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former_member88020
Active Participant
It's been another week since Daniel Hilling-Smith and I spoke about the future of the digital customer experience (CX) at the ASUG Next-Generation SAP Center of Excellence Virtual Conference.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank not only ASUG for the event and setup. We would also like to thank Paul Kurchina, who believes in our mission, always actively supports us and always gives us the opportunity to talk about SAP for Me - The SAP Customer Portal.

In addition to our keynote, there were four other sessions on SAP for Me:

  • SAP for Me - Overview and future of customer collaboration with SAP
    (Recording)

  • Keep Track of your SAP Product Portfolio and Related Opportunities with SAP for Me (Recording)

  • Get your SAP Licenses under Control with SAP for Me
    (Recording)

  • Get the most out of SAP Support and Self-Services with SAP for Me
    (Recording)


Over the next weeks we will also summarize the other sessions in blog posts.

By the way: For all those who prefer to watch and hear our session as video, there is the recording. For everyone else, here is the summary in this blog post.

 

What really matters today, is experience


Anyone who has followed SAP's online tools over the last few years knows that there are a lot of good things. But when it comes to a harmonized, digital customer experience, there is a lot of catching up to do. In our networked, digital, but also complex world, those who have all the information they need at their fingertips to make the right decisions have an advantage. Ideally, as a customer, you don't have to laboriously search for this information. And most certainly the expectation is that information – even in different places - nevertheless is consistent and fits together.

Christian Klein summed this up very aptly at the beginning of 2019:


 

CX needs more than partial improvement:
our customer focused strategy


It takes a strategy to sustainably improve customer experience. In our talk, Daniel gave a little insight into how we see this perspective internally. We have been working on this very strategy and have positioned ourselves in such a way that we can now holistically improve the digital customer experience across SAP.


In doing so, it is important for us to define standards and principles and ensure that they are adhered to. With principles such as "Personal," "Intelligent," or "Predictive" and a strategy that is both task-focused and value-creating, we see the key to a harmonized digital experience.

 

We will put the customer even more
at the center of everything we do


As illustrated in the image below, there are a very many tasks that a customer performs during his customer journey.


Of course, this image is only a small illustration and not complete. But what you can directly see is that SAP's different channels, through which a customer can engage with SAP, provide a multitude of touch points. It is obvious that this is where we need to start.

If we look beyond this view of the channels, it also becomes clear that a customer or a customer employee has very explicit expectations towards SAP.


This includes the fact that SAP knows the software product portfolio in use, but preferably also the individual person and their connection. In addition, the customer also needs a complete picture not only of his portfolio, but also of the possible opportunities to further improve it. A complete picture is therefore necessary. At the same time, it is not only important to get information but also to take the needed corresponding action. That's why customers repeatedly tell us they need digital self-services.

So, context, completeness and self-services are another key to a good customer experience.

 

SAP for Me is the beginning


With SAP for Me, we have already proven that we are able to combine context, completeness, and self-services in a meaningful way.


For us, "semantic" is not just a technical term but the basis for defining context. Already during the information design process, we look at how a certain piece of information fits into the overall picture, which direct “information neighbors” there must be and which "next information" becomes obvious in the next navigation step.

In addition to the context, we have also considered different perspectives from the beginning to directly prevent silo thinking. SAP for Me does not consider only the product, only the support or only the system. It looks at all these aspects together.

Self-services are the supreme discipline of digital transformation. This is where it becomes clear which processes can really be fully digitized. Manual process steps have no place here. We have already taken this path with SAP for Me. For example, you can change contact persons or initiate system provisioning.


The picture above is intended to show a small overview of what is already available in SAP for Me or already in the pipeline. As you can see, we are essentially concerned with the two goals of "keeping your business running" and "identifying new opportunities", both of which we would like to reconcile.

In the continuing presentations from the ASUG Next-Generation SAP Center of Excellence Virtual Conference, you can learn more details about how SAP for Me can already help you today and how we will expand it in the future.

 

Full speed ahead toward implementation:
from vision to reality


For us, SAP for Me is just the beginning of a larger vision. It is ultimately about a ONE Experience. Our goal is to offer customers and their employees a single point of entry to all facets of SAP. With an environment in which it is no longer necessary to differentiate between the individual SAP tools. The motto should be: "Don't search but find". We take this even more seriously and want to ensure that the information finds the respective interested party.


This picture shows where we are coming from. Even today, there are still many different channels and touch points, many of which are completely unknown to customers. And since these touch points often don't know each other, they don't refer the user to one another.

Currently we are a step in between, in which we have defined SAP.com, SAP for Me and SAP Community as "primary entry points". This step also includes to start putting the most important (if not all) SAP tools in a clear order, check the need to integrate data or establish new data services in our backends. It is about improving consistency of displayed content. And: It is also about reducing the number of SAP tools by switching them off.

As mentioned, our vision is that customers and their employees encounter their digital collaboration with SAP as ONE experience by bringing all relevant content together in an easy digestible way. In which tools tend to merge into integrated apps and the most diverse channels can access the same data and services.

There is still a lot to do. And we'll continue to report on it on an ongoing basis.

In the meantime, take a look at the recordings and detailed presentations.

Or: Get started directly with SAP for Me, SAP's customer portal via https://me.sap.com

 

Best regards

JJ