SAP has been particularly busy of late with some big announcements around CRM landing in June. So, to get to the bottom of what’s going on, B&T‘s roving scribe recently sat down for a chat with a few of their friendly people. Here’s what they discovered.

B&T: Ok, let’s start from the beginning. Tell us a little about yourself?

SAP: In a nutshell, SAP Customer Experience is the part of SAP that helps businesses get one view of the customer. From first point of contact, through fulfillment, invoicing and customer service, we help people like marketers, eCommerce, sales and customer experience teams deliver results for their customers every day. If you’re looking at integrated marketing, customer data management, e-commerce, sales or service systems, we’re there to help.

B&T: Gotcha. But what does SAP Customer Experience look like in practice? Tall, dark and handsome?

SAP: Spot on. SAP Customer Experience sits in the front office looking after customer-facing solutions. We recently consolidated three brands: Hybris (primarily marketing and commerce), Callidus (sales) and Gigya (customer data) into SAP Customer Experience. The vision of SAP Customer Experience is to reimagine CRM and integrate it into organisations’ business processes and systems so that they can provide a personalised and responsive consumer experience before and after the checkout process. 

B&T: Ahh yes, CRM. I know that one. That’s customer relationship management, right?

SAP: Yes. What we’ve seen is that CRM has become a tool for managing sales opportunities today, so what fourth generation CRM does is turn this around and put the customer at the centre. What this means is that it focuses on the entire relationship with the customer so that companies can better understand customer preferences and deliver the right offers and products across the whole consumer journey.

B&T: Sounds good, but what does that really mean for Joe Marketer out there?

SAP: These days, it’s no longer good enough for marketing to develop a campaign brief, pull a data set, get creative developed and then set up a triggered campaign that just goes at set intervals. Customers don’t want to get marketing messages that aren’t relevant or don’t reflect actions they’ve already taken (like getting an email offer after you’ve already bought from a company). So what our software can do is create a central customer record (we call it the golden record) and then use AI and machine learning to make sure customers get the offers and support they want in real time. This real-time aspect, combined with the golden record, is what sets us apart.

B&T: Good as gold. So, tell us, what else can SAP Customer Experience do for its clients then?

SAP: Our goal is to make sure that you can deliver consistent and predictable experiences for your customers.  Our solutions are modular and integrate with other business software, systems and processes so you can manage all your customer-facing activities from one place. It’s about making your customers’ journey a seamless one and, let’s be honest, that’s the cornerstone of long-term customer retention.

You can learn a whole lot more about how we can help marketers here.

B&T: And I hear there’s been something of a rebrand recently?

SAP: There certainly has. June was a big month for us. We consolidated SAP Hybris, CallidusCloud and Gigya under one SAP Customer Experience brand for a simplified experience. We also announced the acquisition of Coresystems, which is a Swiss-based pioneer in field service management, so we now bring a crowdsourcing service that taps into the gig economy to our portfolio that better enables customer service response times.

B&T: Lastly, I’m asking for a friend… say I’m a marketer who likes the sound of all this, what should I do next?

SAP: You can get in touch with SAP Customer Experience by visiting the website right here.