Unlock SAP Data to Deliver a World-Class Digital Customer Experience

Call it self-service, call it digital transformation, call it customer self help. It’s the digital customer experience. Getting it right means keeping promises to your customers and driving loyalty. etting it wrong puts revenue at risk and increases inbound low-value calls to already strapped customer service teams. 

So while manufacturers have invested heavily in digital transformation projects – from SAP S/4HANA migration, to automation and on-floor robotics–91% of manufacturing leaders admitted in a global survey they still need to improve, or are starting to implement improvements, to the digital customer experience. 

Contain Rising Costs

Post-pandemic, talent shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation have become near-constant margin threats. Add in increasing competition and it’s critical to contain costs in every area while still investing in the digital technologies that will ensure future success. 

Integrating Salesforce Service Cloud–or other customer care platforms–with SAP delivers a strong ROI in productivity and customer satisfaction. When customer-facing employees have access to all necessary  information within a single system, they can dedicate more time to addressing inquiries and delighting customers, reducing the need to navigate between systems or having to consistently ask “where do I look for this information?”.

By looking at your CRM as a true customer relationship management solution–not just as a commerce portal or quoting tool–it’s easier for the C-Suite to prioritize investments in a fully integrated solution. 

Unlock SAP Data as Your Single Source of Truth

Your tech stack and investments must support seamless integration with SAP to leverage the trusted data within, avoiding the creation of isolated data silos. This means your CRM, like Salesforce, your ITAM, like ServiceNow, 3D order modeling like ThreeKit and your Customer Service or Field Service solutions must leverage real-time data from inside SAP.

Downplaying the significance of this integration means intentionally creating duplicate sets of data that then need to be maintained. This creates mistrust across teams–impacting collaboration–reduces data quality, and increases costs as employees, and potentially customers, have to swivel-chair between systems and screens.

By using SAP data as the foundation for your other systems, a meaningful digital customer experience becomes possible.

For example:

• Customers can create eCommerce orders based on your entire catalog–including configurable products. This also means account-specific configuration options are only available to designated customers.
• Visual commerce via solutions like Threekit enables customers to see their custom configurations come to life with 100%-accurate-to-SAP orderability 
• Field Service technicians are able to see part inventory while at the customer site–no calling back to the office to determine availability.
• Quotes created by the sales teams reflect not just ATP, but account-specific, region-specific, even product-specific discounts, protecting your margins–all information stored in SAP.

This single source of truth becomes even more paramount for any organization looking to leverage AI. Without connected data sources, the power of AI cannot be harnessed or, worse, it becomes a garbage-in, garbage-out scenario when fractured inputs deliver untrustworthy results.

Let’s talk about how to integrate SAP data with your CRM to deliver a digital customer experience that drives loyalty and increased sales.