On-Demand Webinar: The World of SAP Commerce Cloud is Full of Wonders

Here's what you'll learn in the webinar

E-commerce and digital service offerings are becoming increasingly important in B2B business. Complex requirements for a B2B store are to be met and, for example, products and consignmet that require explanation are to be presented in a simple and customer-friendly manner. Complexity as well as content and commerce are not foreign words for the SAP Commerce Cloud formerly known as "hybris". SAP Commerce Cloud is part of SAP Customer Experience Cloud, which is an integral part of the intelligent enterprise.

Ute Danz and Joana Grade, diva-e experts with many years of experience in e-commerce projects, together with Kai-Tat Man, SAP presales expert for SAP Customer Experience, show which miracles the SAP solution can perform for you and how diva-e organizes the launch of further miracles for you and with you. After all, launching an SAP Commerce Cloud is a challenging, but at the same time solvable task. It will boost your online business noticeably.

Learn more about the partnership with SAP here.

Transcript of the Webinar: The World of SAP Commerce Cloud is Full of Wonders

Introduction & welcome

Annabella Pscherer: Welcome to today's diva-e webinar, "The World of SAP Commerce Cloud is Full of Wonders." Today, our experts will share best practices and insides on how to deliver excellent commerce results to your customers with the SAP solution. My name is Annabella Pscherer and I am part of the diva-e marketing team. I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Ute and Joana from diva-e and Kai-Tat from SAP. It's great to have you with us today. I'd now like to hand over to our experts and hope you enjoy the webinar and gain some exciting insights. Ute, I'll now hand over the broadcast rights to you.

Ute Danz: Thank you. So, can you see my screen?

Annabella Pscherer: Yes, everything works.

Agenda

Ute Danz: This is the title slide. Hello, Annabella has already said some things. Wait, here we go. Also from our side, nice that you are all here. Before I say three words about the agenda, we chose a bold title, the world of SAP Commerce is full of wonders. Therefore, for those who don't find only miracles here now, a little quote from Erich Kästner at the beginning, "Miracles are only experienced by those who believe in miracles". We think we'll actually introduce you to a few things today that are beautiful, that add value, you'll see in a moment. After our brief introduction, we want to briefly put SAP Commerce Cloud into the larger context of SAP CX. Joana is going to give you a general look at the SAP Commerce projects, and then actually go into interesting details from very different projects. And in the last part today, we want to show how we organize that, that we make our customers successful with the SAP Commerce solution, when that might be a good fit for you as well. And last interesting part is, what can we expect from SAP in the future, regarding the Commerce Cloud?

Who are we? Ute Danz, it's already been said. I've been with diva-e since 2015, and since that time I've also been constantly involved with Hybris, or SAP Commerce projects. Some of them together with Joana.

Joana Grade: Yes hello, I'm Joana Grade. I've been working with SAP Commerce since 2012 in different iterations and also throughout. And since 2018, I've been with diva-e as a software architect, as a technical lead, and as a team leader.

Kai-Tat Man: Then I'll join you, my name is Kai-Tat Man, I've been with SAP for six years as a presales expert, supporting customers around customer experience, with the main focus on SAP Commerce Cloud.

Ute Danz: Then we'll get into the content.

Joana Grade: Exactly. And SAP Commerce Cloud is only one part of the SAP Customer Experience Cloud, so I'll ask Kai-Tat, what can you tell us about the other components?

The SAP Customer Experience Cloud

Kai-Tat Man: I'd be happy to do that. Can you scroll down one slide, please, exactly. The SAP Commerce Cloud is part of the so-called SAP Customer Experience Portfolio. The goal of the SAP Customer Experience Portfolio is to help companies manage and optimize all customer experiences so that they are as possible as they are positive. In addition to the Commerce Cloud, there are also the categories Sales, Service, Marketing and Customer Data. And all of these solutions help companies understand their customers, engage with customers, and deliver on customer promises and customer value. Each of these solutions complements the others and helps companies build stronger customer relationships with their customers. For example, we have the Customer Data Cloud, which captures a multi-layered customer profile. We have Marketing Cloud, which drives customer analytics and manages customer outreach. And, of course, there's a sales application that develops those prospects and wins them as customers. And then the service takes care of all the customer's post-sales needs. And in that ecosystem, we have the Commerce Cloud, which implements the digital shopping channel and provides personalized shopping experiences across all digital touchpoints.

Joana Grade: And if we now look at the Commerce Cloud,

What is the unique selling point from SAP's point of view? And which customers are using the SAP Commerce Cloud?

Kai-Tat Man: If you go one slide further, we are particularly proud of the fact that we have many satisfied customers all over the world who successfully do e-commerce with us and manage projects with us in a very short time. What sets us apart from other providers is that we combine B2B and B2C on a single platform and can thus set up customized e-commerce business models for our customers. And we offer a complete package of e-commerce functionality, including mobile storefronts, search, checkout, order management, integration with ERP systems, product data management, web content and much more. We offer that out-of-the-box in our package. And this is provided on a modern, cloud-based platform that automates operations, so everything you need for a great experience and successful e-commerce projects. Regarding customers, it can be said that we are very successful, we have over 3000 customers worldwide, represented in 100 countries, 20 industries. And our customers implement a wide variety of business models with us, ranging from B2C, B2B and customer portals to marketplaces. And they sell everything from consumer goods, machines, spare parts, and services to digital products and subscription-based services. Almost everything is included. And our SAP Commerce Cloud is particularly popular with medium-sized and large companies.

Joana Grade: If we take a look under the hood, SAP Commerce Cloud relies heavily on proven architecture models and design concepts.

SAP Commerce Cloud relies heavily on proven architecture models and design blueprints. What is the decisive background for this decision?

Kai-Tat Man: At the moment, a lot is happening with our customers in the area of digitization. In both B2C and B2B, the focus is on how best to serve the customer via the digital channel. And, of course, a lot of complex inquiries are coming from the business. If you also consider the sophisticated sales and service structures of our customers, which are interlinked nationally, regionally or internationally, the result is a very wide range of business requirements for the infrastructure. For implementation and IT, however, this also means that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the times and, for example, to pick up on trend topics. And the key words we constantly hear from customers are agility and flexibility. In other words, how can I react better, faster and more flexibly to business requirements? And that is what is required of a modern e-commerce platform these days. And here we support our customers with the latest technologies, such as headless architectures, APIs first, cloudnative expansion options. We have invested a lot in the last few years to make the package complete. And with that, you can make commerce projects agile, flexible and innovative to be able to react faster to business requirements.

Joana Grade: Great, thank you. Then I would like to move on to the experiences from the diva-e projects. What we have already experienced there in general. And the key question is, what is mostly the same in five years and ten projects and what is actually always different?

SAP experience from the diva-e projects: What is actually always the same and what is always different?

And of course the core is the SAP Commerce Cloud, the SAP Commerce System. This always includes one or more web front ends that communicate with it. There is a CMS system to deliver the content. We have also made the experience that it is relatively common that several platforms are served by the same SAP Commerce System, for example, different business units, or different stores for different target groups, which then run on the same Commerce Platform, but also have differences in the front end and so on. What happens very often is that an SAP ERP is in operation in the backend at our customers and the typical communication that then runs via it is the information that is exchanged. This is usually the creditors, the customers, the item master data, then the inventories and prices, and finally the order history. And, of course, the orders are transferred from the store to the SAP ERP. It's not always SAP ERP, there are also other systems that we've had experience with that we've connected to the Commerce Cloud, other ERP systems, PIM systems, or even CM systems. And the most modern communication method that SAP currently provides is CPI, i.e. Cloud Platform Integration, which is designed precisely to support this communication between the systems.

And if you now jump straight to the next point, there is a very central question that always arises in the architecture, in the structure of the system.

Will SAP Commerce be with or without a head, in other words, will we have a headless system or not?

Of course, the classic approach is still to have a commerce system, a CMS system and a web front end, all running in the SAP Commerce Cloud. The advantage of this is that these systems are integrated out-of-the-box and are optimally coordinated with each other. However, it is also possible to choose a combined approach, where you have the SAP Commerce Cloud, then run the commerce system, but still want to rely on the Spartacus web frontend. But you want to communicate with another CMS system that runs externally. This is recommended in this case, if you want to use the already implemented features, which of course the Spartacus Webfrontend already brings along, which is coordinated with the Commerce System. If you want to share features with another CMS system, because the CMS system may serve other target systems. And then there is the very flexible approach, where the commerce system is of course also available in the SAP Commerce Cloud. Here, too, there is another CMS system, precisely for the reason that it serves other targets. And you develop an independent web front end. This is advisable, for example, if you want to have a web front end that is tailored not only to the commerce platform, but also to the respective CMS system. Then this is a good idea.

It always depends on the goals and the requirements that you have in your existing environment or in your future strategy. Exactly, go on with pleasure. Now let's take a very brief look at the SAP Commerce System, which is a very, very powerful standard software that offers an incredible number of functions for e-commerce. But you don't have to rely on all these options fitting you exactly. And that's why the entire design of the SAP Commerce Platform allows you to expand and customize it. And here are a few of these building blocks, the very basic element are the so-called extensions. And as the name already says, this is exactly the element with which you then make your own extensions that are precisely tailored. And very strong is that the whole SAP Commerce platform relies on so-called inversion of control design patterns. That means that any of these elements that are listed here and floating around can be replaced when you need it with a customized element. And this makes it technically possible to get exactly what you need from this standard software. And that's exactly the kind of customization we've put together.

Miracles of the SAP Commerce Cloud: Some examples

Ute Danz: Exactly, Joana, thank you. Now come our actual wonders. Up to now, we've been looking at things from above. Now we actually want to look at individual features and functions. Our customers have very different priorities for their systems and actually also for individual requirements. For some, it's all about increasing their reach, winning new customers, and ultimately, of course, making more sales. For others, the major goal of digitization is at the forefront. This includes, among other things, providing their customers with extensive self-service functionalities. And elsewhere, or even in close connection, we often also have the desire to reduce effort and costs, that is, to simplify processes for our customers and for their customers. And thus to save costs in many small and also larger places. So much for the preface, but now really to concrete examples.

SCHOTT

Here we see a beautiful list page from SCHOTT. It's very important for online stores that customers don't have to search for a long time to find the right product, so the search, which also offers an incredible number of options out-of-the-box, has to be reliable and fast. That's the case here, we're not demonstrating anything live today, but it really is the case. And it also delivers results when you search for competition articles, for example, the exact matching SCHOTT articles. Then you might still have a long list and then the filters come into play, which are designed quite dynamically, so they let you filter the available attributes according to the articles that you actually find. You can see that quite well here, optical attributes, thermal further down. And since it is not possible to show all of the filters, because the page would otherwise be too long, as is also known from other systems, the SCHOTT employees themselves can set in the back office which filters appear first and which can then be expanded. This means that the knowledgeable customer can get to the right product very quickly with just a few mouse clicks.

And by the way, this doesn't just work with glass, it also works with spare parts and other articles. Once again on the subject of SCHOTT, the goal is to make it very easy for customers to find the right items and, of course, to order them. An important part here is that the customer sees everything he needs. Particularly with products that require explanation or, let's say, are difficult, it's important that you can download technical data sheets from the right place and don't have to search for them for a long time. That you have specifications at your fingertips. And in this case, what we want to represent here is that the customer can actually see live from the ERP inventory that the item is available. That he can put here, depending on which plant he prefers, the right quantity that he wants in the shopping cart and also specify the delivery date, right even before he puts it in the shopping cart. Delivery date depends on holidays, weekends and the like. All this information comes directly from the SAP ERP in the background in real time. And when the item is then in the shopping cart, the customer actually sees its price for this delivery quantity.

Klöckner & Co.

Completely different articles, here we are talking about steel beams, steel at Klöckner. One feature that we have lovingly worked on together with our colleagues at Klöckner is that their customers can not only order six-meter-long steel girders, but can also have them delivered to the construction site ready-cut and can also find out the price and delivery date directly when they place their order. In other words, you select the basic product, click on sawing, and are then offered all the possible angles and sizes that can be sawn, specify your own individual dimensions, including larger or smaller tolerances, depending on what is important. And then to actually see in the shopping cart when you will get these precisely cut items delivered. And everything else you can all look at yourself if you want to. And as a logged in user, you can also see your price. And sometimes it's even more complex than that, sawing seems a bit simplistic, Joana, you can explain that better.

Solutions for complex products

Joana Grade: Yes, with other customers it is the case that there is a highly specific range of spare parts, with a very, very high number of characteristics. In some cases, it is also possible to have specifications that have no equivalent in the ERP system. And sometimes it is simply the case that the customer himself lacks the expertise to select from a very high number of possible variants and preconfigured options. That's why, in addition to the options of selecting variants or using the CPQ connection, we have created another solution for completely free configuration, where the classifications from the ERP serve as a basis and are enriched by classifications that only the store itself, i.e. the commerce system, knows. And then together they make it possible for the customer in the store to enter the important values that are needed to clarify which variant it will be in the end, simply freely, from his experience, from how he knows his products, which are already in use with him. And you can see just on this small upper picture, the classification itself is completely, completely, completely free of the value, so has no restrictions. And then in the small pop-up window, which you see below, it is displayed in such a way that the enrichment takes place around the internal fields and exactly this field is available for the free input. The goal was not to lose the customer who can't find his way around. And also to relieve the customer advisor in the background then and to make the finding of the suitable configurations faster.

Solutions for electricity tariffs Electricity tariffs

Ute Danz: Sometimes it's even more complicated than that, and now we're talking about electricity rates, as Kai mentioned at the beginning of this article. And here the customer wanted a solution. First, that the sales representative already practically prepares the contract, presets the most favorable tariff for the customer and the customer, after checking all this, concludes this contract online. And a second issue with the electricity tariffs is, now the consumption is changing, through Corona nobody goes to the office anymore, so we need less electricity in the office for example. Then, when the customer's electricity consumption exceeds or falls below the respective tariff limit, the upper or lower limit, the sales employee receives a message so that he can check the specific consumption again in detail, so that he can check the tariff and also make a suggestion to his customer as to how he should change the tariff. And in return, as you can see from this example, he gets a contribution margin that is optimal for both the customer and the supplier, so that the margin on both sides is optimized as much as possible. That is brand new.

Solutions for craftsmen

Joana Grade: Exactly, that's brand new. And that's where we're now getting away from the terribly complicated items a bit and getting into making customers' lives easier. And the point here is that the customers are craftsmen, and they want a central overview of several parallel projects that they can manage here, and they also want to make it possible to order on a project-by-project basis in an uncomplicated way. Against the background of course, to bring the craftsmen comfortably into the store platform, to provide them with many management options and to make it easier to complete the order by making these comfort functions available.

And the building blocks for achieving this are that it is possible to see the status of all orders and offers for a particular project at a glance. That there is a separate shopping cart per project, which can be sent separately from the other shopping carts. That there are different delivery addresses per project, which means that the craftsman can have the items for different projects delivered directly to the construction site where he needs them. And then the feature that you can see here in the design, the project item lists, so that the craftsman can create one or more item lists for each project, so that he can conveniently put together everything he needs and collect it for each project before he places the order. What we do here is that we link these projects once, that all this information is always related to a project, made available. And that we make this convenient, also available at a dashboard, for an overview. And can always make it more easily accessible, from the store directly. That to the project management.

Solutions for B2E

Here we have again a completely different scenario, and that is the employees as customers, so a B2E scenario. Here it is about the fact that each employee, who orders in the B2E store, is entitled to one free deputatware per month. It is also important that if he has not ordered within a month, then this is accumulated as long as he does not order. He should not have to do anything for this free product, which means that it will be automatically added to the shopping cart. And he can also decide that he wants only his deputatware, without ordering anything at all. And the challenge here was to simplify a highly manual process for our customers. In the past, the store manager had to go to the warehouse first, let them know what the depot goods were for the month, and then, when the warehouse employee received an order, he first had to find out how long this employee had not ordered and was he entitled to depot goods? And here it is just so that we make it possible that in the store these depot products can be maintained separately, can be maintained clearly and it is for the warehouse employee simply in the order of course already evident, the customer receives and how much and this whole process of adding has received an automation.

Contracts

Next. Here we have again from the Klöckner world the topic of contracts. Also an overview feature. The initial situation was that there was a standalone tool, with a separate login for the customer where they could see their contracts. And now it's like we've provided parts of the store and industry platform. That means that this access is also possible in one platform, directly accessible for the customer via my account area, where he can also find his other data, of course. The offline contracts can also be viewed here, they are available. And the advantage is that the data that is in the SAP ERP can be viewed online by the customer, which of course increases customer satisfaction and the customer can move around the platform very comfortably and has another reason to use the platform.

Ute Danz: Exactly. We have something similar at SCHOTT, again it's about long-term contracts from which customers make call-offs. That means, next week I want a pallet and in three weeks I need five, that's often important that that gets to the point so that it's not stored for a long time and can go straight into the production of our customer's customers. And here we also have in the, here it's called the service area, we have on the one hand the overview of the status of the various contracts and the call-offs for them and how much is still open. And there is a very nice feature here, for some it actually may not depend on the hour, but on the day. The SCHOTT customer can practically configure trucks here in his area that he sends to SCHOTT and can specify exactly on which day he wants to drive up with his truck, in the morning, in the afternoon, there are different time windows, and which goods he picks up so that they arrive perfectly at his plant. Here, too, as I said before, there is always the SAP plant calendar behind it, sometimes it is also called the Holiday Calendar. This means that it is known exactly when work is actually being done at SCHOTT. And all of this is immediately available in the ERP at any time, the basic data also comes from the ERP in real time, so that the SCHOTT employees know immediately afterwards what they have to do this afternoon, if necessary, if things have to be done quickly because a customer is driving up with a truck.

Self-Service

Another, in our opinion, small, very fine feature that we have is, as you may have noticed, this is very much about self-service and the most comprehensive information possible for customers, that customers can actually have their entire business relationship reported, so to speak, from SCHOTT's SAP BI, all goods in all years, as you can see here, 2008, when this store did not exist for a long time, they can still have it displayed. You can very handily set time periods, the granularity and the product groups to see what you have bought from SCHOTT so far. It's very, very popular and also saves the inside sales team extremely many queries and therefore time. SCHOTT again, something completely different, after we were in selling, in the first examples, in sales service now in the last examples, we now come to complaints.

Complaint handling

Here it's about getting away from the really unsatisfactory initial situation, which was extremely time-consuming both for the customer and for customer service, with huge Excel worksheets that had to be sent manually by e-mail and then transferred to the CRM by copy and paste, there is now, it's not quite live yet, but some pilot customers are trying it out, a handy online form, which of course knows all the data that previously occurred in the delivery history, so you can simply select it and don't have to look it up first. And one of the requirements here was that not only those who are in the online store anyway and work under my account and under service, but also employees in production and at the incoming goods department can record complaints, because that's where they are detected, which the office doesn't even see. And there is a smartphone app for this, where the employees on site actually take photos, scan barcodes, so that they can already pre-record all the necessary data. And the person in charge in the office then ends up sending the complaint to SCHOTT, which is then transferred directly to the CRM and also actually outputs the correct online status at any time. I hope it was clear, despite many words, that this saves a lot of work for a lot of people and also avoids a lot of mistakes.

Translations & text maintenance

And our last small example, a really small, fine tool. The initial situation with SAP Commerce, with all the many features and functions, is still like this, however, if you want to change something in the localization, that is, if you want to transfer or change button labels, form field labels or the like into other languages, it actually always requires the development team and that simply leads to time delays and is expensive for our customers in the end. A small back-office extension makes it possible for our customers to make these translations or textual changes themselves in the SAP Commerce Cloud back office, which are then also imported immediately at runtime. These can be searched for conveniently, the identifiers are not particularly constructive sometimes, or can be easily confused, so that you can also search here for the texts that you want to change. So far, we have already used this with several of our customers and it has led to great joy and saves frustration and the process is just square, practical, beautiful.

So, those were our small and also larger features and functions that were created on the basis of SAP Commerce with different amounts of effort, together with our customers.

And now the question is, how do we work to make this work well?

First part, like so many others and therefore without many words, we usually work according to Scrum, especially in the initial project. It's a little bit different every time, it depends on the customer, how it works best as well. It's important to us that we become a joint team very quickly and that we quickly find a good way of working together. For me, it's really more about the lower part, because that's not really a big deal in software development. Kanban also works very well in the continuous further development that almost every store we work on actually undergoes. The arrows are supposed to show how individual features arrive at the team practically on the timeline as a prioritized backlog. We have feature one, which is obviously something pretty big, maybe that's a real small project again. Feature two and three, which are then worked through by the team. And the cool thing here is that the features practically overtake each other. That the little things can also be tested and released quickly in the Kanban process, so that all the others in this little example, which is very abstract, overtake feature one. And in one case, we have actually managed to go from one live deployment a day for years, because the point is, as Kai said at the beginning, to bring innovations to the market very quickly, and we now have up to 20 live deployments a day. And this Kanban process is a very good mechanism for the joint team, so to speak.

The second aspect is, for example, if one of you contacts us and says, "I want that too," how do we proceed? We have had very good experience with a hundred-day MVP in many projects. Most of you may be familiar with MVP, which means Minimum Valuable Product, i.e. an executable system with all essential functionalities, a stable system of course, with all important data and interfaces. It's not a POC, it's not a prototype, it's really executable and you can continue to develop on it, so to speak, the big, beautiful goal with all the functionalities. The good, 100 days, plenty of three months, are tangible for everyone, it creates a joint first success that is presentable. Whether individual customers, whether the board, you have a sense of achievement, which you can also celebrate a little. We count the 100 days from the start of development to the delivery of the MVP. Of course, you need a scoping phase beforehand, and we've had very good experiences with a one-week closed workshop with all the trades, so that afterwards you essentially have a functional backlog and the information architecture to start implementation. And also the basic interface concept, so that in a joint kick-off the team can once again be committed to these 100 days and the common goal. Yes, so much from our real life. And now I have to move up a bit in the abstraction.

Joana Grade: Exactly, the question arises, that's all well and good what we can do with it, now let's illuminate it once again,

From our point of view, from our experience, when is the SAP Commerce Cloud a particularly good fit for our customers?

The first is relatively obvious if you are already using SAP in the backend, according to plan, i.e. primarily with a view to the ERP. That's where the synergy is particularly high, of course. A very special case is also when you want to use SAP CPQ, i.e. provide it in the store, make it available.

Ute Danz: What is that?

Joana Grade: That is the configuration mechanism, that is, the configured price quotations. And that's exactly what this fits perfectly for, of course, because the preparation for this is already given in the Commerce Cloud. It is also particularly suitable when the process structures and the integration of data are very complex in a customer's company. And of course, as Kai presented earlier, if you already have or are planning to build your world with SAP CX, i.e. the customer experience, then SAP Commerce Cloud is of course a super integrative component. Then it is also the case that automated data streams and processes can be mapped very, very well in SAP Commerce, i.e. where there are few manual processes. But the manual process can also be interposed. Another very obvious criterion is, of course, if the SAP Commerce standard already covers many of the company's own requirements, which is not impossible, since the standard set is already very large. But also if you have a very high degree of customization, i.e. very special, very individual, very specific needs as to how you want to design your store experience, based on the customers or the products. That sounds like a contradiction at first, but it's actually not at all, because both cases are simply very well prepared. We have the standard with a lot of features, with a lot of offers that are already there, which can also be a good basis. And as I also mentioned earlier, it is simply possible to adapt each of these elements, either already by configuration, or by your own extension, to your own needs then, or also to add completely new elements. These are our thoughts and experiences on the subject.

Ute Danz: We are also at your disposal if someone wants to drill deeper into this. So, now a look into the future. Of course, I would like to ask the expert from the manufacturer, Kai. The current topics of headless, microservices, IoT software service, do they have anything to do with you, where is SAP Commerce Cloud heading against this background?

Where is SAP Commerce Cloud heading against the backdrop of headless, microservices, IoT software services?

Kai-Tat Man: Yes, quite clearly, so for us the focus is primarily on the success of our Commerce Cloud customers, which means that we are constantly working on the Commerce Cloud platform in order to optimize the return on investment, the time to market and the TCO for our customers. Our slogan here is "Commerce everywhere". This means that it is no longer just about the normal web store, but actually how can I reach the customer via different touchpoints? That means not only via the web store channel alone, but also via channels such as apps, Facebook, Instagram, or wearables. Such topics are becoming more and more in demand, and our customers want to address their customers via such channels in the future and market and sell products and services via them. And this is where we are working on modern, cloudnative services so that our customers can implement this innovation quickly and activate it at the touch of a button. On the other hand, we will invest more in the topic of hyperpersonalization or marketing to the audience of one. That is, how can we make customer engagement, content more personal and lift conversion rates on these digital touchpoints.

Ute Danz: Cool.

What specific innovations are already on your roadmap today?

Kai-Tat Man: You can see that very nicely on the next slide, that is, maybe one click further. That is, in the last few years we have invested massively in the Commerce Cloud and introduced many innovations into the solution. The focus topics are of course very clearly on these Commerce-specific capabilities. This means that our innovations support you in designing appealing commerce experiences, for example with the expansion of personalization functions, headless experiences, better content design, and the automation of e-commerce operations. These are all topics that we have already brought into the platform step by step. Commerce is an important touchpoint for the business. Nevertheless, customers have become more demanding these days, they have high expectations for the overall customer experience, that is across all touchpoints, from marketing, sales, service, to commerce. And here the CX portfolio complements the Commerce Cloud very nicely. And that means that SAP's Customer Experience Portfolio supports companies in designing networked customer experiences, and here the Commerce Cloud is optimally integrated and serves topics such as digital marketing, 360-degree view of the customer, sales, and aftersales support. And with that, we can continuously expand the touchpoints. In addition, of course, we also work very closely with partners, which means we have a very broad and large partner ecosystem where our solution areas can be flexibly expanded. And then we also have a project called SAP.iO, where we support young startups that are already shaping the future of CX in order to bring new trends into our platform in advance.

Ute Danz: Cool, thank you. I have one more question about the SAP CX Customer Experience, the latest part is the Customer Data Cloud, abbreviated CDC.

What role can CDC play for those customers who are using SAP Commerce Cloud?

Kai-Tat Man: I'm happy to go into that. We recently launched a new solution called CDP, or Customer Data Platform. And that's a very important extension capability of SAP Commerce Cloud in the context of hyper-personalization. And here we are following a modular approach to gradually expand the personalization capability of Commerce Cloud in a sustainable way. First, we have already integrated personalization tools into Commerce Cloud, which means you can search content there, personalize product recommendations, and here we are working with intelligent AI-based algorithms. Basically, these tools can personalize content based on customer data that is generated in Commerce, such as customer preferences, roles, or more dynamic data such as click streams.

The next building block is then the 360 degree profile from the CDP or Customer Data Platform. The CDP brings together all customer data, i.e. customer data from marketing, sales, service, social media online and offline. And that gives an end-to-end picture of the customer journey and the totality of the customer experience. And with this information, customer data can be modeled and segmented to optimally control the optimization or timing of advertising and offers. Then there is the third building block on top, which is the marketing platform. We recently made another new acquisition with Emarsys. The marketing platform can then use customer data from the CDP and apply it in its activities to drive personalization forward. In other words, we have a market here that can define marketing strategies and tactics and then automate those campaigns across channels, with appropriate target groups. That allows for very engaging, dedicated customer targeting across all channels, not just the commerce channel, but also channels like email, through apps, through advertising, social media chats and many more of course. In summary, Commerce Cloud work very closely with CDP and Marketing to understand the customer, to personalize content and offers, and to play them out and manage them across a wide variety of channels.

Ute Danz: Cool, very powerful. Thank you very much. And with that, I think on behalf of all three of us, thank you to everyone who's been listening carefully, for your attention and time so far. Annabella.

Annabella Pscherer: Thank you very much. So, I'll take the broadcast rights again now. Thank you very much Joana, Ute and Kai-Tat for these detailed insights. Can you already see the presentation now, or is it still loading for a moment?

Ute Danz: Still loading.

Annabella Pscherer: Still loading, one moment.

Ute Danz: Are there any questions?

Q&A

Annabella Pscherer: Exactly, so let's get to the Q&A for a moment. Just write your questions already in the question box, maybe I'll manage to get that going in a moment and you'll have one or two minutes for that. There was already one question, and that is,

Is it also worthwhile for small stores to integrate SAP Commerce, to use it?

Ute Danz: I would like to leave that to the professional, from the manufacturer.

Kai-Tat Man: Is it worth it? It depends on the use case and the business case, of course. As I said, the Commerce Cloud is very common in the midmarket and with large enterprise customers. You have to look at how high the complexity is and the use case. Whether it is worthwhile to enter the Commerce Cloud accordingly.

Ute Danz: Perhaps to add to this, of course we have a whole range of medium-sized companies that I have never heard of before, let's say niche players that operate worldwide and manufacture complex products. And that's where the right software comes in, but you have to take a close look at it. So a small store with five products that can all be entered by hand in the back of the store, maybe the SAP Commerce Cloud is a bit overpowered.

Joana Grade: I also have a supplement on how you can perhaps look at this. In the case of customers from the past, where SAP Commerce Cloud was actually used for several projects, for several stores, and then these individual stores could have different sizes, as we saw earlier, you can run several different stores on the platform. And then this may also be suitable for smaller stores, such as the B2E store that we briefly saw earlier, which then simply runs in parallel.

Annabella Pscherer: Thank you very much. I hope that answers the question. Then one more question,

Does it make sense to use SAP Commerce if you otherwise don't use any or few other SAP products at all?

Ute Danz: You can do that, Joana has shown that in this introduction. Quite often, of course, SAP ERP or S/4 HANA is in the background, but it doesn't have to be.

Joana Grade: The synergy effects are high, of course, that results naturally, but basically you can also connect other systems, we have already done that successfully, also other systems, it is not mutually exclusive, not at all.

Kai-Tat Man: The Commerce Cloud is an open system. We have a very broad partner spectrum and of course that complements optimally with the solutions from the CX portfolio. But as I said, there is now vendor login, but we also work in many projects with other providers who control other capabilities to it and in fact, Commerce Cloud is already a very good solution when it comes to e-commerce in the B2C or B2B area.

Ute Danz: An example from ourselves, we have a customer who has bought several companies and with several Navisions and also SAP ERPs background. And you can connect everything like that via the CPI, so you can also integrate deeply.

Annabella Pscherer: Okay, thank you very much. If there are no more questions, I would like to close the Q&A session. The recording of today's webinar and the presentation can be downloaded free of charge from our website. Here you can find the contact details of our contact person, Vanessa Bestler. Feel free to contact her, she will be happy to hear from you and to exchange ideas.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to our next webinars, feel free to visit our newsroom, for the end of the year we have two more webinars next week. One on the topic of product information management, create growth through high-quality product data. And once the webinar Content Marketing, Success along the Customer Journey. So thank you again Joana, Ute and Kai-Tat for your exciting insights and your insides. Thank you so much for participating in this webinar and I hope you were able to learn something, you were able to take something away. Until next time and I wish you a wonderful day.

Ute Danz: Bye.

Joana Grade: Thank you, bye.

Kai-Tat Man: Thank you very much, bye.