SAP CX – A Deep Look into the Glass Ball
Earlier this year, a few days after attending SAP Sapphire reimagined, I asked Quo Vadis, SAP. At that time industry legend Bob Stutz led the CX group already for 8 months, with Esteban Kolsky being his chief of strategy. At this event there was hardly any mention of SAP CX. This is in spite of the CRM market being the fastest growing enterprise software market and in contrast to then CEO Bill McDermott’s bold statements that SAP will take Salesforce heads on. Esteban meanwhile changed his role and has become Head of Product, Customer Service and Sales for the SAP CX unit, which indicates that there is an emphasis on execution. And then, there was the announcement that Qualtrics, the company that basically defined the experience management market and that SAP acquired barely two years ago, will be brought public. So, something is happening. But still, there is no word about a strategy or a vision besides a few hints that Bob and Esteban gave during various webcasts or a blog post, in which Esteban gave a glimpse at what he sees as the next generation CRM. It should not surprise you that his thoughts have to do with platform, as the overall market for business applications, and especially the market for customer experience, has morphed into a platform market. This void of communicated strategy was supposed to be filled in early May. This communication was cancelled in the wake of Jennifer Morgan leaving SAP and Christian Klein becoming the sole CEO. This void shall be closed soon, after it lasted far too long. This indicates some alignment challenges...
CRMKonvos – beyondCXM: How to turn customers and employees into raving fans
#BeyondCXM. To turn customers and employees into fans as a possibiility to achieve sustainable business is what Ralf Korb and Thomas Wieberneit as hosts discussed with Dr. Winfried Felser and Marc Schmid, CEO of Novadoo. Sometimes the magic of customer experience if found beyond normal processes and classic expectations and therefore individual, consumable, experiences. This happens especially if one offers a genuine and heartfelt ‘Thank you’ and with that creates an emotional bondo or relationship with the customer, instead of just a transactional one. Leading up to this: What are companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, or Zoho currently doing and how can these developments help with a Corona restart with ten times the current possibilities? Big topics, discussed in this CRMKonvos episode. The episode is in German...
CRMKonvos – The value of Tiktok for Oracle and the route beyond CXM
In this episode we had the pleasure to talk with fellow long time analyst, influencer and CRM industry observer Marshall Lager about what value TikTok could bring to Oracle – if any – and continued from there to experiences and experience management upto raising the question about what lies beyondCXM. Will it be purely technically driven or even philosophical? Find out in this episode fo the #CRMKonvos. And do not forget to tune into the next one, which will continue on the theme of going beyond CXM. This episode is in...
Why TikTok is a fit for Microsoft, Walmart and Oracle
Will ByteDance be able to sell some of its non-Chinese TikTok business or not? TikTok, the app that is all the rage with millenials who post thirty second movie clips and seem to have tremendous fun with it. And which got valued at more than $ 50 bn US before it was threatened with a ban in the US. It is less than a week to the deadline for an enforced shut down of the infrastructure. Time to jot down a number of seemingly, but not so random thoughts. Microsoft, in combination with Walmart, and Oracle, along with some unnamed additional investors, appear to be the frontrunners for making a deal. There are rumours about at least Twitter and Netflix showing some interest, too. If they are allowed to make a deal, and then willing to make it given the boundaries that are set by both, the US and the Chinese governments. There is tremendous pressure exerted by the US government citing a threat to national security because it could provide data about US users to China. This would make it necessary to ban the app in the USA if the US business stays under Chinese control. India already banned the app back in June 2020. China, in turn, updated its export control rules, restricting the export of “technology based on data analysis for personalized information recommendation services” (login required). This is pretty much exactly what TikTok does. This means that the sale of technologies that are implemented by TikTok are now subject to ByteDance as the owner of TikTok getting a governmental approval. It is not unreasonable to...