The SAP Customer Experience and Connecting with Purpose

The emphasis in today’s digital business climate is on creating long-term relationships with customers, not just on selling them a product and moving on. The expectations on the part of customers for such lasting relationships are high – getting the product they want when they want it, great follow-up for service and future needs, and protection of their personal data. Meeting these requirements, and thus obtaining customer loyalty, requires sophisticated digital technology.

The SAP Customer Experience solution enabled by SAP C/4HANA does just that. It puts the customer at the center of attention, from lead to invoicing and beyond. Positioned to adapt quickly to changing business requirements, it is easily updated with extensions and microservices. It enables vendors to build on the capabilities of the Intelligent Enterprise to personalize the customer experience. These independent software vendors (ISVs) are developing and reselling value-added components to SAP C/4HANA.

Jaguar Land Rover Limited, a luxury car company located in the UK, optimized its customers’ experiences, creating stronger brand loyalty by launching a new e-commerce site. It included an automated online booking platform set up by Keytree  and SAP that allows potential buyers to schedule half-day or day-long test drives at one of 50 centers worldwide. This eliminates manual booking, saving staff time to concentrate on enhancing the driver test experience, which includes navigating the Land Rover through natural habitats with rocky terrain and water obstacles. Mining the customer data with the underlying functionality of SAP Cloud Platform, the company gains valuable insights it can use in the subsequent sales process.

Other partners such as Keytree are also using extensions to SAP C/4HANA to personalize buyer engagements so that deals close faster, use market insights to understand the intents of each customer, and orchestrate the entire customer experience from presale to after a sale.

Integration with the Back End                                                                                                     

The SAP C/4HANA core application is made up of five clouds: SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP Customer Data Cloud for identity management.  

What differentiates SAP C/4HANA from other offerings is its strong integration with the back end via SAP S/4HANA, enabled by SAP Cloud Platform. That tie-in to data from resources such as the supply chain and e-commerce store provides visibility into crucial information including inventory levels, current orders, and customer profiles. Access to such detailed data and its analysis is what allows for personalization – to putting the customer first.

C-level leaders such as marketing and digital officers are on the front line in dealing with a rapidly changing ecosystem of customers and partners, and the SAP C/4HANA suite is on the front line with them, enabling them to optimize their companies’ back-end history and quickly respond to the evolving environment.  The Customer Experience portfolio applies the assets of the entire company to drive the customer experience.

For more examples of partners that are innovating in the customer service space, visit https://bit.ly/AppCenterCustomerExp. Additional SAP PartnerEdge Build information can be found here or by following @SAPPartnerBuild. 

To read other articles in this series, go to:

Transforming Business in the Era of Intelligence

The Intelligent Enterprise and the Workforce of the Future

The SAP Intelligent Enterprise and the Digital Supply Chain of One

Data is the Key to the Intelligent Enterprise