tal­ly, respec­tive­ly. The sur­vey then took things a step fur­ther and looked for areas where enter­prise soft­ware buy­ers are going to be mak­ing dig­i­tal pur­chas­es in the future. Edu­ca­tion is at the top of the list, along with things like enter­prise per­for­mance man­age­ment and gov­er­nance, risk, and com­pli­ance solutions. 

ASUG: Let’s talk about what SAP is doing. You’ve touched on this a lit­tle bit, but can you give me some spe­cif­ic exam­ples of how SAP is using dig­i­tal chan­nels to build trust and deliv­er bet­ter expe­ri­ences for its customers?

Aman­da: If you look at the whole buy­ing jour­ney, it’s not just the trans­ac­tion or the pur­chase. It starts much ear­li­er than that in the search-and-dis­cov­ery phase. Cus­tomers then move into the con­sid­er­a­tion phase before the pur­chase and post-pur­chase phas­es. It’s a whole end-to-end jour­ney, and each step of that is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build trust.

The dis­cov­ery and con­sid­er­a­tion phas­es are the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make sure the nec­es­sary mate­r­i­al is avail­able. Are there cus­tomer case stud­ies avail­able? Is there a prod­uct spec sheet avail­able that talks about depen­den­cies or sys­tem require­ments? Is the price clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed? Does the cus­tomer under­stand what has an impact on the price? 

Each step in the jour­ney is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to win or lose trust. SAP is think­ing through each step, the rel­e­vance to the cus­tomer, and what they’re going to need — mak­ing sure that all of that is available.

ASUG: Part of what cus­tomers are look­ing for is a tri­al peri­od. How impor­tant is it to pro­vide tri­al peri­ods for cus­tomers and why?

Aman­da: It is incred­i­bly impor­tant. Accord­ing to the 2019 B2B Dig­i­tal Buy­ers’ Jour­ney report, 90% of orga­ni­za­tions con­sid­er prod­uct tri­als to be impor­tant to their dig­i­tal-buy­ing process. Eighty-five per­cent of respon­dents rat­ed one-on-one online prod­uct demos or video prod­uct demos as ​“very impor­tant.” And four out of five orga­ni­za­tions said they con­sid­er paid proof of con­cepts impor­tant to their buy­ing jour­ney. So, even if it’s not a free tri­al, they would pay for that test dri­ve to prove how this solu­tion is going to fit their busi­ness, along with expect­ed results and ben­e­fits. The research bears that out in black and white, and our own expe­ri­ence also bol­sters that.

There is a full list of avail­able tri­als for SAP prod­ucts on SAP​.com. One that I would like to high­light is SAP Cloud Plat­form, which offers a 90-day com­pli­men­ta­ry tri­al. The team recent­ly launched a new user inter­face, which offers users a guid­ed tour and hands-on tuto­ri­als. When you’re reg­is­tered for that tri­al, you also go into a nur­ture flow, where SAP will reach out and help with nav­i­gat­ing and inter­con­nect­ing the dots between dif­fer­ent ser­vices with­in SAP Cloud Platform. 

ASUG: What do you say to orga­ni­za­tions that aren’t pur­chas­ing dig­i­tal­ly? If they’re hes­i­tat­ing to do so, what does this mean for them short-term and long-term?

Aman­da: I would ask them ​“why not?” Orga­ni­za­tions that aren’t pur­chas­ing dig­i­tal­ly are going to start feel­ing the impact as their com­peti­tors con­tin­ue to do so. With a dig­i­tal-buy­ing approach, you get solu­tions much faster. You’re up and run­ning faster, oper­at­ing more effi­cient­ly, con­duct­ing busi­ness faster, and bak­ing agili­ty into your busi­ness and your pro­cure­ment process. In the long-term, com­pa­nies’ com­peti­tors will begin to out­pace them if they don’t start mov­ing this direction.

ASUG: What’s been some of the feed­back that you’ve heard from SAP cus­tomers on the SAP Dig­i­tal Com­merce platform?

Aman­da: Cus­tomers want this approach. When SAP Dig­i­tal Com­merce first launched about five years ago, the reac­tion from cus­tomers was skep­ti­cal — cus­tomers weren’t quite sold yet on being able to buy enter­prise-grade soft­ware dig­i­tal­ly. What’s been refresh­ing and val­i­dat­ing as I’ve grown up with the busi­ness, is that I don’t get that reac­tion any­more. Cus­tomers now talk about how they’ve ben­e­fit­ed from being able to buy digitally. 

ASUG: What do you want ASUG mem­bers to know about SAP Dig­i­tal Commerce?

Aman­da: I hope that every ASUG mem­ber will check out SAP App Cen­ter to see what inno­va­tion is avail­able from the SAP ecosys­tem. It’s an SAP-cen­tric mar­ket­place. I also hope they’ll look at SAP Store and see what’s avail­able. The port­fo­lio on SAP Store grows every week. It’s worth check­ing out today, even if you were already there last month. It’s help­ful beyond new solu­tions and pur­chas­es because we also heard from cus­tomers, loud­ly and clear­ly, that they active­ly want self-ser­vice mod­els when it comes to adding more of the same. 

Learn more about how data sci­en­tists are improv­ing the pro­cure­ment process deliv­ered through SAP solutions.