Pho­to Cred­it: SAP

The open­ing move in what looks like an epic bat­tle for the CRM mar­ket took place in Orlan­do Tues­day morn­ing. The big news from day one at the SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence is the offi­cial launch of SAP C/4HANA, SAP’s new cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) suite. This move comes as no sur­prise, after SAP’s much-dis­cussed pur­chas­es of hybris, Gigya, and CallidusCloud.

With­out direct­ly men­tion­ing Sales­force, SAP CEO Bill McDer­mott said in his keynote address, ​“SAP was the last to accept the sta­tus quo of CRM and is now the first to change it.” Lega­cy CRM doesn’t sup­ply a 360-degree view of the cus­tomer, and SAP is mov­ing from a world where noth­ing hap­pens when you add a record to a CRM sys­tem to a world where the entire sup­ply chain is con­nect­ed to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, he added. 

Treat­ing Cus­tomers Like People

SAP C/4HANA is a direct response to what Alex Atzberg­er, pres­i­dent, SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence, refers to as a cus­tomer rev­o­lu­tion, where the cus­tomer is in charge of the rela­tion­ship. Cus­tomers are rebelling against the use of data and com­pa­nies who don’t deliv­er on their promis­es. ​“It’s ​‘me to B,’” he said, not­ing that cus­tomers have iden­ti­ties, needs, and desires — and want their data to be pro­tect­ed. They want per­son­al­iza­tion, but not at the cost of pri­va­cy. ​“Cus­tomers are done with creepy,” he added.

Atzberg­er explained that the SAP C/4HANA suite was built to cre­ate trust­ed rela­tion­ships around the per­son. As the fourth gen­er­a­tion of CRM, ​“it’s tar­get­ed at peo­ple, not seg­ments,” he said. The com­merce cloud pro­vides per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences to cus­tomers across dif­fer­ent touch­points, while the sales cloud allows the sales force to tap into the sup­ply chain by con­fig­ur­ing and pric­ing prod­ucts in the moment.

Intel­li­gent Enter­pris­es Cap­i­tal­ize on Data

SAP C/4HANA wasn’t the only prod­uct announced in the keynote speech. McDer­mott also intro­duced the SAP Data Man­age­ment Suite, an umbrel­la for SAP HANA busi­ness data plat­form, SAP Data Hub solu­tion, SAP Cloud Plat­form Big Data Ser­vices, and SAP Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture Design­er Web appli­ca­tion. The idea is to cre­ate a full man­age­ment suite that pulls in data from every avail­able source.

The Busi­ness Process Company

“Every step in the process fuels intel­li­gence in the next step, and inte­gra­tion fuels intel­li­gence,” McDer­mott said. SAP Data Man­age­ment Suite is designed to con­nect the demand chain to the sup­ply chain as an end-to-end process suite. ​“SAP is the busi­ness process com­pa­ny,” he said.

Microser­vices made sev­er­al appear­ances in the keynote, in par­tic­u­lar as a ​“microser­vices ecosys­tem” for SAP Cloud Plat­form to cre­ate one data mod­el for an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence suite, accord­ing to Atzberg­er. This, in turn, pro­vides bet­ter intel­li­gence for SAP Leonar­do to embed into appli­ca­tions direct­ly, dove­tail­ing with McDermott’s state­ment that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence must be part of the busi­ness process­es themselves.

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings Glob­al Teams Together 

SAP decid­ed to end the keynote with a bit of flashi­ness. In this case, pro­duc­er Simon Fuller, best known for Amer­i­can Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, brought out Now Unit­ed, a musi­cal act com­prised of 14 young adults from 14 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The act tied in SAP’s over­ar­ch­ing theme of using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to fos­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across glob­al teams, while keep­ing the crowds entertained. 

ASUG’s Keynote of Champions

Col­lab­o­ra­tion and knowl­edge-shar­ing is what ASUG is all about, accord­ing to ASUG CEO Geoff Scott. ​“You are not alone,” he implored. ​“We are faced with adapt­ing to tech­nol­o­gy or being left behind. ASUG is your place for answers, clar­i­ty, and support.”

Refer­ring to the Olympic ath­letes Lind­sey Vonn, Joce­lyne Lam­oureux, Monique Lam­oureux, and Amy Pur­dy who spoke in the ASUG keynote, Scott not­ed that like them, SAP users are rac­ing against the clock, and against tech­nol­o­gy. ​“We need to be at the top of our games,” he said.

Ulti­mate­ly, Users Pow­er SAP

Scott’s keynote served as a pep talk of sorts for users who may be feel­ing the pinch of new tech­nol­o­gy while still try­ing to sort through lega­cy sys­tems under pres­sure from the busi­ness. ​“The skills of every­one in this room is what makes (SAP) work,” he said, adding that, like David against Goliath, users suc­ceed by their wit, not weight. As SAP intro­duces SAP C/4HANA and the SAP Data Man­age­ment suite, users will need to inno­vate in their own busi­ness­es using those platforms. 

Cit­ing the 2018 ASUG State of the Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey, Scott not­ed that 73 per­cent of respon­dents are increas­ing spend­ing on key inno­va­tion ini­tia­tives, and 68 per­cent said this will require get­ting more out of their SAP sys­tems. The new SAP prod­ucts being released today will help com­pa­nies inno­vate and get more out of SAP invest­ments, he said. 

“In so many ways, that’s our lat­est pair of skis,” Scott said. ​“But it takes skill, deter­mi­na­tion, and grit to make it down the mountain.”

Quotes of the Day

“Just don’t be creepy.” – Alex Atzberg­er, Pres­i­dent, SAP Cus­tomer Experience 

“The ulti­mate form of sophis­ti­ca­tion is sim­plic­i­ty itself.” – Bill McDer­mott, CEO

Inter­est­ed in what went on at the 2018 SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence? Catch up with the events of day two and day three. Or read a recap of Dr. Has­so’s keynote.