B2B for SAP Customer Data Platform

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While the value proposition of a customer data platform from the B2C space, i.e. providing a unified view of customer data from multiple sources, enabling real-time insights, enhancing customer experiences, and better decision-making across the organization hold true for B2B as well, it takes more to unlock these values for B2B than for B2C. Which will then enable the delivery of an enhanced account-based customer engagement experience that is shared and consistent across front-office and back-office.

SAP Customer Data Platform helps you to unlock these values for your B2B business while offering some unique advantages.  

1. Native ERP integration: SAP Customer Data Platform has a native connection with its S/4HANA ERP system, which is especially valuable for B2B scenarios. This integration, e.g., allows for prioritized order fulfillment, supply chain optimization, and product innovation based on customer data. This tight integration with S/4HANA back-office solution is a unique strength of SAP's offering. The back-office also happens to be a great source to identify potential risk within your customer base. Know and manage customer issues or mitigate potential risk in a proactive manner. 
   
   
   
2. B2B and B2C in one solution. SAP Customer Data Platform offers the flexibility to support B2B and B2C business models within the same platform. This can be beneficial for companies operating in both or mixed business models. SAP Customer Data Platform also offers an authorization-based separation of data and business processes in this case. 

3. Industry-specific AI models: SAP Customer Data Platform offers AI models that are specifically optimized for industry use cases. This allows for customer behavior prediction like true customer lifetime value, churn risk and propensity to buy.
   

4. Privacy and consent management: SAP Customer Data Platform puts a strong emphasis on maintaining the purpose of customer data during every engagement and respecting customer data privacy. This is crucial in B2B relationships where data governance and compliance are often stringent.
   
   

What specific B2B features does SAP Customer Data Platform offer?

1. Profiling of B2B contacts and accounts while maintaining multiple relationships including details like job role with a flexible, customer extensible data model. Aggregation of contacts across the account provides one holistic view of the customer across the enterprise. SAP Customer Data Platform manages contacts as profiles, accounts as groups and their relationships in a parent-child manner.
   
   
   
2. Accounts can be managed in multiple levels of a hierarchy, e.g. team, department, and organization.
   
   
3. Identity resolution for accounts as well as contacts to create a unified view. The matching rules will determine how to match the data to an existing account, or create a new one, based on a prioritized match and merge configuration. Define your own single or multi-attribute match rules. For example based on exact match for Account ID, eMail Domain or DUNS Number.
   
   
4. 3rd Party Data enrichment for firmographics and intent data. You can enrich your account and contact data with further data from external data providers like Dun & Bradstreet, Bombora, Data Axle, ZoomInfo and others. Examples include company size and industry a company operates in or interest in certain products. Maintain data integrity and identify the best leads meeting the criteria of your ideal customer profile. Get the highest quality and most likely to close prospects in the hands of sales as early as possible. SAP Customer Data Platform offers pre-build integration to above mentioned B2B data providers as well as a flexible Connector Studio to integrate with other providers.
   
   
   
5. B2B insights generation. SAP Customer Data Platform allows you to calculate activity indicators and segments on contact as well as on all account levels. This is especially helpful for the more complex B2B lead-to-cash process. Use profiling and scoring features to manage an automated qualification and decisioning process, identify and mitigate risk or find your best advocates. 
   
   
6. CX Journeys for accounts. SAP Customer Data Platform allows you to model the progression of your accounts and their opportunities through the lead-to-cash process and helps you automate it. Qualify and nurture prospects, welcome new customers using an onboarding journey, mitigate risk throughout the front-office or enable any number of account-based customer journeys. Journey milestones can activate marketing, sales and service simultaneously to provide a consistent and improved customer experience. 
   
   
7. B2B specific out-of-the-box integration with
   • SAP S/4HANA
   • SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2
   • SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement

SAP Customer Data Platform supports B2B throughout its entire platform from data ingestion to activation of the next best action. Protect data privacy and purpose, create unified customer views, enrich contacts and accounts, generate and share insights throughout the organization, activate customer data based processes in real-time or have unified customer data available for querying.

Key B2B Use Cases SAP Customer Data Platform Enables

Real-Time Revenue Identification

Leverage SAP Customer Data Platform to identify potential revenue opportunities in real-time across the customer base. Use the indicator, segments and orchestration features to develop an always-on model focused on getting the highest quality prospects to sales early, identifying new opportunity for existing customers and finding the best targets for higher value account-based engagements.   

Proactively Identify and Manage Risk

While the goal is to always have customers 100% satisfied, operations or factors beyond your control do happen. Risk does not occur overnight; it can fester and evolve over time. Often, the front-office is completely unaware that something has gone wrong. ERP data can be the source of both positive and negative events throughout the customer lifecycle. Just as revenue opportunities can always be found, potential risk can be also. Risk mitigation can and should be managed by marketing, sales, and service.

Account Based Marketing and Sales Enablement

SAP Customer Data Platform helps you to target and engage specific high-value accounts in a personalized manner rather than casting a wide net. With its orchestration capabilities and flexible connectivity, even prebuilt to SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 and SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement, it enables a close collaboration between sales and marketing teams and helps keep the message consistent across channels to different contacts of the same account. 

Account-Based Personalization

SAP Customer Data Platform unlocks new personalized engagement scenarios. Drive customers to extend warranties, or up-sell to the latest product version; proactively engage when potential issues take place in the supply chain process; send communications on behalf of sales and service staff; or build customer loyalty and maintain interest. SAP Customer Data Platform gives you the ability to engage your customers based upon the current state of the account in a highly personalized manner.

Conclusion

SAP Customer Data Platform is the only solution in the market that seamlessly brings the power of data from S/4HANA to the front office, where personalized customer engagements become meaningful. In parallel, front-office data is infused in the back-office, where business data decisions can be made, powered by contextual customer insights. Our mission is to Deliver Customer 360 to the Enterprise by Leveraging Operational & Experience Data to Create Intelligent Customer Engagements and Optimized Business Processes.

More Information

For further information refer to SAP Customer Data Platform or to SAP Customer Data Platform | SAP Help Portal.