How do you delight your customers? How do you increase the spend and profitability from your customers? How do you retain good customers? The answer to all these questions is the same - understand them better!
According to many psychologists, being understood is a core desire of human beings. This applies to business as well. In today’s online world, companies are more distant from the individuals, but the expectation is still there.
People want to:
- Be known as an individual
- Have their past communications & interactions tracked
- Feel like they matter
- Have an interactive experience
This is true not only for Business to Consumer marketing but for Business to Business as well. Businesses don’t buy from businesses. People buy from people.
The Data to Insight Opportunity
So how do you strengthen business relationships and understand your customers better? By analyzing all interactions within your organization and beyond.
Some departments only work in silos, summarizing activity within their division. However, both business customers and consumers interact in many ways – company web site, procurement networks, channel partners, contact centers as well as public social apps. The good news is this creates vast amounts of data about your customer. For some companies, this can be bad news as well. To truly understand your customers, you need to access as much of that data as possible, quickly determine which portions have value and analyze that information to make business decisions. This provides you with customer insight.
Businesses Using Insight
Velux, a Danish manufacturer that proclaims their core competency as providing “Light Engineering” for their clients, leveraged enterprise data to better understand their clients and prospects.
The company learned early on that the key to engaging their customers was bringing together data from various sources to conduct a holistic analysis. For example, Velux analyzes the products they sell to determine support requirements in the future using SAP Analytics Cloud. The results are used for financial planning and customer support purposes. They combine data from their enterprise resource planning (ERP), Sales and Service platforms which enables them to provide real-time analysis leveraging multiple factors. Velux Testimonial
Velux Sample Display
Powell Electronics, a major US distributor of electronics components and value-added services, wanted to improve their relationship with customers and suppliers. Their objective was to improve the customer experience and deliver “intuitive e-commerce.”.
The company knew this would be challenging based on the vast number of items and SKU’s they were handling., First, they needed a comprehensive ERP system that could support the current business as well as the future worldwide expansion.
Once operations were under control, they needed to enhance engagement with both the customers and suppliers. They required a commerce platform that enabled them to deliver a rich, personalized omnichannel experience.
Finally, they also wanted a way for their employees to connect with the sales experience and accelerate the buying process.
Using SAP S/4HANA, SAP Commerce Cloud combined with SAP Sales Cloud delivered all of that and more. Powell Electronics added SAP Analytics Cloud to provide analysis of data in all the systems to support real-time decisions.
The tight integration between these solutions empowered Powell Electronics to:
- Improve order processing
- Respond faster to customer inquiries
- Optimize inventory
Link to Powell Business Transformation Summary
Powell Electronics Warehouse
A Common Element for Success
These are just a few examples of many customers that improved profitability while delighting their customer. The potential for increased business value from enterprise insight is substantial.
The key ingredient to success is creating a holistic view of the customer. This means including as many touch points and data sources as possible then presenting the insight in a usable format that supports the customer directly or with someone from your team.
SAP and its partners provide substantial business content that can accelerate your time to value results. To learn more, engage with your SAP account team or one of our many partners that have experience with multiple departments.
Start your free 90 day trial of SAP Analytics Cloud today click here. There is also substantial business content that can improve your time to results.