By now, SAP’s acqui­si­tion of Qualtrics last month might seem like old news, but we’re just start­ing to uncov­er what it all could mean for both SAP and Qualtrics cus­tomers. To do that, we must first under­stand what Qualtrics brings to the table.

Adam Page, ASUG’s mar­ket research spe­cial­ist told us that, ​“Qualtrics is the leader in sur­vey soft­ware when it comes to user expe­ri­ence data.” SAP cer­tain­ly thought so, con­sid­er­ing it spent near­ly $8 bil­lion on the acqui­si­tion. ​“We were incred­i­bly excit­ed when we began our con­ver­sa­tions with Qualtrics,” said Arlen Shenkman, SAP exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of glob­al devel­op­ment and ecosys­tems. ​“We were impressed not only with the prod­uct Qualtrics built, but also with the vision it had to attack the mar­ket and cre­ate an entire­ly new category.”

That cat­e­go­ry is expe­ri­ence man­age­ment, which fits with­in SAP’s vision of an intel­li­gent enterprise.

Qualtrics: Roots to Bloom

Back in 2012, Qualtrics’ CEO, Ryan Smith, turned down a $500 mil­lion offer for the com­pa­ny he and his father and broth­er had spent 10 years build­ing. The com­pa­ny, which got off the ground by focus­ing on the aca­d­e­m­ic mar­ket, has grown into a sur­vey provider now serv­ing For­tune 500 companies.

Like oth­er sur­vey providers, Qualtrics sells online ques­tion-and-answer sur­vey tools. But what dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from its com­peti­tors is that it can cap­ture and ana­lyze data from real-time sources, includ­ing social media and email. That’s how the com­pa­ny mas­tered its expe­ri­ence man­age­ment solutions.

Qualtrics iden­ti­fies four core expe­ri­ences with­in a busi­ness — cus­tomer, employ­ee, brand, and prod­uct — and offers the solu­tions to man­age all of them. ​“If you’re think­ing about it from the customer’s per­spec­tive, it allows a com­pa­ny that wants to mea­sure expe­ri­ence data (or X data) to do it at a much more sig­nif­i­cant lev­el,” Page said.

Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Dic­tates Everything

As more busi­ness­es rec­og­nize that the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence dic­tates every­thing from rev­enue growth and inno­va­tion to plan­ning and exe­cu­tion, there is increased demand for how to bet­ter mea­sure and ana­lyze cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and feed­back. Accord­ing to a 2017 study from Accen­ture, 81 per­cent of cus­tomers feel loy­al to brands that are there when they need them, but oth­er­wise respect their time and leave them alone. But how do you make the strate­gic choic­es to run your busi­ness like this?

Busi­ness­es need to know how to man­age their cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ences to improve loy­al­ty, reduce the cost to serve them, and increase brand aware­ness. Accord­ing to Qualtrics, ​“the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence man­age­ment pro­grams track every cus­tomer inter­ac­tion and ana­lyze the data to close the gap between what cus­tomers expect and the expe­ri­ence cur­rent­ly being delivered.”

The Qualtrics Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence solu­tion cov­ers three core func­tions: engage with cus­tomers on their terms, pre­dict what they will do next, and acti­vate the entire orga­ni­za­tion. To accom­plish this, the plat­form offers sur­vey soft­ware, ana­lyt­ics, cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping tools, closed loop cus­tomer fol­low-up, and event sur­vey soft­ware. It’s helped brands such as 1 – 800 CON­TACTS, Aet­na, and GE. 

Your Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence Mat­ters, Too

Employ­ees who are excit­ed to be ambas­sadors for your brand can only help strength­en your busi­ness. But how do you help every employ­ee suc­ceed so they can give your cus­tomers what they need, too?

The Qualtrics Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence solu­tion is designed to help improve the employ­ee expe­ri­ence through tools for onboard­ing, engage­ment, train­ing and assess­ment, 360 devel­op­ment, per­son­al expe­ri­ence track­ing, all the way to their exit. It’s built to deliv­er three main func­tions: a dig­i­tal open door so busi­ness lead­ers and man­agers can inter­act with employ­ees at scale; per­son­al­ized pro­grams spe­cif­ic to each busi­ness’ needs and func­tions; and insights that dri­ve impact by turn­ing data into mea­sur­able employ­ee expe­ri­ence improvements.

Accord­ing to Qualtrics, ​“An effec­tive employ­ee expe­ri­ence pro­gram cre­ates hap­pi­er, more-engaged, and bet­ter-devel­oped employ­ees while also dri­ving busi­ness out­comes like reduced attri­tion, high­er rev­enue, and increased cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.” Hap­py employ­ees can absolute­ly cre­ate hap­py customers.

Where the Brand Expe­ri­ence Fits

Hap­py cus­tomers and hap­py employ­ees are part of the equa­tion, but the over­all brand expe­ri­ence is just as impor­tant. Accord­ing to Qualtrics, ​“Rec­og­niz­able names and marks com­mand a pre­mi­um in the mar­ket, but only if that recog­ni­tion is pos­i­tive. Brand expe­ri­ence means lis­ten­ing to cus­tomers and the pub­lic using research and feed­back soft­ware. Iden­ti­fy­ing your essen­tial brand dri­vers helps you improve brand per­cep­tions, opti­mize your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy, and grow your company’s over­all brand value.” 

Track­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence reveals some of that infor­ma­tion. For a busi­ness to tru­ly cap­ture the whole pic­ture, how­ev­er, it needs to under­stand how this adds up to its brand. The Qualtrics Brand Expe­ri­ence solu­tion offers insights on mar­ket trends, com­peti­tor analy­sis, and brand aware­ness in one place. The plat­form offers tools such as brand track­ing, adver­tis­ing test­ing, and brand posi­tion­ing research.

Your Prod­uct Expe­ri­ence Deliv­ers the Goods

Your prod­uct, whether it’s a tan­gi­ble item, dig­i­tal, or a ser­vice, is what rep­re­sents your brand and what your employ­ees help cre­ate. Know­ing what kind of expe­ri­ences your prod­uct or ser­vice deliv­ers is crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of your business. 

So, what does the Qualtrics Prod­uct Expe­ri­ence solu­tion offer? For starters, by sur­vey­ing prod­uct testers, it can help you quick­ly iden­ti­fy the fea­tures users want. Sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis can help you pri­or­i­tize fea­tures before a prod­uct launch or under­stand what cus­tomers want you to change about your exist­ing prod­uct or ser­vice. You can use this real-time feed­back from cus­tomers to dri­ve adop­tion and loyalty.

The plat­form includes mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion soft­ware, con­cept test­ing research, user expe­ri­ence research, and prod­uct sat­is­fac­tion surveys.

What’s the Tie-In with SAP?

Shenkman explained that where the SAP C/4HANA suite touch­es every­thing from ser­vices to mar­ket­ing and the cus­tomer, Qualtrics fits per­fect­ly with­in the suite by pro­vid­ing a per­spec­tive from the cus­tomer on their expe­ri­ence and how they’re per­ceiv­ing that expe­ri­ence. ​“To have that kind of feed­back direct­ly from the cus­tomer,” he said, ​“dove­tails real­ly well with the prod­ucts we already have.” 

The strat­e­gy isn’t to cre­ate an addi­tion­al cloud plat­form for SAP C/4HANA using Qualtrics, but rather to inte­grate it with exist­ing SAP tech­nolo­gies wher­ev­er it would make sense — for exam­ple SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors or SAP Ari­ba. And of course, SAP C/4HANA.

The acqui­si­tion deal won’t be com­plet­ed until some­time in 2019. This means SAP is still in the process of work­ing out the details for its devel­op­ment road map, yet it’s look­ing at the inte­gra­tion holistically.

The Q&A Cus­tomers Need to Know Now

SAP saw Qualtrics as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fill in a gap in the ser­vices it offers, while com­ple­ment­ing its prod­ucts. In the short term, SAP will offer pack­ages that add the most val­ue to the cur­rent SAP solu­tion portfolio.

For SAP cus­tomers, Shenkman not­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead to begin to make more-informed deci­sions about how they’re cur­rent­ly doing busi­ness. About cur­rent Qualtrics cus­tomers, Shenkman said, ​“We’re going to make the com­pa­ny even bet­ter. We’re not going to take you off the road you’re on.”

SAP has approx­i­mate­ly 400,000 cus­tomers and Qualtrics has about 9,000. Though Shenkman said that there isn’t much over­lap in the cus­tomer base, the two com­pa­nies do serve some of the same big-name brands, such as Under Armour and Volk­swa­gen. For all cur­rent and future cus­tomers, Shenkman point­ed to the pos­si­bil­i­ties ahead. ​“We’re going to bring the breadth of the Qualtrics port­fo­lio to SAP solu­tions and infuse that tech­nol­o­gy in what we’re doing to help our customers.”

We’ll con­tin­ue to track this acqui­si­tion as the details become avail­able, so be sure to check back with us and vis­it the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence sec­tion of ASUG Insights or ASUG News + Views.