SAP Engagement Cloud: Q&A on the new SAP Omnichannel CRM Platform

SAP has understood this: A consistent customer approach with personalized content, recommendations and offers across all touchpoints is more important than ever for companies. Traditional marketing automation tools quickly reach their limits because they focus too much on marketing processes and too little on networking with other company data.

The SAP Engagement Cloud closes this gap: As a link between customer data, business processes and personalized interactions, the omnichannel platform sees customer engagement as an integral part of the corporate strategy and makes it a cross-location discipline for all teams and departments.

The platform addresses key challenges that slow down the efficiency and productivity of customer-facing departments and limit the effectiveness of their initiatives. Four central pain points:

• Fragmented omnichannel management: marketing teams often work with a patchwork of individual tools and systems to manage different channels: Email here, push notifications there, loyalty system somewhere else. As a central control instance for all channels, the SAP Engagement Cloud supports consistent campaign orchestration along the customer journey.
• Hurdles to real-time personalization & automation: Slow responses, a lack of flexibility and incorrect forecasts are often the result of a lack of segmentation depth and a fragmented customer picture. The SAP Engagement Cloud uses AI and 360-degree insights to offer customers relevant content at all touchpoints at the right time and to address them in a contextual and personalized manner.
• Isolated data sources & lack of transparency: In most cases, historically grown systems mean isolated data sources that are barely interlinked: Data is not synchronized, processed and used in a contextualized way in real time. By consolidating all channels and touchpoints, the SAP Engagement Cloud creates a single source of truth to better understand customer behavior, trigger targeted actions and make data-based decisions.
• Complexity in integration & migration projects: IT enhancements or switching to a new platform cost resources and can temporarily limit the availability of information. With native connectors to other SAP products such as the SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud or SAP Business Data Cloud as well as open APIs for non-SAP systems, the SAP Engagement Cloud simplifies integration into the existing IT landscape.

In its strategic realignment, the SAP Engagement Cloud goes far beyond the functionality of a traditional marketing or SAP CRM solution. Functionally, the new platform covers three core areas:

1. Omnichannel CRM & campaign management: with the new Omnichannel Content Blocks, reusable content can be created, adapted for different formats, target groups and campaigns and played out on a channel-specific basis. This ensures a consistent brand experience across all channels and for every communication, whether via email, mobile app, social media, ads, web, wallet or conversational channels such as WhatsApp.
2. AI-powered personalization & automation: real-time segmentation, AI-generated campaign and communication content, automated translations and intelligent loyalty programs: The SAP Engagement Cloud uses AI along the entire customer journey for automated analyses and processes, data-driven suggestions, personalization and fast, accurate responses.
3. Real-time analytics & data-driven decisions: SAP Engagement Cloud combines customer profiles and behavioral insights with transactional and operational data to deliver contextual recommendations and enable data-driven decisions. By linking to the SAP Commerce Cloud, for example, marketing and service teams can view real-time information on product availability and delivery status via the CRM platform and use it for customer communication.

The platform covers a wide range of functions for different use cases and objectives. Some bring tactical quick wins, others are to be understood as strategic long-term initiatives. Use cases that work quickly and effectively at all levels are, for example

• Lifecycle marketing, e.g. in the form of fully automated and personalized welcome routes, reactivation campaigns and VIP tiers
• Transactional communication, e.g. shipping notifications and post-purchase journeys with up-selling potential
• Loyalty programs, e.g. points-based systems, couponing and mobile wallet integrations for loyalty management that can be controlled under an umbrella campaign
• Conversational commerce, e.g. through product advice, support and services in direct customer dialog via WhatsApp
• B2B marketing, e.g. through native connection with the SAP Sales Cloud and segmentation by buyer role, purchase history and deal stage for account-based marketing (ABM)
• Real-time triggered campaigns and event-based communication based on behavioral and transactional signals in real time

The SAP Engagement Cloud is aimed at companies that want to personalize their customer communication, optimize it in a data-driven and channel-specific manner and scale it in an omnichannel context. More specifically, the new SAP CRM platform addresses the following company profiles:

• Medium-sized companies in the retail, e-commerce and B2C sectors that already use Emarsys and want to continue working in their familiar environment – supplemented by AI-supported, automated functions and centralized campaign management
• Global corporations and multi-brand companies looking for an enterprise-ready solution – with central governance structures, brand-specific configurations and cross-departmental journey orchestrations
• Existing SAP customers who are already using other SAP solutions and want to embed Customer Engagement natively in their existing systems.

The SAP Engagement Cloud is particularly strong in data-intensive, transaction-driven industries, such as manufacturing, fashion, CPG and food retail, as well as for telecommunications, utilities and financial service providers.

Compared to traditional CRM solutions or pure email marketing tools, the SAP Customer Engagement Cloud offers more channel- and context-specific depth. Applications of previous generations focused on the management of marketing and customer data. This made it possible to answer the question: “Who is my customer?”. The SAP Engagement Cloud links and processes this data contextually, across all channels and AI-supported. This allows intelligent conclusions to be drawn for the next actions and answers the question: “How and when do I best approach a customer?”

The SAP Engagement Cloud is far more than just an Emarsys rebranding, because the strategic scope has been fundamentally expanded. What makes the difference:

• Enterprise governance: with capabilities for role-based access control, SSO integration and global brand governance, SAP Engagement Cloud makes it easy to manage multiple brands, regions and business models through one platform instance.
• Deeper SAP integration: While Emarsys mainly processed marketing data, the SAP Engagement Cloud also accesses operational SAP data – without detours via complex data integration projects.
• Conversational commerce: WhatsApp is available directly in the platform and enables bidirectional customer conversations with automated follow-up suggestions.
• Company-wide orchestration: Engagement is no longer just a marketing issue. Sales, service and operations teams are integrated into customer communication processes and measures.

A question that is currently on the minds of many Emarsys customers and can be answered clearly: The familiar Emarsys functions have been fully transferred to the SAP Engagement Cloud and are still available. The new name is therefore not a departure, but an extension of the proven SAP marketing solution. Customers using Emarsys today are not facing a forced initiative in terms of a change or upgrade.

For these companies, valantic recommends a structured health check to find out whether all the possibilities of the platform have been exhausted, whether it continues to do justice to the company’s development and whether it optimally supports long-term objectives.

The SAP Engagement Cloud has a modular structure. Depending on prioritization and readiness, companies can adopt new functions step by step without having to make a big-bang change.

The basic solution is available as an Emarsys Edition and is based on the proven Emarsys foundation with all central marketing automation functions.

The Enterprise Edition supplements the application areas with, among other things

• extended administration and governance functions for global organizations
• a flexible architecture for multi-brand and multi-market scenarios
• Support for changing business models, e.g. from B2B to D2C
• deep integration into the SAP Business Data Cloud

The SAP Engagement Cloud offers a comprehensive integration ecosystem, including native connectors to SAP Commerce Cloud (including engagement events for real-time shopping cart signals), SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud as well as open APIs for non-SAP systems. The new Batch Sales Data API also simplifies the loading of large historical sales data sets with self-service configuration. For particularly complex system landscapes, we recommend integration middleware. To this end, valantic has many years of project experience to advise companies accordingly.

This is a key strength of the SAP Engagement Cloud Enterprise Edition: the Brand Center makes it possible to centrally manage global design standards and content blocks while giving local teams the flexibility they need. Combined with role-based access control and centralized data management via the SAP Business Data Cloud, this creates a framework that ensures consistency and compliance even with AI automation.

The time and effort required to implement the new SAP CRM platform depend heavily on the initial situation. Two typical scenarios:

1. Switching from a non-SAP CRM to SAP Engagement Cloud: This is the most complex scenario, but also offers the greatest potential. Relevant workstreams include data extraction and migration, harmonization of contact data, rebuilding the segmentation logic, transferring existing journeys and technical integration into the existing store and ERP landscape. With an experienced implementation partner, a go-live can be realized in three to six months.
2. Upgrading from Emarsys to the Enterprise Edition: Anyone upgrading from the standard version to the Enterprise Edition must first and foremost redefine their governance structures: Who is allowed to see and configure what? How are brands, regions and teams organized? This is less of a technical project and more of a strategic and organizational one. Even if the technical migration effort is manageable, change management should not be underestimated.

In addition to these two scenarios, the “relaunch” of Emarsys creates an ideal starting point for a forward-looking further development strategy. For existing Emarsys customers who want to stick with the basic solution, a structured health check is therefore a good way to find out whether the platform is being used optimally and is exploiting all its potential: Which features are currently being used operationally via workarounds? Where are there gaps compared to what would be possible with the extensions currently available?

Some basic technical and organizational requirements must be met to determine the success or failure of the implementation:

• Data strategy: there needs to be a clear idea of which data flows into the SAP Engagement Cloud from which sources (e.g. store, ERP, social media channels) and how it is managed.
• Data protection & consent management: GDPR-compliant opt-in management and consent structures must be defined before go-live.
• Channel strategy: An actionable roadmap should define the goals, milestones and metrics: Which channels will be activated and in what order? What are the most important KPIs for measuring the success of the individual touchpoints?
• Internal resources: At least one dedicated contact person each from marketing and IT should be assigned to the project.
• Executive sponsorship: The Enterprise Edition in particular, which has a cross-departmental impact, requires support at management level.

At valantic, a classic roadmap is divided into five phases with focused objectives for the implementation of the SAP Engagement Cloud:

• Phase 1 (Discovery & Readiness Check) takes about 2 to 4 weeks and includes the inventory, data strategy, channel prioritization and stakeholder alignment
• Phase 2 (Concept & Design) takes around 2 to 4 weeks and includes steps such as architecture design, journey mapping, governance model and segmentation logic
• Phase 3 (Implementation & Integration) usually takes 6 to 12 weeks and includes the technical setup, data migration, channel activation and testing
• Phase 4 (Go-live & Enablement) takes 2 to 4 weeks and includes the launch, training and KPI-based performance measurement
• Phase 5 (Optimize & Scale) is ongoing and includes, for example, iterations, the implementation of further use cases, AI activation as well as monitoring and reporting