SAP acquires hybris, focuses on Omnicommerce Customer Engagement

Yesterday, SAP and hybris held a press and launch event in NYC to talk about the future of their high profile partnership.

Here’s what we know: after a few years of speculation, SAP made strides in the enterprise ecommerce sphere by acquiring hybris, which will be, what Jonathan Becher, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of SAP, calls SAP’s “go forward [commerce] solution.”

But what does that mean to retailers?

It means customer intimacy. SAP and hybris together lets brands and retailers achieve true customer engagement by creating a unified, consistent and compelling experience across all channels. “We have to change our mindsets from thinking about controlling customer relationships and automating them…to thinking about how to provide that holistic experience,” says Becher.

During his presentation at Tuesday’s event, Ariel Luedi, hybris CEO, laid out some solidly innovative thinking on the topic:

“retailers say they would like to have a single view of customers. That’s already the wrong approach. That’s the inside out approach. You have to think about customers having a single view of the brand.”

And that single view is achieved by meeting 3 expectations customers (us included, since we’re all customers) have of brands and retailers:

Consistent product info

 “Whenever we touch one of these channels, we expect to get the same answer. Sounds simple, but it’s not happening. There’s different availabilities, different pricing. [Retailers] don’t know where the product is, what the order status is…if I’m getting confused, I’m not buying.” -Luedi

Consistent customer service

“If I start a dialogue with a brand and I choose in this process to change the channel, I’d like to continue this dialogue without starting from scratch. Channels should be integrated…they should know what I’ve done and help me to finish this process” -Luedi

Consistent user experience

“I would like to get treated the same way on all channels. Best friend on web. But on the weekend, unshaven with my old jeans, if I go into a store, they look at  me like a potential shoplifter….especially if you’ve been treated well, if all of a sudden the information chain breaks down, it hurts the most.” -Luedi

The solution? With SAP and hybris, retailers can manage data complexity (i.e. single source of true content data that informs all channels) and process complexity (multi-channel integration):

“The same source about products, about customers, about inventory, about pricing, about order status. One source. It’s an infrastructure project. And that’s where hybris and SAP can help…managing data complexity. And process complexity.” -Luedi

And as for innovation, “we’re future-proofing our company’s businesses through open architecture, and the level of R+D that we do, and the new functionality and modules we bring to market,” said Steve Kramer, Executive VP Americas, hybris.

Click image to view the full webcast.

Or just see what the Twitterverse had to say:

@jbecher : "looking at numbers of overlap customers, we see a huge upside here alone + expect huge uptake in #EmergingMarkets" #OmniCommerce

— Sven Denecken (@SDenecken) August 6, 2013

"That's the world now." Optimizing omni-channel enterprise. #omnicommerce #SAP #hybris http://t.co/yHyxwWOx3D pic.twitter.com/HkQzBuKoid #ENSW

— Sven Denecken (@SDenecken) August 6, 2013

@jbecher : "How about creating a dedicated website for a consumer every minute? Imagine the power of real-time" > #simplyHANA #OmniCommerce

— Sven Denecken (@SDenecken) August 6, 2013

#hybris CEO Ariel Luedi: "customer experience: needs to be defined much wider and deeper" #OmniCommerce” – well said, often overlooked point

— Jamie Anderson (@collsdad) August 6, 2013

https://twitter.com/hybrisNA/status/364772134460997632

#hybris CEO hardest challenge is to manage the incoming interest and scaling partners to deliver – key focus for 2013 #omnicommerce #SAP

— Madhur Aggarwal (@aggarwalmadhur) August 6, 2013