Dur­ing the SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Live event, held vir­tu­al­ly for the first time, CEO Chris­t­ian Klein dou­bled down on the company’s road map for cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty. He empha­sized that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence dri­ves suc­cess, and that SAP is hom­ing in on pro­vid­ing an end-to-end plat­form that deliv­ers the best expe­ri­ence for any organization’s customers. 

“With more than 15,000 cus­tomers and 1,000 part­ners, we’ve built on your feed­back to under­stand what an excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence looks like,” Klein said. ​“We will increase the speed of inno­va­tion to deliv­er a beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence to your cus­tomers and fur­ther accel­er­ate your growth.” 

Accord­ing to Klein, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) is the fastest grow­ing cat­e­go­ry in the SAP port­fo­lio. The plan, going for­ward, is to con­tin­ue inno­va­tion and a com­mit­ment to the plat­form. He out­lined two areas atten­dees of the event should focus on. First, he said they’d learn more about the impor­tance of CX as an inte­gral part of an intel­li­gent enter­prise, and sec­ond, they would bet­ter under­stand the dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing capa­bil­i­ties that set SAP apart from the competition. 

Why Is Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence an Inte­gral Part of an Intel­li­gent Enterprise? 

As this year has revealed, orga­ni­za­tions not tuned in to cus­tomer expe­ri­ences — and adapt­ing to improve CX — have found it par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to not only remain com­pet­i­tive, but to even sur­vive. Klein not­ed how almost all of us have changed our buy­ing and con­sump­tion pat­terns. As a result, the pan­dem­ic has chal­lenged orga­ni­za­tions to accel­er­ate busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and has forced them to rein­vent the expe­ri­ences they offer their customers. 

“You can­not think about CX sep­a­rate­ly,” Klein stressed. ​“It needs to be con­sid­ered as an inte­gral part of an intel­li­gent enter­prise.”

To meet your customer’s expec­ta­tions at every junc­tion, you need to have end-to-end capa­bil­i­ties across the entire enter­prise, which includes an intel­li­gent ERP in addi­tion to an HXM (human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment) solu­tion. ​“CX is one key ele­ment of SAP’s holis­tic strat­e­gy,” Klein said. ​“While we will con­tin­u­ous­ly evolve our CX port­fo­lio, we will also keep our focus on areas includ­ing SAP Com­merce Cloud, SAP Mar­ket­ing Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Ser­vice Cloud, and the new SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud.” By focus­ing on a holis­tic approach, SAP can pro­vide an entire­ly seam­less expe­ri­ence for both the orga­ni­za­tion, as well as the cus­tomer. ​“By doing a holis­tic busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion,” Klein empha­sized, ​“and by adapt­ing exist­ing process­es end to end and inte­grat­ing data flows, even beyond com­pa­ny bor­ders across the whole cus­tomer jour­ney, you can meet cus­tomer expectations.” 

What Sets SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Apart from the Competition? 

Dur­ing the keynote ses­sion, Klein intro­duced the new SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form and dis­cussed the recent announce­ment to acquire omnichan­nel cus­tomer engage­ment leader, Emarsys.

“Tru­ly mean­ing­ful cus­tomer expe­ri­ences have three main char­ac­ter­is­tics,” Klein not­ed. ​“They are hyper-per­son­al­ized, they are seam­less, and they are deliv­ered across all the chan­nels your cus­tomers opt for. At the cen­ter of these expe­ri­ences is one key ingre­di­ent — data.” Accord­ing to the press release, the new SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form is designed to help orga­ni­za­tions cre­ate indi­vid­ual but anonymized 360-degree cus­tomer pro­files using data from mul­ti­ple sources with­in and out­side of a com­pa­ny, includ­ing online sources and social chan­nels. ​“We don’t just talk about a 360-degree view. We have it,” Klein not­ed. ​“You can trans­late these insights into tan­gi­ble actions and engage with cus­tomers in com­plete­ly new ways, all while ensur­ing the high­est data secu­ri­ty standards.” 

The Emarsys acqui­si­tion is anoth­er sig­nal that SAP is dou­bling down on its CX invest­ment and com­mit­ting to its cus­tomers that it will con­tin­ue build­ing this port­fo­lio. The ful­ly inte­grat­ed, cloud-based mar­ket­ing plat­form will allow an orga­ni­za­tion to deliv­er tru­ly per­son­al­ized cus­tomer inter­ac­tions across a vari­ety of chan­nels. ​“This demon­strates our com­mit­ment to the CX mar­ket,” Klein said. 

What Does SAP Going all-in on Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Mean for Customers?

Through­out the vir­tu­al event, SAP and its pre­sen­ters ham­mered away at one main point — expe­ri­ence dri­ves suc­cess, and SAP has the abil­i­ty to con­nect that expe­ri­ence from the front office all the way through to the back office and beyond. This is true for B2C and B2B scenarios. 

Dur­ing a pre-con­fer­ence media brief­ing, SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer Paula Hansen not­ed, ​“Our cus­tomers have come to trust SAP for scale and for agili­ty, which is so impor­tant right now espe­cial­ly dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. Cus­tomers are mak­ing dra­mat­ic piv­ots, and that requires their busi­ness to be able to sup­port high lev­els of com­merce and high lev­els of man­age­ment of data.” Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing and Oper­a­tions Bob Stutz added, ​“What the SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form does is bring every­thing togeth­er. So that expe­ri­ence that a cus­tomer has at the point of inter­ac­tion with, whether it’s a com­merce sys­tem or a sales rep in a busi­ness-to-busi­ness sce­nario, it is high­ly per­son­al­ized, high­ly inter­ac­tive, and all the data is there so that brands can know their cus­tomers so much better.” 

ASUG asked about how SAP is improv­ing the process for orga­ni­za­tions to cap­ture cus­tomer data today — espe­cial­ly regard­ing the region­al reg­u­la­tions they must com­ply with. Klein respond­ed, ​“We are pro­vid­ing syn­chro­nized mas­ter data…and when a cus­tomer asks to have their infor­ma­tion removed, you can press one but­ton that ful­fills data pri­va­cy com­mit­ments in accor­dance to region­al and local regulations.” 

As SAP con­tin­ues to go all-in on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, the mes­sage is clear: The soft­ware com­pa­ny rec­og­nizes what is dri­ving busi­ness deci­sions. ​“To remain mean­ing­ful, you must pro­vide rel­e­vant, hyper-per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences by lever­ag­ing your customer’s data foot­print,” Klein said. ​“Sec­ond, you must pro­vide seam­less expe­ri­ences based on a tight­ly inte­grat­ed front office all the way through the sup­ply chain. And third, you must pro­vide expe­ri­ences wher­ev­er your cus­tomers choose to engage.” He added, ​“As I speak with cus­tomers across every region, and every indus­try, it has become so clear to me that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is the cor­ner­stone to their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. With our port­fo­lio, SAP is per­fect­ly posi­tioned to be your trans­for­ma­tion part­ner to not only help you rein­vent how your busi­ness works, but also to help with how you deliv­er supe­ri­or expe­ri­ences to your customers.” 

Reg­is­ter for the on-demand SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Man­age­ment Strat­e­gy and Road Map web­cast to learn more about the SAP CX port­fo­lio. Like any of our web­casts or in-per­son events, reg­is­ter today so you don’t miss it!