Is SAP serious about CX? You bet, and this is why!

The News

SAP flexes its muscles.Bob Stutz returns to SAP as the new president of the CX group. In this role he becomes the successor of Alex Atzberger who held this role since January 2018, himself succeeding Carsten Thoma. In his new role Bob will report directly to Co-CEO Jennifer Morgan.

The Bigger Picture

Bob Stutz certainly is one of the creators of CRM, where Paul Greenberg is its godfather. He was instrumental to the success of Siebel, the company that basically created the industry and dominated the market in the early days of the millennium, till the company got acquired by Oracle.

From there, Bob moved at once to SAP in 2005, with the intention of making a a success business enterprise unit out of SAP CRM.

Which he did. With CRM 7, released in the direction of the give up of 2007, he and his team created a completely competitive product, functionally, and from a usability thing of view.

He additionally, with CRM on Demand, laid the inspiration for an SAP pass into the cloud. Not absolutely successful, that one, as it the whole shape become now not cloud oriented, but it became the first step into the proper route. And an crucial one, as the entire market, led through Salesforce, went for the cloud.

It became a tough transition; accept as actual with me, I became there.

By then, Salesforce become hot at the heels of the then market chief SAP, with Oracle and Microsoft making themselves heard as nicely, Oracle hampering itself with the transition to Fusion and Microsoft on the begin of its adventure that created Dynamics.

His tenure led to 2010. He moved on to Hewlett Packard earlier than joining Microsoft because the top for Dynamics CRM, all over again with the task of making a winning product.

Which he did.

Before moving directly to Salesforce, first heading the analytics cloud, if memory serves after which turning into the CEO of the advertising and advertising and marketing cloud and chief analytics officer. Here he, once more, become instrumental in growing a CRM product line a success.

Bob Stutz is a pacesetter with a passion (and track record) of turning a promising underdog into a category chief.

And now he is lower back at SAP.

My Analysis and PoV

Bob Stutz is someone who cannot, likely doesn?T want to and without a doubt doesn?T need to cowl his military records. He combines vision with execution, appears at his challenge from many angles after which attacks it following 3 guiding standards which might be important within the military, too: The solution need to be powerful, that one is apparent. It should be easy, so it's going to likely be well understood. And it ought to be green. That is the same for his corporations, too (which became difficult for SAP to implement lower back within the day).

This permits him to get topics performed.

However, there may be a project to it. His direct approach doesn?T best create buddies.

Since SAP entered the CRM marketplace again in 1998 the corporation commonly dealt with CRM as a shape of step baby. In the early days there has been loads of warfare via using the R/three groups, however then, while SAP places itself at the back of an goal, it's miles an impressive pressure. This can be visible even as SAP employed Bob the number one time at a time while SAP?S CRM business end up in all likelihood to tank. When he left, CRM have become an awful lot less a achievement again, for numerous reasons.

It took the employer nearly seven years to come to be a hit within the CRM market again, in part because of an amazing implementation strategy, and partly due to locating an exciting tale with patron revel in extending the tale of the smart organization. The branding glide from SAP Hybris ? Which have become a wonderful logo to take gain of in the early days ? To Customer Experience Suite with agency latest cloud names might have been kind of excellent, if no longer for the HANA suffix that still remains alive. But uninteresting enterprise preferred cloud names like sales cloud, service cloud, advertising and marketing and advertising and marketing cloud are honestly the way to move. Be it simplest due to the truth that is what humans look for whilst no longer being in the SAP fold.

And one of the most crucial reasons is a a achievement acquisition approach with Hybris, Gigya, Callidus, Coresystems (right right here just a few IP) and Qualtrics being the large gadgets, and a few smaller ones, too ? Assume Recast.Ai, absolutely to provide one instance.

One can say, SAP has long beyond complete circle due to the fact cease of 2004.

And with that we've got some proper motives why SAP and Bob Stutz are a first rate healthy yet again.

·      The story around customer (and user) experience extending the intelligent enterprise that needs to be told is available, but it isn’t really told yet, at least not consistently. SAP has strong analyst relations and an even stronger partner network, which could – and would love to – help around this topic.

·      As a result of its acquisitions, SAP now has a number of solutions that need to be integrated. This is very hard work, especially in the light of a multi-cloud strategy that works across hyper scaling IaaS vendors.

·      Although most CX solutions are good, there needs to be a lot of attention to detail. And taking the marketing cloud as an example, it has quite some strengths, but could do better with a closer look at what marketeers are doing day by day. Combine this with a more reliable roadmap communication brings a winner

·      Related to the intelligent enterprise story there is the actual uncertainty about how S/4 and C/4 (here we are with naming) actually complement each other or where the boundary between the two really is.

With hiring Bob Stutz again, after making the CX numbers more transparent in the financial reporting, SAP shows just how serious the company is about this line of business. After all CRM software is also now the largest sector of enterprise software.

The foundation is there, and despite the fact that he didn?T handiest make pals at SAP, now the chief is there, to execute on SAP?S ambition.

A rocky journey lies in advance ? For SAP and for its opposition.

I?D in truth love to participate in it ?