SAP Commerce Cloud – The Future of Retail

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The Future of Retail: SAP Commerce Cloud’s Impact on Global Markets!

SAP Commerce Cloud is an integral part of SAP’s comprehensive ERP solution designed for large enterprises. This platform promotes consistency across all systems and devices, ensuring a seamless buying process for customers, and aims to drive higher profits with a lower total cost of ownership for businesses.

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In fact, Spadoom conducted a user survey in September 2023 which indicates that 72% of enterprises believe that using SAP Commerce Cloud has significantly enhanced their e-commerce capabilities. Would you like to find out more about the proven power of SAP Commerce Cloud? Let’s dive deeper into this report of the results of our survey.

Methodology

Our survey covered 700 businesses, which were divided uniformly across automotive, consumer goods, medical, chemical, industrial equipment, IT, retail, and other industries. Using a combination of social platforms, we reached out to leaders of diverse businesses from various countries with objective questionnaires to understand their perspectives.

User Distribution

We found that 355 of the 700 surveyed businesses were actively using SAP Commerce Cloud. Meanwhile, the major competitors used by non-SAP users included Oracle Commerce (70), Shopify (203), Salesforce Commerce (61), and others (11). Let’s study its user base in more detail.

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Industry

Just over half of surveyed businesses used SAP Commerce Cloud and these users were spread over various industries with a concentration in retail. While its popularity varies, it is apparent that SAP Commerce Cloud has found use in diverse industries, indicating a high degree of versatility.

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Business size

Notably, SAP Commerce Cloud’s versatility and scalability became further apparent as we discovered that SMEs form about 47% of its users while 53% are large businesses. This roughly uniform distribution indicates that SAP Commerce Cloud adjusts perfectly to different business sizes thanks to its advanced personalization and scaling abilities.

Geographical

Based on location, 45% of surveyed users were based in Europe while 33% were based in North America, followed by 19% in Asia, 5% in South America, and 3% in both Australia and Africa. This shows the global relevance and popularity of SAP Commerce Cloud, but its popularity is apparently higher in countries with a high concentration of large businesses.

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Industry Trends and Market Position

The industry is undergoing a significant transformation, with cloud technologies playing a pivotal role. In fact, 91% of all respondents reported adopting at least one new SaaS tool in the last 1 year.

SaaS spending and data safety

As per a Gartner research, worldwide SaaS spending has been rising steeply, going from 120,686 million USD in 2020 million USD to 145,509 in 2021 and 171,915 million USD in 2022.

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This steep rise is expected to continue in the foreseeable future. Moreover, data safety has taken primary importance in recent times, with 52% of all surveyed leaders considering it the most important selection criterion for a SaaS.

Growth and Position of SAP Commerce Cloud

We also found that SAP Commerce Cloud is playing an increasingly crucial role in this SaaS evolution, with 50.7% of surveyed users implementing it in their daily operations, as mentioned earlier.

Also, the time of adoption of SAP Commerce Cloud and its SAP predecessors was spread uniformly, spanning mostly over the last 5 years. This shows its consistent popularity. In fact, SAP Commerce Cloud has about 4,817 live websites as of 2023 based on a Builtwith study.

These statistics show the consistent popularity and market impact of the tool.

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Results of Implementing SAP Commerce Cloud

Overall, 256 or 72% of enterprises using the tool believe that using SAP Commerce Cloud has improved their e-commerce capabilities. 52% of users in the retail segment and 65% of all users also reported a rise in profits after adopting the tool which they are able to directly attribute to it.

An impressive 8 out of 10 surveyed users expressed full satisfaction with SAP Commerce Cloud, while those that did not were partly dissatisfied mainly due to slow performance and delayed updates.

These numbers indicate that SAP Commerce Cloud’s comprehensive management capabilities, such as product content management and order management tools, clearly make it a preferred choice for a majority of businesses, especially in the retail segment. But it does have some challenges to overcome. Let’s understand the strengths and weaknesses in more detail.

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Strengths: Top 3 reasons for selecting SAP Commerce Cloud

When asked for the 3 primary reasons for going with SAP Commerce Cloud instead of popular alternatives, a majority of respondents emphasized its integrations, safety, global commerce, omnichannel commerce, and personalization abilities.

  • Offers most comprehensive safety and compliance measures- 179
  • Integrates seamlessly with other SAP or third-party solutions- 120
  • Powerful omnichannel commerce platform- 96
  • Powerful and flexible product information management system- 21
  • Robust personalization features- 83
  • Rich set of APIs and extensions- 23
  • Advanced built-in analytics and reporting tool- 11
  • Effective global commerce support- 101
  • Better customer support- 4
  • A strong community of partners, developers, and customers- 27
  • Other- 3

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Safety remained the most important factor followed by integrations and personalization for most businesses when asked to rank their most important reason for choosing SAP commerce. However, the retail segment showed some unique trends in the selection criteria since over 50% of retail users considered omnichannel commerce abilities as the most important strength of SAP Commerce Cloud followed by global commerce abilities and safety.

Limitations

Despite its clear effectiveness, SAP Commerce Cloud may require optimizations to appeal to a larger customer base. Currently, 61% of those who have not adopted the tool said that the complexity and steep learning curve of SAP Commerce Cloud are the main reasons why they have preferred alternatives. 30% of these non-users said it is too costly and only 9% stated the lack of features or other limitations as the cause. As discussed, slow performance and delayed updates were the key issues faced by users who were not entirely satisfied.

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Security and Compliance Taking The Center Stage

In today’s digital age, security, and compliance are of paramount importance. In fact, 185 or around 52% of all surveyed business leaders stated that security is the single most important criterion they consider while selecting a new commerce cloud software. This is followed mainly by functionality (20%), cost (12%), integrations (7%), support (7%), and other (2%) factors.

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SAP Commerce Cloud is performing well in this regard as 77% of SAP Commerce Cloud users consider it to be the most secure e-commerce platform. Moreover, around 40% of those who have adopted it say that the platform’s security and compliance features were major considerations while selecting the platform. A majority of these were from the retail segment, where user privacy is gaining increasing importance.

The Retail Relevance

The ubiquity, ease of collaboration, speed, and security offered by cloud technology have clearly played a key role in SAP’s widespread adoption across industries, business sizes, and continents

However, the higher profit and adoption rate in retail across business types, sizes, and locations suggests its unique advantages in the global retail sector. As per our research, the key advantages include-

  • It helps retailers scale their e-commerce operations on demand and reduces the time and cost of launching new online shops.
  • It comes with pre-loaded features, which means that retailers can benefit from the best practices and industry standards that SAP Commerce Cloud offers.
  • It provides a polished customer experience, which means that customers can find what they are looking for easily and quickly, get relevant recommendations and offers, and enjoy a smooth checkout process. This is great for cross-selling, upselling, and customer retention.

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  • It allows easy integration with other SAP solutions, especially as it is a complementary part of the overall SAP Customer Experience or SAP Hybris suite.
  • Its global commerce features also create a seamless experience from anywhere in the world. These include support for multiple languages, currencies, tax calculations, and payment methods.
  • It supports omnichannel commerce. This key strength means that customers can shop online, in-store, or on mobile devices with a smooth experience across platforms.

Case Studies

We also went through some cases of the application of SAP Commerce Cloud by various businesses, and here’s what we found:

Franke

Franke Home Solutions

Franke Home Solutions is a Swiss kitchen and bathroom solutions provider that offers sinks, faucets, hoods, ovens, and coffee machines. With the help of Spadoom, it implemented and used SAP Commerce Cloud to provide efficient online purchasing experiences for its resellers.

Bose

Bose Corporation

Bose Corporation is a US-based audio equipment company that produces headphones, speakers, and sound systems. They used SAP Commerce Cloud to create a seamless and consistent omnichannel experience for their customers. They benefited from faster time to market, better scalability, more personalization, and improved marketing integration.

Beiersdorf

Beiersdorf

Beiersdorf is a German personal-care company that owns brands such as Nivea, Eucerin, and La Prairie. They used SAP Commerce Cloud, the cloud-based e-commerce platform, to reach out to worldwide markets through the rapid rollout of online shops. Beiersdorf increased its online sales, reduced the time and cost of launching new online shops, improved the customer experience, and enhanced its brand loyalty and reputation.

The Impact and Future of SAP Commerce Cloud in Global Retail

The future of SAP Commerce Cloud in retail appears bright. It is powering the growth of global retail and will likely play a key role in shaping the future of retail. Here are the key reasons behind this inference as per our survey-

We found that 72% of enterprises believe SAP Commerce Cloud has enhanced their e-commerce capabilities and 52% of SAP Commerce Cloud users in the retail segment reported a corresponding rise in profits.

We also found that the tool was being adopted consistently over the years across the globe, and a majority of survey respondents were actively using it.

We learned that its key strengths include its global support, security, personalization, and seamless integrations.

The complexity, high costs, and limited updates continue to pose challenges as per respondents, but these will likely be resolved in upcoming updates.

Apart from the surveyed details, let’s also have a closer look at the features that are propelling its popularity and impact in retail, and may be instrumental for future growth-

SAP Commerce Cloud is known to help businesses deliver personalized and engaging digital experiences to their customers. It also enables businesses to scale their e-commerce operations on demand, launch online shops in multiple countries and languages, and reach more customers and markets with less time and cost.

Moreover, Sap Commerce Cloud helps businesses to create a seamless and consistent omnichannel experience for their customers, optimize search, merchandising, and personalization capabilities, and increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention with relevant and tailored offers and content.

It is also part of the SAP Customer Experience portfolio, which provides a comprehensive and unified view of the customer and the business. It also integrates with other SAP solutions, such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP CPQ, and SAP Upscale Commerce, to provide innovative features such as product configurator, order management, subscription billing, and more.

Lastly, it helps businesses leverage the latest technologies and innovations to enhance their e-commerce capabilities and deliver a superior customer journey across all touchpoints.

With the staggering numbers and plethora of proven advantages and impactful features, the popularity and impact of SAP Commerce Cloud in the retail sector are growing and bound to skyrocket!

In conclusion, SAP Commerce Cloud is revolutionizing the retail industry by offering scalable, flexible, and secure solutions. As businesses continue to navigate the challenges of the digital age, platforms like SAP Commerce Cloud will play a crucial role in shaping the future of retail.

Spadoom can help you leverage this tool
to stay at the forefront of this transformation. All the best!


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Spadoom SAP GOLD Partner

As an experienced SAP Gold Partner,

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