Announced dur­ing the recent SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence LIVE event, SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein made no mis­take about it: SAP is dou­bling down on its road map for cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty. This is not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing many orga­ni­za­tions today are look­ing to bet­ter con­nect and engage with their cus­tomers as means to not only stay­ing com­pet­i­tive, but also to stay in busi­ness altogether. 

ASUG sat down with Adri­an Nash, who was the VP of prod­uct at Gigya before SAP acquired the com­pa­ny, but cur­rent­ly serves as the head of strat­e­gy for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at SAP. ​“My pre­vi­ous role involved strat­e­gy, which involves being able to look out two to five years and deter­mine the best path to inno­va­tion,” Nash said. ​“That’s what I con­tin­ue to do today as far as under­stand­ing where best to invest while also think­ing about what comes next.” 

We dis­cussed the SAP cus­tomer expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy, as well as how it can help busi­ness­es not only respond to today’s grow­ing demands, but also bet­ter plan for a chang­ing future. 

Sharon: This is a fair­ly new role for you in what is a rebrand of the SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio. From a high-lev­el overview, what goals have you set in place, and what are your plans to achieve them?

Adri­an: Think­ing about the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio, we have indi­vid­ual solu­tions that are very impor­tant in the spaces where they oper­ate, and mak­ing sure that they’re set up for suc­cess is my over­all goal. I will approach that by engag­ing with the prod­uct orga­ni­za­tions in those indi­vid­ual solu­tions and then mak­ing sure to con­nect them into the broad­er top­ics around the end-to-end processes. 

When I moved into my cur­rent role, I was first tasked with think­ing about how all the solu­tions con­nect togeth­er; sec­ond, that we have a con­sis­tent way of engag­ing with our cus­tomers about the strat­e­gy; and third, mak­ing sure that we incor­po­rate feed­back from our cus­tomers to con­tin­ue inno­vat­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence portfolio. 

The thing that is real­ly impor­tant for me is that we have a strat­e­gy that sits over the port­fo­lio, and then con­nects what we do from an invest­ment per­spec­tive inside the port­fo­lio to achieve our greater goals.

Sharon: Cus­tomers have been hear­ing about SAP C/4HANA for a cou­ple of years and have recent­ly been intro­duced to SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio. How are the two dif­fer­ent, and can you talk about the strat­e­gy going forward? 

Adri­an: The SAP C/4HANA suite meant cus­tomers had to adopt a ​“suite strat­e­gy,” and the real­i­ty is that not every orga­ni­za­tion is in the same place with their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions. The SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio, how­ev­er, has great prod­ucts that com­ple­ment each oth­er, but you could start exact­ly where you need to start. The idea is that we’re not forc­ing the whole thing as a pre-pack­aged suite of solu­tions, but instead sup­port­ing our customer’s choice of which solution(s) they want and then mak­ing it so that they all com­ple­ment each other. 

We need to make sure that it’s an open kind of ecosys­tem that also sup­ports oth­er ven­dor solu­tions as part of that. The inte­gra­tion — whether that’s with SAP or non-SAP prod­ucts — is a big part of the SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio capability. 

Sharon: How does Emarsys — SAP’s newest acqui­si­tion — fit into the portfolio?

Adri­an: Emarsys fits into the puz­zle because it’s a solu­tion that allows orga­ni­za­tions to engage at scale and across many dif­fer­ent chan­nels with their cus­tomers, but it also pro­vides great tools for the mar­ket­ing teams. Tools such as the indus­try tac­tics and AI-based per­son­al­iza­tion make sure that there’s con­sis­ten­cy and con­ti­nu­ity between dif­fer­ent chan­nels. Emarsys pro­vides focused tools to real­ly lever­age the data that we’re get­ting from capa­bil­i­ties such as the recent­ly announced SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form.

Sharon: Let’s talk about the SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form. What is the most impor­tant thing for cus­tomers to know about how this capa­bil­i­ty will help in their end-to-end business?

Adri­an: The SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form is a new solu­tion, which is part of the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud. Its main func­tion is to look at the broad­er con­text of cus­tomer data. 

To take a step back, the SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud now has an iden­ti­ty man­age­ment solu­tion, a con­sent and pref­er­ence man­age­ment solu­tion, and a cus­tomer data plat­form (CDP). The CDP con­sumes all the data from an iden­ti­ty man­age­ment solu­tion, as well as from the con­sent and pref­er­ence man­age­ment solu­tion, and makes it avail­able to appli­ca­tions — SAP or non-SAP — in real time, while still obey­ing per­mis­sions set in place by the consumer.

So, let’s say a cus­tomer has opened a ser­vice tick­et, or they’re brows­ing the web­site with­out being a known cus­tomer, or they’ve acti­vat­ed a loy­al­ty plat­form, the CDP com­bines all of that data togeth­er into a liv­ing and breath­ing cus­tomer pro­file, and an orga­ni­za­tion can use that pro­file in the right moment of engage­ment across dif­fer­ent chan­nels. It is more real-time, up-to-date view of the cus­tomer than we’ve ever had in the mar­ket before. 

Sharon: What is the mes­sage to the CIOs about inte­grat­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence into the road map of their organizations? 

Adri­an: Let’s look at from the per­spec­tive of 2020. It’s a year we’re all going to remem­ber for a long time. Con­sumer habits all over the world changed lit­er­al­ly overnight, and they con­tin­ue to change even still. And although we have been see­ing pat­terns change for a while now, and have been prepar­ing, it became that much more nec­es­sary to move quickly. 

For CIOs, they need to look at hav­ing cus­tomer-cen­tric process­es as opposed to busi­ness-cen­tric process­es, or ulti­mate­ly cus­tomers will vote with their feet and move to com­peti­tors. What we’re see­ing is that those orga­ni­za­tions that are most resilient and that are most agile and have been able to weath­er the storms of the things like 2020 have been those orga­ni­za­tions that have brought the cus­tomer into the heart of those process­es as opposed to build­ing a busi­ness process that has the cus­tomer kind of bounc­ing around. 

To be cus­tomer-cen­tric, you need to be able to sup­port the dif­fer­ent cus­tomer pref­er­ences as well as be able to deliv­er the right moment of engage­ment at the right time on the right channel. 

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is an impor­tant piece of the puz­zle for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions and there­fore should be a pri­or­i­ty for CIOs. 

Sharon: Why is SAP’s vision of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence one cus­tomers should adopt? How does this affect their bot­tom line? 

Adri­an: There are a cou­ple of things that make SAP unique as an orga­ni­za­tion when it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. First, we have a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence port­fo­lio, which is crit­i­cal to the intel­li­gent enter­prise, but we also have back-office ERP tech­nol­o­gy. That view of data that we have — from cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in front-office engage­ments to the vast ERP foot­print that we have — enables us to blur the lines and make it a seam­less experience.

Anoth­er area of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence SAP has an advan­tage is with cus­tomer pri­va­cy. We real­ly under­stand the impor­tance of data pri­va­cy and how that plays a role in a good cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Our approach to data and third-par­ty appli­ca­tions is dri­ven by cus­tomer-cen­tric strategy. 

These are the core prin­ci­ples of how we’re approach­ing cus­tomer experience.

Sharon: What trends do you see emerg­ing in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence? How will cus­tomers want to nav­i­gate their expe­ri­ence, and what do orga­ni­za­tions need to do to meet those demands? 

Adri­an: One of the most impor­tant things for an orga­ni­za­tion to con­sid­er is to always look for a way to meet their cus­tomers where they live. As we see more con­sumers shop­ping via dif­fer­ent chan­nels, whether its social media sites, or web­sites, or hybrid expe­ri­ences, an orga­ni­za­tion needs to have a com­merce engine on the back of all those chan­nels and be ready to engage. 

Those trends from a con­sumer per­spec­tive will be vital­ly impor­tant. Those brands that under­stand those con­text changes between one chan­nel and the next chan­nel will be most successful. 

This same type of expe­ri­ence will influ­ence how we engage on the busi­ness side as well. The lev­el of expec­ta­tion of expe­ri­ence doesn’t drop because the inter­ac­tion is no longer about buy­ing a car but instead about ful­fill­ing a job or meet­ing a KPI. Those orga­ni­za­tions that can use cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in that unique moment and deliv­er the best expe­ri­ences in those moments will be those orga­ni­za­tions that real­ly win in those com­pet­i­tive landscapes.

Sharon: As orga­ni­za­tions are start­ing to accel­er­ate their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, what mes­sage do you have regard­ing pri­or­i­tiz­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as part of their plans? 

Adri­an: It’s an iter­a­tive change to think about build­ing a process around the cus­tomer. I recent­ly read the quote by an Ama­zon insid­er who said, ​“One prob­lem is that the cus­tomer isn’t real­ly there at every meet­ing. So, what we like to do at every meet­ing is we reserve a seat for the customer.” 

That’s a small thing, but I think it’s impor­tant to see the cus­tomer there in the deci­sions that you make as an orga­ni­za­tion. Always remem­ber that the cus­tomer is at the heart of every busi­ness, and those orga­ni­za­tions that are most resilient think about that at the core of their belief. 

ASUG mem­bers can reg­is­ter for the on-demand SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Man­age­ment Strat­e­gy and Road Map web­cast to learn more about the SAP CX portfolio.