The Complete Overview Of SAP CX Suite And Its Components
- September 11, 2023
Customer experience (CX) is becoming a key differentiator for businesses in the digital age. In fact, 80% of CEOs believe that delivering a better customer experience is a strategic priority for their organization. However, many businesses struggle to provide consistent and personalized experiences across multiple channels and touchpoints, due to fragmented customer data, siloed processes, and outdated technologies.
To address these challenges, SAP offers a comprehensive suite of cloud-based solutions that enable businesses to manage and optimize their customer relationships, experiences, and data. So, let’s explore the power of SAP CX (SAP Customer Experience) and its key components through this detailed overview of the SAP Customer Experience Suite!
What Is SAP Cx And What Are Its Applications?
SAP Customer Experience or SAP CX is the brand name for SAP’s portfolio of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. The SAP CX Suite includes a set of integrated CRM solutions that cover the entire customer journey, from marketing and commerce to sales and service.
The SAP CX Suite originated in June 2018, after several acquisitions and major updates to the original SAP CRM system (or SAP Customer Relationship Management). Today, SAP CX is trusted by thousands of customers worldwide, across various industries and sectors. Some of the notable customers include Adidas, Nestlé, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, BMW, and Samsung.
Coming to its applications, the SAP CX CRM is part of the SAP Intelligent Enterprise vision, which aims to help businesses become more agile, innovative, and resilient in the digital economy. The SAP CX Suite consists of five main components that together help businesses to:
- Connect customer data from various sources, and ensure its security and compliance
- Create personalized and relevant customer interactions across different channels and devices
- Deliver seamless omnichannel customer experiences to drive loyalty and retention
- Measure and improve the effectiveness and performance of customer-facing processes and activities
- Leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to gain insights and recommendations for enhancing customer satisfaction and value
- Increase customer acquisition and retention by offering personalized offers and recommendations
- Enhance customer loyalty and advocacy by providing consistent and rewarding experiences across touchpoints
- Boost customer satisfaction and value by resolving issues quickly and proactively
- Improve operational efficiency and productivity by automating tasks and workflows
- Drive revenue growth and profitability by optimizing pricing and promotions
Components of the SAP CX Suite
You now know what is SAP CX and what is SAP CRM, but we’ve just scratched the surface yet! The SAP CX Suite includes five powerful components that work in symphony to create a superior customer experience at all points of their journey. Let’s have a quick look at them before going into their details:
- SAP Customer Data Cloud – SAP Customer Data Cloud facilitates the collection, storage, and protection of customer data while allowing customers to manage their preferences. This fosters trust and loyalty between businesses and their clientele.
- SAP Marketing Cloud – This component empowers businesses with targeted marketing campaigns, personalized interactions, and tools to gauge marketing efficacy. Additionally, it harnesses the power of AI and machine learning for insightful recommendations.
- SAP Commerce Cloud – The Commerce Cloud offers personalized experiences across platforms like web, mobile, and social. It encompasses omnichannel commerce features, including order and content management.
- SAP Sales Cloud – SAP Sales Cloud streamlines sales operations, from lead acquisition to deal closure, and includes tools for forecasting, pipeline and contract management.
- SAP Service Cloud – This solution ensures prompt and consistent customer service across channels. Its features include field service management, self-service options, ticketing, and knowledge management.
Now, it’s time to dive into the nuances! Let’s check out these SAP CX solutions and their sub-solutions in detail, along with their key functionalities-
SAP Customer Data Cloud
SAP Customer Data Cloud is a solution that helps businesses to manage their customer data in a transparent, secure, and compliant way. It consists of three sub-solutions:
- SAP Customer Identity– SAP Customer Identity allows businesses to authenticate their customers across various channels and devices, supporting multiple identity providers like social media platforms and email. Customers can also register and log in using methods including username/password, biometrics, or one-time passwords.
- SAP Customer Consent– SAP Customer Consent assists in collecting and managing consent for data processing, ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and offering customers the flexibility to adjust their consent preferences.
- SAP Customer Profile– This sub-solution enables businesses to store and access customer data in a unified profile. It helps businesses to create a single source of truth for customer information across systems and applications. It also allows customers to view and update their profile data, such as personal details, preferences, or interests.
- SAP Customer Data Platform- The SAP Customer Data Platform is a cloud-based tool that integrates customer data from sources like CRM and ERP, offering a comprehensive view of customers to enhance personalized experiences.
The SAP Customer Data Cloud empowers businesses to foster trust and loyalty by honoring customer data rights and preferences. It consolidates data from diverse sources, providing a comprehensive view of customers, which in turn facilitates tailored content and offers for enhanced customer experiences. Additionally, it mitigates data security threats and lowers compliance expenses by adhering to industry best practices and standards.
SAP Marketing Cloud
SAP Marketing Cloud is a solution that helps businesses to plan, execute, and measure their marketing activities. It consists of six sub-solutions:
- SAP Marketing Planning and Performance – This tool enables businesses to define and align their marketing goals, strategies, and budgets. Additionally, it provides dashboards and reports that help businesses monitor and analyze the performance of their marketing campaigns.
- SAP Marketing Segmentation and Campaigns – This sub-solution allows businesses to segment their customers based on various criteria, such as demographics and behavior. It also supports the creation and management of multichannel campaigns, which include platforms like email, SMS, and social media.
- SAP Marketing Insights and Optimization – With this, businesses can leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to gain valuable insights and recommendations. It also provides functionalities that allow businesses to optimize their marketing campaigns by testing various scenarios and predicting outcomes.
- SAP Marketing Commerce Integration – This integrates marketing with commerce, ensuring that businesses can offer consistent customer experiences throughout the buying journey. It also has features that trigger personalized offers based on specific customer behaviors.
- SAP Marketing Content Studio – The SAP Marketing Content Studio is designed to assist businesses in creating and managing engaging content for their marketing campaigns. It offers features for designing and editing content templates, and it supports content localization and personalization.
- SAP Marketing Analytics – This enables businesses to measure and analyze the effectiveness of their marketing activities. It provides a comprehensive view of various metrics and KPIs, such as campaign performance, customer engagement, and revenue attribution.
SAP Marketing Cloud empowers businesses to boost customer acquisition and retention through timely and pertinent messaging, foster enhanced loyalty and advocacy by offering rewarding experiences, streamline marketing processes via automation, and bolster revenue and profitability by fine-tuning pricing and promotions.
SAP Commerce Cloud
SAP Commerce Cloud is another SAP CX product that helps businesses to provide seamless and personalized customer experiences across various channels and touchpoints. It mainly consists of these sub-solutions:
- SAP Commerce Platform – It is the core foundation for building e-commerce websites and applications, offering features like product catalog management, order management, payment processing, and search engine optimization.
- SAP Commerce Content Management – This tool allows businesses to curate and manage diverse content, including images, videos, and blogs, for their e-commerce platforms, with the added capability of personalizing content based on customer data.
- SAP Commerce Omnichannel – This solution ensures consistent customer experiences across channels like web, mobile, social, and voice, with features like click-and-collect, buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS), and ship from store.
- SAP Commerce Context-Driven Services – It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer context-aware customer experiences, including personalization, merchandising, and recommendations.
- SAP Commerce Cloud Accelerators – Accelerators help businesses speed up their launch timelines and cut down on implementation costs through preconfigured templates and industry-specific best practices, catering to sectors like B2B, B2C, financial services, and travel.
SAP Commerce Cloud empowers businesses to boost customer conversion and retention through seamless shopping experiences, foster loyalty by ensuring consistent and tailored interactions across platforms, enhance operational efficiency by refining processes, and bolster revenue and profitability via optimized pricing and promotions.
SAP Sales Cloud
SAP Sales Cloud is a solution within the SAP CX suite that helps businesses streamline and automate their sales processes, from lead generation to closing deals. It consists of these key sub-solutions:
- SAP Sales Automation – SAP Sales Automation allows businesses to oversee their sales pipeline, activities, and opportunities, offering features like account management, contact management, opportunity management, and activity management.
- SAP Sales Performance Management – This helps businesses inspire and compensate their sales teams based on performance, incorporating features like quota management, commission management, incentive compensation management, and gamification.
- SAP Sales Intelligence – True to its name, this sub-solution empowers businesses to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning for insights and recommendations to enhance sales effectiveness. It includes features such as lead scoring, opportunity scoring, deal intelligence, and next-best action.
- SAP Sales Collaboration – This facilitates businesses in collaborating with both internal and external stakeholders during sales, supporting features like chat, video conferencing, document sharing, and contract management.
SAP Sales Cloud empowers businesses by automating tasks and workflows to boost sales productivity and efficiency. It provides clear goals and incentives to enhance sales performance, while also offering intelligent tools for sellers to engage customers across digital channels effectively. The platform emphasizes understanding each customer, using insights for improved sales results, and fostering collaboration in context. This allows sellers to focus more on selling and reduces time spent on reporting.
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud is another impactful tool in SAP CX Suite’s arsenal that helps businesses deliver fast and reliable customer service, both online and offline. This SAP customer service powerhouse consists of four sub-solutions:
- SAP Service Automation – SAP Service Automation enables businesses to handle service tickets, activities, and resources with features including ticket, activity, and resource management, as well as service level agreement (SLA) oversight.
- SAP Service Intelligence – It empowers businesses with artificial intelligence and machine learning for insights and suggestions to improve service quality and create the perfect SAP experience for customers. Features include ticket classification, sentiment analysis, knowledge base creation, and predictive maintenance.
- SAP Service Field Management – This sub-solution assists businesses in overseeing field service operations with capabilities like scheduling, dispatching, and tracking. It offers route optimization, location tracking, a mobile app, and an offline mode.
- SAP Service Customer Engagement – This facilitates businesses in interacting with customers during the service phase, offering chat, voice, video, and a self-service portal.
This SAP CX product empowers businesses to boost customer satisfaction and value by swiftly and proactively addressing concerns. It is a crucial SAP customer management tool that fosters enhanced loyalty and advocacy through transparent and prompt communication, streamlines service operations by automating tasks and workflows, and minimizes service expenses and potential risks by fine-tuning resources and processes.
How A SAP CX Implementation Expert Can Help You Leverage SAP CX And Its Components
SAP CX is indeed a powerful and comprehensive suite of solutions that can help businesses to transform their customer relationships, experiences, and data. However, implementing SAP CX can be a complex and challenging task that requires expertise and guidance.
Therefore, hiring a SAP CX implementation expert like Spadoom can be a wise decision for businesses that want to leverage SAP CX effectively and efficiently. A SAP CX implementation expert can provide various useful services, such as:
- Assessing the business needs and goals, and designing a customized SAP CX strategy and roadmap
- Selecting the best-fit SAP Customer Experience solutions and components for the business scenario and use case
- Configuring and integrating the SAP Customer Experience solutions with the existing systems and applications
- Migrating and consolidating customer data from various sources and platforms
- Testing and validating the SAP CX solutions for functionality and performance
- Training and supporting the end-users and stakeholders on how to use the SAP CX solutions
- Monitoring and optimizing the SAP experience solutions for continuous improvement and innovation
By hiring an SAP CX implementation expert and leveraging their SAP cloud customer experience management and implementation services, businesses can benefit in various way, such as:
- Saving time and money by avoiding common pitfalls and errors during the implementation process of SAP CX solutions
- Enhancing the quality and reliability of the SAP CX solutions by following best practices and standards
- Maximizing the value and return on investment (ROI) of the SAP CX solutions by utilizing their full potential and capabilities
- Gaining a competitive edge in the market by delivering superior customer experiences
Summing Up
In this blog, we saw that SAP CX Suite consists of five main component and each component provides specific features and functions that work in tandem to cover the entire customer journey, from marketing and commerce to sales and service.
We found that the SAP CX Suite helps businesses to connect customer data from various sources and platforms, create personalized customer interactions across different channels and devices, deliver seamless and omnichannel customer experiences that drive loyalty and retention, measure and improve the performance of customer-facing processes, and leverage AI and ML to gain valuable insights and recommendations for enhancing customer satisfaction and value.
This diversity and comprehensiveness of features is indeed impressive! However, we also noted that implementing SAP CX Suite can be a complex and challenging task that requires expertise and guidance. So, you must consider hiring a SAP CX implementation expert like Spadoom if you want to leverage SAP CX for boosting your business. All the best!
FAQs
- What is the difference between SAP CX and SAP CRM?
SAP CX is the brand name for SAP’s portfolio of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. SAP CRM or SAP customer relationship management is the predecessor to SAP CX which provided less advanced on-premise CRM capabilities for various industries and sectors.
- How much does SAP CX cost?
SAP CX pricing depends on various factors, such as the number of users, the type and size of the business, the selected solutions and components, and the level of customization and integration. SAP CX offers flexible and scalable pricing models, such as subscription-based, pay-per-use, or hybrid.
- How can I learn more about SAP CX?
You can learn more about SAP CX by visiting the official website, reading the blog posts, watching the videos, or joining the community. You can also contact a SAP CX expert or partner for more information and guidance.
- Why does a business need an SAP CX implementation expert?
An SAP CX implementation expert can help businesses save time and money by avoiding common pitfalls and implementation errors, enhance the quality and reliability of the SAP CX solutions, and maximizing the ROI of the SAP CX solutions by utilizing their full potential.