Engage your customers like never before... Next in our blog series, sharing SAP customers' business cases for cloud solutions.
Recently a net new name has been added to SAP´s cloud installed base, a customer who is (still) running ERP from Oracle. The customer is a large automotive distributor, also operating in the mobility aids industry and signed for SAP Cloud for Customer.
SAP Cloud for Customer helps you to align the whole organization around your customers. Marketing, Sales and Customer Service teams are the front line to the customer. They need to harness the end-to-end enterprise, along with deep customer insight and personalized engagement in order to stand-out from the competition and deliver a relevant experience at every step of the customer journey.
Business Challenge(s)
The customer’s business unit in the mobility aids industry faces a new challenge. Originally operating purely in a B2B market, the sales department engaged with distribution channels but never with end consumer. Therefore no processes have been implemented nor have integrated tools been in use to support. Operating based on Outlook and Excel has led to unstructured tasks with little transparency. Mainly nursing homes and hospitals were served. Once a contract was signed, renewal came automatically over time.
Extending their business they now also engage in the B2C market; serving physically challenged people directly, they need to redesign sales operations and market activities.
Expected Outcome
As social media has changed the way how people interact, inform themselves about products or give feedback to vendors, the customer demanded a solution that helps getting more valuable insights of their end customers, achieve a more intimidate/deeper engagement with them and get more touch points with sales.
Understanding the changing rules of a B2C market, they would like to listen better to the (web) market and engage with influencer and clients.
To add the end customer focus, a fast, integrated and easy-to-use sales application was needed driving more efficiency in their sales department, helping them closing more deals and avoid data inconsistency caused by the use of excel sheets.
Benefits
What convinced the customer about SAP was the fact that we have a 40 year successful history in the industry and came up with a brand new solution in the cloud, ready to use but flexible enough to ensure the coverage of their specific processes. To buy SAP was a jointly decision of all stakeholders (VP Sales, CMO, IT, Sales Operations and finally the CEO himself). Where the LoB experienced the great benefits of completeness, ease-of-use and the capability to trigger action in sales and create great transparency, the IT department was impressed by the extensibility of the solution and the integration capabilities.
Another important reason why they decided for SAP over several competitors was the transparency of costs (TCO). The subscription fee covers all costs that appear with the use of its solutions whereas other vendors charge additional fees for data storage, etc.
In Phase 2, the extension with SAP Cloud for Social Engagement (part of the SAP Cloud for customer family) and SAP Social Media Analytics is planned to engage especially with the younger prospects and clients, being closer to them, take their feedback to action and offer better individualized products.
We are excited to see the proof points as soon as the customer has finished the implementation.
For more product specific information, please refer to SAP Cloud Solutions and in particular to SAP Cloud for Customer.
Looking forward to your feedback
Follow us on Twitter @SDenecken , @BeSchulze and @NikolaiVetter
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