SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence (CX) has under­gone a sig­nif­i­cant strat­e­gy shift in recent years, with SAP mov­ing from a pre­vi­ous focus on tra­di­tion­al cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) func­tion­al­i­ty to pur­sue more cloud-cen­tric, indus­try-spe­cif­ic CX.

As part of that evo­lu­tion, the SAP roadmap for intel­li­gent CX was unveiled at this year’s SAP Sap­phire and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, enhanced by the pow­er of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and data. Few indi­vid­u­als will be more cen­tral to the suc­cess of this new direc­tion than Ritu Bhar­ga­va, Pres­i­dent & Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, Indus­tries & CX/CRM at SAP.

Bhar­ga­va, who began her career as a devel­op­er at SAP, returned to the com­pa­ny in 2021; she pre­vi­ous­ly spent a decade each at Sales­force and Ora­cle, and she also began her career as a devel­op­er at SAP. In her cur­rent role, she leads prod­uct, engi­neer­ing, user expe­ri­ence, strat­e­gy, and oper­a­tions for the entire SAP CX portfolio.

In the sec­ond half of our wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Bhar­ga­va dis­cussed the realigned ​“indus­try-first” strat­e­gy for SAP CX, the emer­gence of SAP Dig­i­tal Assis­tant, and why AI and automa­tion are cru­cial to the suc­cess of intel­li­gent CX. And for more from this SAP leader, read the first half of our con­ver­sa­tion here.

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

ASUG: Ear­li­er this year, SAP announced a realigned ​“indus­try-first” approach to SAP CX. In prac­tice, what does this approach look like?

Bhar­ga­va: It’s an intrigu­ing dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, being ​“indus­try-focused” or ​“indus­try-tai­lored,” but you can think of it as whether you’re ​“CX” or ​“CX for retail.” Per­haps you’re both.

If you are a major gro­cery retail­er, you need to know inven­to­ry data, sup­ply chain data, user pro­files, buy­ing behav­iors, cam­paigns, mar­ket­ing emails, pro­mo­tions, loy­al­ty pro­grams, order ful­fill­ment process­es, returns man­age­ment process, and so on — and you need all of those capa­bil­i­ties from all our prod­ucts. Right now, you might have a bill of mate­ri­als (BOM) that has all these prod­ucts that are sold, and then the cus­tomer gets a sys­tems inte­gra­tor or does it in-house, build­ing all this as their architecture.

Or, I could say, ​“I’m going to give that to you out-of-the-box,” which means that from the time the retail cus­tomer signs in, it’s one sin­gle sign-on across nine or 10 prod­ucts, from the ERP to CX. If the cus­tomer clicks on one par­tic­u­lar link, it is a hard link that does not ask for addi­tion­al sign-in, giv­ing them the same expe­ri­ence across all prod­ucts. More impor­tant­ly, they get pay-as-you-go com­pos­able pric­ing, so they buy only as many units as they need. 

That’s where ​“indus­try-tai­lored” CX comes to life. We know the indus­tries. There are 27 – 30 indus­tries SAP works in. Now, we can start bring­ing that dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion into pro­vid­ing holis­tic capabilities. 

ASUG: With regards to CX adop­tion, are there any indus­tries you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on? 

Bhar­ga­va: We’re think­ing about how we can become increas­ing­ly indus­try-tai­lored by think­ing about capa­bil­i­ties that are agnos­tic of indus­tries, at a suite lev­el, that can still pow­er the com­pos­abil­i­ty of part­ners com­ing and work­ing with us. 

For auto­mo­tive cus­tomers, there are parts sup­pli­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, and deal­er net­works; then, there’s its inter­sec­tion with retail, with elec­tric cars and charg­er sta­tion net­works. What does that look like, and how does that mon­e­ti­za­tion hap­pen for the ecosys­tem of a retail expe­ri­ence sit­ting side-by-side with auto­mo­tive? This also fits into our over­all sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals of how we help advance our more car­bon-neu­tral, car­bon-neg­a­tive products. 

There are tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties there, as once-thick bound­aries are blur­ring between indus­tries. Com­mon­al­i­ties exist, as all these indus­tries want to scale their per­for­mance, with flex­i­bil­i­ty, com­pos­abil­i­ty, per­son­al­iza­tion, and build­ing fur­ther with part­ners. What do you focus on for more organ­ic inno­va­tion, and where do you leave it for part­ners to build on top of? That’s where this becomes an indus­try-led approach. 

ASUG: What do you see of the role SAP Dig­i­tal Assis­tant and its gen­er­a­tive AI capa­bil­i­ties will play in the SAP CX portfolio? 

Bhar­ga­va: Con­sid­er the process of send­ing an email to a col­league. When you start typ­ing the email, in what­ev­er con­text that you are in, SAP Dig­i­tal Assis­tant gives you a side-pan­el that will note the last time this col­league was in touch, the three points that were dis­cussed, and any out­stand­ing deliv­er­ables that should be asked for in this lat­est email.

In the back­ground, SAP Dig­i­tal Assis­tant will parse every inter­ac­tion and con­nec­tion you had with that col­league, or with their clos­est con­nec­tions that are also con­nect­ed to you. It can then tell you the next steps; the best time to con­nect with the col­league, the best e‑mail to send. It can curate that e‑mail for you, through Chat­G­PT inte­gra­tion, and gen­er­ate it. That’s just one small use case. It can be used across CX and Indus­try solu­tions – from com­merce, mar­ket­ing, ser­vice, retail and many more. 

We did an alpha release at SAP Sap­phire and are now onboard­ing our own inter­nal sales team at SAP. We’re tar­get­ing, lat­er this year, to have a gen­er­al­ly avail­able release with more fea­tures. First, we’re test­ing it with­in SAP and see­ing how it serves our oper­a­tions. The best part is that it’s a com­bi­na­tion of our own pro­pri­etary AI mod­els and what we’re build­ing on through part­ner­ships with Ope­nAI and oth­er vendors.

ASUG: SAP recent­ly not­ed Piz­za Hut, Carhartt, and smart Europe as three SAP CX cus­tomers ben­e­fit­ing from indus­try-first CX. Can you shed some light on either those cus­tomer sto­ries or oth­ers you see as exem­plary case stud­ies in how SAP CX strat­e­gy can dri­ve success? 

Bhar­ga­va: Carhartt tran­si­tioned its entire back-office oper­a­tions with SAP and has been through a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Carhartt want­ed agili­ty and com­pos­abil­i­ty. Hav­ing been in the busi­ness for 130 years, imag­ine the com­plex process­es Carhartt had to sim­pli­fy. Carhartt want­ed to focus on per­son­al­iza­tion, on con­nect­ing enter­prise data from the back office to the front office, on pow­er­ing e‑commerce with sup­ply chain and inven­to­ry data. Intel­li­gent CX is four things: indus­try-tai­lored, con­nect­ed, insight­ful, and adap­tive, and Carhartt rep­re­sents that.

Swarovs­ki recent­ly launched the LUX­ig­nite strat­e­gy to con­sol­i­date its process­es, and to dri­ve delight to cus­tomers at every touch point. How can Swarovs­ki know who the cus­tomer is, have a 360-degree view of the con­sumer, know their spend­ing pow­er, and use mar­ket­ing insights to under­stand when is the right time to talk to them? Swarovs­ki also cares about sus­tain­abil­i­ty and is val­ues dri­ven. Sus­tain­able dia­monds are a big deal for their business. 

Swarovs­ki also wants to give cus­tomers high-end expe­ri­ences, rather than sim­ply man­u­fac­tur­ing dia­monds. With SAP Com­merce Cloud and a suite of oth­er SAP solu­tions, and as an SAP cus­tomer of more than 40 years, Swarovs­ki is a wall-to-wall SAP shop — from ERP to sup­ply chain to SAP Ari­ba, SAP BTP, and SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud. It’s been huge for Swarovs­ki to have a con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence, because their end-to-end expe­ri­ence is every­thing for them. 

ASUG: What else would you share about your vision for CX, and what are you excit­ed about going forward?

Bhar­ga­va: It’s not a mar­ket­ing pitch or just a vision. We’re talk­ing about an intel­li­gent CX, where we are sim­pli­fy­ing the BOM, process­es, com­mer­cial­iza­tion, and more. Every touch­point will be dri­ven by AI and automa­tion, and the solu­tions are com­pos­able. If I were to build CX and CRM today, it would be intel­li­gent by default. It would be AI-dri­ven by default — not every­where but in a way that makes tech­nol­o­gy trans­par­ent and pro­vides pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy to the end user. 

I’m hyper-focused on exe­cu­tion, not just talk­ing about a strat­e­gy. My team is exe­cut­ing incre­men­tal­ly to deliv­er out­comes. Tech­nol­o­gy is rapid­ly chang­ing, the world is rapid­ly chang­ing, and users’ needs are rapid­ly chang­ing. So, we need to keep up but also avoid too much dis­rup­tion for our cus­tomers and end users. We have to take some of that dis­rup­tion on our­selves, to antic­i­pate needs and demands.

ASUG: Can you speak about SAP Recom­merce and why help­ing retail­ers to man­age returned goods is a priority?

Bhar­ga­va: Think of it as our answer to ​“reuse, reduce, recy­cle.” It is a fea­ture built on SAP Com­merce Cloud. If a cus­tomer wants to return a prod­uct, instead of just respond­ing to the cus­tomer that they can send it back, SAP Recom­merce could sug­gest how to sus­tain­ably han­dle the return. Instead of send­ing it to a land­fill, can it be donat­ed to the near­est Good­will or reused it anoth­er way? 

The biggest prob­lem for retail­ers right now is how much of their rev­enue is tied up in goods that are in tran­sit. Even before you sell it, you want to have the best size, the best fit, the best prob­a­bil­i­ty of being sold. Recom­merce opti­mizes for the least num­ber of returns and then advis­es on what cus­tomers can do with those returns. It’s an SAP inno­va­tion, from scratch, and it’s impor­tant. You don’t want excess, you want few­er returns, and you want more used prod­ucts in the market. 

We are in the ini­tial stages, and plan for SAP Recom­merce to be more gen­er­al­ly avail­able lat­er this year. We’re look­ing for pilot cus­tomers, and the pipeline is look­ing pret­ty sol­id. The sub-seg­ments of retail are good start­ing points, such as high fash­ion and fur­ni­ture, as well as con­sumer goods. 

For more from our inter­view with Ritu Bhar­ga­va, read the first half of the con­ver­sa­tion, on the impor­tance of com­pos­abil­i­ty to a cloud-cen­tric and indus­try-focused CX, here.