Organizations spend a lot of time and effort researching CRM systems, getting their budget approved, invest their resources during the implementation phase only to find out that the rolled out solution was not well accepted among key stakeholders – their marketing, sales or service teams as well as their customers. Bad marketing, sales or service experience with the rolled out solution can lead to bad customer experience.

Are you truly empowering your teams with insightful data and tools to exceed your customers’ experience? Are you meeting the high expectations of your customers across all touchpoints of a customers’ journey? 

In this post, we will see how SAP has repositioned itself by offering much more to provide rich customer experience. By not just rebranding, SAP C/4HANA Customer Experience (CX) suite offers many new solutions compared to its predecessor SAP Hybris suite. The complete suite, with 5 core solutions plus the C/4HANA Foundation, is not just a modern CRM but rather a next-generation CRM primarily focused on providing great customer experience – across all customer touchpoints.

Before we get into the SAP CX suite, we need some context and get into the customer mindset.

The Experience Economy & Me2B

Ryan Smith, Co-founder & CEO of Qualtrics (acquired by SAP), explains the “Experience Economy” very well…

 

 

“With the rise of the internet, smartphones, social media, it’s never been easier for customers, employees, stakeholders, to evaluate which companies are actually providing great experiences and which ones don’t. Today, organizations are dispropotionately rewarded when they deliver great experience and absolutely punished when they do not!

Our markets not only demand better experience but for the first time in the history, experience has been and become the growth engine for business.”

– Ryan Smith at 2019 SAPPHIRENOW 

Online marketplace such as Amazon and other disruptive brands such as Uber, Airbnb, etc. in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) world are offering amazing customer experience. Customers now are smarter than ever and demand all marketing, sales, delivery, customer service and data privacy in their terms. They also expect you to communicate through their preferred channel.

Although your organization may be a Business-to-Business (B2B), it’s compared to an individual’s own B2C experience. At the end of the day, the B2B buyers also put on a consumer hat, who outside their workplace, experience much better customer journey in B2C space. These buyers see themselves as Me2B, instead of the traditional B2B or B2C categories. Products, services, and your pricing may be secondary compared to their overall experience across all touchpoints with your organization.

It’s not about efficiency anymore but being effective. Having the right people and processes but working with a traditional CRM as a system of records will not work anymore in the new experience economy. The existing solution may even be a cloud-based with good user experience (UX), but that alone won’t benefit much!

The Launch of C/4HANA CX Suite

Organizations must empower all customer-facing teams with the right tools, data insight, and integrated solutions. These solutions must be available to your team as well as customers anywhere, anytime and on any device. Solutions must build trust; putting customers in full control of their data, consents and preferences. It must provide a connected customer journey so your teams don’t work in a fragmented siloed solutions. Instead of a handover between various departments, it should provide a good handshake.

This called for a major overhaul of the status quo. Launched in 2018, SAP C/4HANA CX suite in the grand scheme of things is SAP’s commitment to organizations who want to be ready for the customer experience revolution and exceed customer expectations. It is CRM reimagined!

– Hasso Plattner at 2018 SAPPHIRENOW 

C/4HANA in 2018 at a glance

In 2018 SAPPHIRENOW, SAP launched C/4HANA – a 4th generation suite for customer-facing business processes to provide an amazing customer experience. This suite offers the following 5 key core solutions:

• SAP Marketing Cloud
  • Dynamic Customer Profiling, Segments, Campaigns, Journeys, Lead/Account-Based & Commerce Marketing

• SAP Sales Cloud
  • Cloud for Customer (C4C) Sales
  • Configure Product Quote (CPQ)
  • Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
  • Sales Performance Management (SPM)

• SAP Service Cloud
  • Cloud for Customer (C4C) Service
  • Customer Engagement Center
  • Crowd Servicing 

• SAP Commerce Cloud
  • E-commerce framework and platform

• SAP Data Cloud
  • Consent, Profile & identity Management

C/4HANA in 2019 at a glance

In 2019 SAPPHIRENOW, SAP launched 2 more solutions:

• SAP C/4 HANA Foundation
  • Data model, unified UX, manage, integrate, extend any or all the above cloud solutions

• Customer Experience Management (CXM)
  • Combines existing operational data with experience data to predicts actions that significantly impact the bottom line 

More information about each solution and the acquisitions are discussed below. Each solution deserves a deeper dive blog that will be posted in the near future, but first some historical context…

SAP wins CRM Watchlist 2019 Award

“In May 2018, they announced an all-out pivot of the company, which put all things customer-facing at the core of their entire being as an entity.

That meant not only did the then-rebranded and refreshed SAP Hybris become SAP CX, and the focus of the entire practice became how to engage customers so that they have the quality of customer experience that they need to become sustainable customers…”

– Paul Greenberg for Social CRM: The Conversation & Best-selling Author CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers

SAP’s Cloud Journey

SAP CRM

Since the year 2000 when SAP first released its CRM application, it has seen many successful implementations. Still supported by SAP, it’s an on-premise traditional CRM system of records. SAP was still offering the same on-premise CRM solution even when cloud-based CRM solutions were gaining momentum.

SAP Hybris CEC Suite

Fast-forward to around  2013 – 2014, cloud-based CRM solutions gained some good traction. A competitor then leading the cloud-based Sales Force Automation (SFA). SAP launched its cloud-based similar solution SAP Customer On Demand (COD).

COD was later renamed as Cloud for Customer (C4C). As the name suggests, it’s a cloud-based solution for sales and service lines of business. These 2 streams from time-to-time were also referred to as Cloud for Sales and Cloud for Service.

Cloud for Marketing and Cloud for Social Engagement are also offered – previously part of the SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence suite. Meanwhile, SAP also acquired Swiss e-commerce solution company Hybris. Hybris is a leading e-commerce platform offering Omni-commerce and unified commerce processes.

A couple of years later, SAP offers a comprehensive Hybris – Customer Engagement & Commerce (CEC) suite. It included all the above discussed individual and improved cloud solutions.

Building up C/4HANA CX Suite – Strategic Acquisitions

The 3 Acquisitions + Roadmap

In a move to be more competitive and future proof, SAP realigned its CRM strategy. Between 2017 – 2018, SAP acquired CallidusCloud, CoreSystems, and Gigya. All offering public-cloud solutions for customer-facing processes:

• CallidusCloud – CPQ, CLM, SPM now part of SAP Sales Cloud portfolio
• CoreSystems – Crowd Servicing  now part of SAP Service Cloud portfolio
• Gigya – Profile, Consent, Identity Management now part of SAP Data Cloud

The roadmap included a more tightly integrated suite with C/4HANA Foundation for organizations to manage, innovate, integrate, and be agile.

The 4th Acquisition + 1 SAP Solution

In 2019, SAP completes the acquisition of Qualtrics XM (Experience Management). It also launches C/4HANA Foundation to manage and integrate all solutions in their CX suite.

• Qaultrics: Customer Experience Management (CustomerXM) cloud solution which combines operational data (O data) & Experience data (X data) to understand the customer journey and deliver a better experience  
• C/4HANA Foundation: Central cloud solution that breaks down silos with unified User Experience (UX), business and master data services, end-to-end processes, suite analytics, platform services, extensions and integrations, open ecosystem

Key solutions of C/4HANA

SAP Marketing Cloud (on-premise option available) – With more than 4.1+ billion interaction already, this cross-industry cloud solution supports end-to-end marketing processes

• Organizations can engage with their customers, drive conversions and react to the market. It empowers the marketing and sales team to dynamically deliver individualized and relevant experiences across all channels
• Provides a comprehensive set of tools to enable consolidation of data to get deeper insights
• It offers marketing scenarios such as Dynamic Customer Profiling, Segmentation, Campaign and Journeys, Lead and Account-based Marketing, Marketing Planning and Performance, Analytics

SAP Sales Cloud – A mobile-first cloud solution used by over 7+ million sales reps. focusing on 4 key areas of the business to act faster, become more relevant, have a strong presence and sell more

• It offers comprehensive and seamless user-experience (UX) with customizable tiles to help fully engage with your customers. Real-time customer and business insights, including predictive analytics with a deal finder and influencer map
• With easy-to-use dashboards, provides sales overview with YTD sales performance. Turn valuable insights into effective actions. Manage activities and track performance even when offline
• Integrate with your back-office inventory management and/or pricing to ensure a smooth transition of data between key business units

SAP Service Cloud – Brings unified and seamless customer service experience to customers through the channel of their choice, to reach your team KPIs and exceed targets, and drive customer loyalty

• A single cloud offering enabling 24×7 customer support, harmonizing front-office engagements and back-office processes, create a full feedback loop from case to resolution and motivate agents by gamifying contact centers
• Drive true customer engagement with omnichannel communication, service ticket management, field service capabilities, knowledge platform, mobile features, analytics, and reporting, machine learning & IoT, service contracts and maintenance

SAP Commerce (on-premise option available) – Industry-leading omnichannel commerce solution to create a relevant and personalized customer experience that boosts loyalty and sales.

• Besides the core e-commerce capabilities such as social, bundling products, payments, search, customer support, rules/promotions, it stands out in the following 3 areas
  • Product Content Mangement – Oversee all your product-related information with collaboration and integration
  • Customer Experience – Ensuring the right products are offered to the right customers at the right time
  • Order Management – Order fulfillment, Returns & Inventory Management
• It also offers “Accelerators” with ready-to-use commerce solutions for B2B or B2C to kick-start e-commerce implementations. They have matched 80% of business requirements and can be quickly re-branded/adapted
• Provide customer support by looking at your personalized storefront from your customer’s eye while having access to customer information at the same time

SAP Data Cloud – Offers solutions for building trusted and valued relationships with customers, by giving them control over their information and experiences. Allows organizations to communicate with customers on their terms

• Based on transparency and control, it features customer identity and consent management and customer profile 
• Complies with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
• Provides a single location for customer consent/identity related to marketing, e-commerce, sales, and services solutions

C/4HANA Foundation is a core addition to the suite. It comes free with any one of the 5 solutions. It’s a lightweight orchestration layer providing suite-level:

• Business and Master Data Services – One central place that stores all your customer-related business and master data that is distributed into all or any of the 5 cloud solutions

• End-to-End Processes – Tightly coupled front-office C/4HANA and back-office S/4HANA helps not just market, sell or service but also have transparency on “promise to deliver” for an amazing customer experience

• Harmonized User Experience (UX) – Unified UX that is Conversational, Contextual, Intelligent and Consistent using Fiori Design theme. It can fuse many cloud application content on one screen (via cloud widgets) as well as Analytics, AI/ML to form 1 unified user experience

• Suite Intelligence & Analytics – Business intelligence processes using deep learning algorithms and analytics dashboard across all 5 or any of the 5 cloud solutions

• Platform Services – One central place helps life-cycle management of CX suite solutions – the C/4HANA cockpit can track all provisioned clouds including its status and administrative links

• Extensions & Integration – Improves stability of all or any of the 5 solutions during upgrades using loosely coupled SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory – It allows to implement micro-services extensions/custom solutions with agility. Enables a tightly integrated suite environment for all 5 solutions

• Open Ecosystem – Enables open architecture allows customers, partners, developers to build additional add-on solutions on top of the C/4HANA suite – leveraging Kyma, an open-source project which allows you to extend and customize cloud-based and on-premise enterprise applications

SAP Qualtrics CustomerXM  – Provides Customer Experience Management (CustomerXM) solution for C/4HANA suite. With SAP Qualtrics CustomerXM organizations can predict actions that will have an impact on the bottom line and act accordingly in real-time. 4 CX related offerings as announced on Qualtrics blog post by Webb Stevens, VP, CustomerXM, Qualtrics are: 

• “SAP Qualtrics CX for Commerce: Organizations can now gather feedback across all digital interactions to provide premium experiences that increase conversion, loyalty and satisfaction”
• “SAP Qualtrics CX for Sales: Organizations can now assess the strength of their client relationships, improve the sales productivity of their Account Executives, and provide a premium sales experience”
• “SAP Qualtrics CX for Customer Service: Organizations can now design and deliver seamless service experiences to customers across every support channel including phone, chat, in-person, and digital”
• “SAP Qualtrics CX for Marketing: Marketing teams can now collect feedback to better understand their customer segments, target audiences, and customer behavior”

Bringing together the most powerful X and O systems for world-class CX

“To achieve breakthrough results, organizations need more than a system of record – they need a system of action designed to intelligently use both X, and O-data to improve customer experiences. 

By bringing together Qualtrics and SAP C/4HANA, we are building the most complete and powerful customer experience platform, offering organizations the tools they need to build better experiences, better understand their customers and adapt to their rapidly changing expectations.”

– Webb Stevens, VP, CustomerXM Qualtrics

Conclusion

SAP C/4HANA is a suite of 5 solutions, each offering many applications and tools. It closes the gap of working in silos, enabling a connected customer journey. It offers personalized experiences for your teams and your customers. Integrated with back-office ERP, it enables visibility to deliver on your promise. All this with a single view of the customer across all channels.

As you can see, C/4HANA is not just a rebranded Hybris suite offering the same old solutions. It’s a new comprehensive cloud portfolio providing the new offering. It is SAP’s commitment to achieving excellence in Customer Experience (CX).