SAP is a leading provider of enterprise application software. The company is dedicated to helping organizations of all sizes and industries run more effectively, spanning areas from the back office to the warehouse, storefronts, and mobile devices.
The company ranked number seven in the 2013 Software 500, reporting $20,860 billion in total corporate revenue. The company states that its applications and services currently enable more than 258,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably.
Verticalization
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a core focus for SAP. Recently, the company announced plans to deliver new customer engagement solutions specifically to insurance, utilities, and retail verticals.
“At SAP, when we talk about our CRM solutions we talk about our SAP Customer Engagement solutions portfolio, that includes both cloud and on-premise CRM solutions. CEC is focused on the end customer and on the full customer journey, including traditional marketing, sales and service, as well as online and mobile commerce and associated omnichannel order orchestration. CEC is omnichannel, delivering a consistent, seamless, contextual experience from Web, mobile, and in-store/branch to social and the Internet of Things,” says Jamie Anderson, global VP, product marketing, Customer Engagement Solutions, SAP.
The company’s CRM solutions include SAP Cloud for Sales, SAP Cloud for Service, SAP Cloud for Marketing, SAP Cloud for Social Engagement, SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence, SAP CRM, and hybris.
Most recently, SAP’s Customer Engagement offerings now include the new CMO dashboard, which displays key marketing /sales performance data measured in real time. It also provides proactive/intelligent notifications for immediate action and comes pre-integrated with many products from SAP partners. “Our new customer-centric industry cloud solutions for insurance, utilities, and retail aid brands and organizations in identifying prospects and closing sales deals, improving customer engagement, and streamlining the customer journey,” says Anderson.
The company expanded the solution into industry-specific versions because they recognized that most customers that have implemented “off-the-shelf” CRM solutions have ended up needing to heavily customize customization them to meet the needs of their industry. “SAP’s history of strong competence in a variety of industries has been a key hallmark of our success for the past forty 40 years. Extending our cloud-based CRM capabilities to support these key verticals was just a natural progression,” says Anderson.
SAP recognized insurance, utilities, and retail as industries with a strong desire to innovate and develop next- generation CRM solutions. SAP also already had a great deal of its own intellectual property already invested in each vertical so the move made sense, explains Anderson. He says that enhancements in other industries are most definitely on the horizon.
SAP updates and provides new features for its cloud solutions on a quarterly basis.
Launched in May 2014, the insurance, utility, and retail solutions are fully available now.
CMO Dashboard
In addition to the industry-specific cloud-based customer engagement solutions, SAP introduced a new cloud-based marketing performance dashboard that that is designed to deliver combined sales and marketing insights to executives. Available on any device, it is intuitive, easy to personalize, and allows leaders to drill into details to understand the metrics.
Anderson explains that the company’s own Jonathan Becher, CMO, was the key driver behind the dashboard. “He, along with several other companies with which we were partnered, expressed the need for an easy-to-use, operational dashboard that would provide insight into key measurements that were place and how they were performing against them. Simple as that!” he adds.
“The dashboard is really a part of SAP’s overall mission to simplify the way modern organizations do business—a tenant that has been developed and constantly executed upon since our inception,” says Anderson.
The CMO dashboard is fully available now.
Customer Engagement|
Customer engagement solutions from SAP are part of the company’s portfolio of cloud-based CRM solutions, which are designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing, sales, and service organizations.
Consistent improvements enable organizations to best run their organizations and improve the overall customer experience.
“The new solutions will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing, sales, and service organizations but crucially they are part of our mission to help our customers engage their customers like never before, in context, in real-time, across all channels of interaction,” says Anderson.
Vertical solutions help its SAP partners gain an advantage in today’s competitive global economy and engage customers in a more personal, meaningful, and industry-specific ways. While the CMO dashboard ensures executive goals are met and key performance indicators are managed properly against predetermined benchmarks in an easily digestible and visually stunning manner. SW
Jul2014, Software Magazine
