Businesses and buyers are constantly evolving everything from expectations to processes and even the offerings themselves. Ownership is becoming an outdated concept, convenience reigns. What was once a simple linear transaction has transformed completely into a maze of touchpoints and engagements. Today a series of meaningful engagements and data points is often considered more valuable than cold hard cash.
Businesses as diverse as B2B printing services companies to B2C grocery retailers have come to the conclusion that to stay ahead, transformation is essential. While the roadmap to disruption is hardly direct, there are a few qualities that are common across organizations who have disrupted their markets. If you’ve been following SAP Hybris for a while now, you may be aware of how we better arm our customers through a simplified front office and support for new cutting-edge technologies.
What we have learned from our customers that are leading the pack are these key differentiators for businesses today.
Put on your disruptor hat
Any business willing to step out of its comfort zone and consider a complete business model transformation will instantly stand out. SAP helps to encourage big thinking by providing an agile foundation that supports radically changing business models. Our flexible architecture offers everything from complex billing cycles to new methods of engagement. Because businesses aren’t limited by lack of capabilities, and everything is fair game in the world of disruption – even billing cycles.
Retail is one industry where we see lots of disruption, but all industries will be touched. One customer comes to mind, a household name in Germany, known for its heating systems and radiators. It has completely repositioned itself as a service level provider to private individuals. This is a completely different discussion.
Treat your customer data with respect
One of the greatest differentiators for any commerce company today is full visibility into all customer touchpoints. From the beginning, our vision was driven by one portfolio in the front office. SAP Hybris provides seamless integration of all touchpoints across commerce, marketing, sales, service and billing, so companies can better serve individuals – all in context.
Business users begin with a sophisticated customer profile not wasting any time with “test” runs or batch-and-blast techniques. It’s important to be able to collect the data and push the experience when you know it’s relevant. Not just blast it out. Because SAP is constantly touching data across the integrated product suite, businesses don’t need to worry about disconnects and information silos.
Be fast
Being able to take advantage of new innovations at break-neck speed is important in today’s fiercely competitive market. If you can’t react quickly to customer demands with new technologies, your chances of survival are low. Think about Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods. There is literally always someone out there to eat your lunch.
With a short path to adoption, SAP Hybris offers quick innovation cycles that embrace new and emerging technologies for everything from chat bots and conversational commerce, to immediate delivery, machine learning and artificial intelligence. I am very positive about the future of ML and AI and disagree with scare-mongers. Machines have always replaced machines.
Users have always had more depth, reach, and impact. By enabling customers to get ahead of hype cycles and service their customers in new and unique formats, we help set the pace of innovation and customer satisfaction, and so encourage continued business growth.
Give them an inch
What is vital, too, is having the ability to not only execute sophisticated marketing efforts and commerce models, but measuring the success or failures that go along with it. Having a single comprehensive place to pinpoint these efforts and drive smart business decisions is a critical differentiator. With visibility across all channels and spends, business users are equipped to drive sustainable growth.
It’s no secret that companies around the world are accelerating the pace of innovation and fundamentally changing the way we buy and interact. Being able to trust that your technology solution understands the sales and marketing funnel and can actually help you execute on the strategy ahead is essential to driving transformation forward. Here at SAP Hybris, we believe that context-based, data-driven marketing is the future. We are working toward automating the funnel and have data classify the opportunity. This allows our salesforce to focus on our customers.
We’re thrilled to play a part in creating positive change and providing companies with the resources they need to transform our world. How is your business contributing? I’m curious to hear.
(In case you missed it, we recently achieved leader position in two Forrester Waves: B2B & B2C Commerce Suites, 2017, recognized as best fit for companies looking for an industrial-strength, reliable, and fully functional commerce platform that is in wide use across several industry verticals.)
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This post was originally published by Carsten on LinkedIn, and has been republished with permission.
