Many analysts, including myself, have repeatedly written about us having entered a new normal, which is enforced by a so-called green swan event – an event that according to BIS is “extremely disruptive and that could be behind a systemic crisis” (brackets set by Thomas Wieberneit). Supply chains are broken, employees need to work from home, stores were forced to close for prolonged times, and so on. This has the potential to seriously harm the base function of a business, which is helping their customers solve their problems. Looking at the pyramid of customer expectations, businesses are often barely, if at all, able to maintain its lowest level – the level of effectivity – and are far away from making it easy for their customers or even providing them with a joyful experience when interacting and engaging with them. Figure 1: The hierarchy of customer expectations Yet, we are in an era where products and services themselves get increasingly deprecated and the experience becomes the main distinguishing factor for continued success. Still not all organizations are set up to deal with this. Most are not resilient enough to fend off or at least mitigate the disruption caused by a crisis. Some organizations are affected more than others. So are the people who work in these organizations.

• Salespeople cannot interact with their customers in the ‘usual’ way anymore. They cannot go out and visit them currently.
• Customer service professionals need to change their ways of collaboration with their colleagues, they cannot just ask their neighbour anymore.
• Marketing Teams cannot create and host offline events due to distance and meeting restrictions.
• Finance departments see challenges in creating invoices in time due to inaccessibility of information, advice, data and documents.
• Bonding between colleagues works different now, as there is no coffee corner anymore – nor the common smoke. Social interactions work differently now.
• Stores can only serve a very limited number of customers, if at all, again, due to distance and meeting restrictions.

These are different problems that need different solutions. Not solving them results in both, employees and customers, not being satisfied. However, looking at the examples above, two common themes emerge:

• People cannot interact with each other as they are used to.
• Processes, that rely on siloed best of breed implementations, break down.

The good news is that they have two common denominators: culture and technology. About the role of culture I have written a while ago: Employees make, and want to make, customers happy. Therefore, it needs a relentless focus on the customer and it is the role of management to make employees happy, so that they can do what they want to do. Culture is the foundation for a business to be an integral part of the solution of the problem facing its customers. Then, there is the question of technology. The ability of employees to provide customers with a good experience requires powerful applications, built upon a strong platform, which big companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce or SAP, but also emerging players like Zoho provide. Wisely selecting a platform and gradually integrating processes and data on it to serve people – employees and ultimately customers, is key to business resilience. Figure 2: The building blocks of a customer experience platform This platform provides four elements:

• A strong technology platform that holds and exposes the main capabilities that all enterprise software needs in order to be able to create a great experience: Analytics, integration, machine learning/AI, IoT services, blockchain, database access, security, no-code/low-code development services, to name just a few of the more important ones. The ability of organizations to innovate and while maintaining a stable core is depends on this.
• Insight, i.e. actionable information with the objective of achieving an outcome. Insight is what enables companies or individuals to turn raw data into actions that yield positive results for customers and therefore for themselves. This data may be structured or unstructured, transactional or behavioural, etc. Data may be first party, second party, or third party data. Through the use of analytics, data can be turned into information and through the use of advanced analytics and AI into insight. The services to enable this are delivered via the technology platform.
• Productivity is about the effective and efficient process automation, where possible combined with an efficient way for people to get their jobs done. Especially within a business, but also across businesses, people need to collaborate easily and efficiently. This requires a lot of tools, services, and a strong data sharing ability. It also requires people to interact with computers not in the computer way but the same way people interact. This is one of the main reasons for the rise of speech and voice interfaces. Efficient collaboration, based upon insight, is not only necessary for people, but for interacting software systems as well; it is crucial for an effective process automation.
• And finally, an ecosystem of customers and partners, that enables scale. This scale is achieved by building and nurturing an ecosystem of partners. Partners are developing solutions that augment the core ones; other partners implement solutions across the ecosystem. To be accepted, it needs to distribute the value it generates fair and transparent to all involved parties.

As said above, only few software vendors are capable of providing this platform, along with the relevant business applications and a culture that bases on being part of the solution, not the problem. One of them being Zoho, which recently invited me to their analyst briefing 2020. Many thanks again to Sandra Lo for inviting me to this enlightening event. You want to learn more about how you can set your business up to be able to deliver the same high customer experience in a post Covid-19 world? Then join me in a webinar on June 4 at 2 pm CET and discuss how you can leverage the opportunities created by this crisis. I am looking forward to discussing with you!

It is this time of the year. Both, my wife Nicole and I put in long hours throughout last year, and yes, the pre-Christmas-time was not exactly a vacation, too … So, we were looking forward to some downtime and a family cruise with the line that prides itself as being “the home of the smile”. But, hey, if you are in the customer experience business – you never really have full downtime. At the end of the day it is also impossible to not reflect your own experience. Hence, we also could not avoid to realise how simple things can turn something amazing into something mediocre – or even plain disappointing. The cruise industry is a highly competitive industry, too, with more and more customers having more and more choice. Cruise Market Watch predicts more than 27.6 million cruise customers in 2020. Ships are getting bigger and more comfortable – and the fleets are growing, too, with 25 more cruise ships being expected to enter service in 2020. At the same time, customer expectations are rising fast. And this does not only apply to the digital world, but also to the physical one. And a cruise is all about the customers’ experience, and nothing else. This is what they are selling with slogans like ‘premium all-inclusive’ (TUI Cruises). “After all, the best holiday feeling is: not being in the need to think of anything, but to be able to. Not needing to pay for it, but being able to try anything. Not needing to relinquish anything but being able to enjoy everything.” (original in German, translation by me) AIDA cruises states on its homepage that “Every cruise is a special occasion: During an AIDA cruise you experience a fantastic vacation, explore the best destinations worldwide and can get yourself regaled. In a relaxed atmosphere and with a great choice of activities you can fashion your vacation to your liking and live your love of adventure.” (original in German, translation by me) Carnival cruise’s mission is to “deliver joyful vacation experiences and breakthrough shareholder returns by exceeding guest expectations and leveraging our industry-leading scale.” Carnival also in 2017 started to connect the digital and physical worlds with their Ocean Medallion (here my take on it). I could go on and on with the promises of the various operators, but you get the picture.

Expectations are high, competition is cut throat, and promises are bold

This is the archetype of an environment where companies need to excel on experience to sustainably succeed. So, delivery to promise matters! This is also what Patrick Stokes, EVP Platform and Services at Salesforce has in mind when he says that “In 2020, companies will be competing on the experience they deliver to customers - not just their products, but making the entire customer relationship, from lead to purchase and beyond, as simple, personalized, and human as possible". Although he comes more from a 360 degree view angle than I want to pursue here. And no: Consistently exceeding customer expectations is not it – unless you want to initiate and sustain a vicious circle of rising expectations. But what about delivery to promise on a cruise ship? Cruise operators, as every other business need to operate with the three tiered pyramid of customer expectations. Customer needs from basic to higher order need to be met. There is no point in concentrating on the higher order needs if the basic ones are not met. Customer experience is about consistently fulfilling the customers’ needs and then using the chance to create little ‘wow‘ moments. The customers’ needs are you being available THEIR way and you reliably and accurately providing them with accurate and reliable information, then with what they really want. There is no chance of impressing/wowing customers at this level. Failing here, however, creates negative experiences. Think: ‚Your call is important to us – however, due to exceedingly high call volumes …‘, or different company representatives giving different answers to the same question, or the cabin not being available or the key not working for its door, or unfriendly personnel. The options to fail are manifold. From a cruise passenger customer journey point of view we are looking at four main phases of their vacation:

• Booking
• Check in
• On board
• Check out

Of these the on board phase is the longest one by far, while the other ones being the easiest to deliver on customer expectations. But then they are also the ones that are at the bottom of the customer experience pyramid. They are simply table stakes. Still, a smooth onboarding process sets the scene for the stay on board. If this process does not work, customers are annoyed right from the outset. A poor check out experience might prevent them from becoming repeat customers – although the memory might have faded until the next booking – or superseded by a more recent poor travel experience that is caused by airways or rail transportation. So, the stay is what matters. Here, again we have table stakes like a clean cabin, friendly and helpful and available service, appropriate food, little fine print, the actual availability of what is written in the prospects, to name but a few. Naturally, some of the offerings that one reads in the catalogue are additions to the base fare. Ease of booking additional services is an example for the second stage. A little treat for the kids when they least expect it, would go for stage three.

The Experience

Overall one can say that Aida cruises has optimized its processes. Booking (well, we had a little help of a travel agent, too) was smooth, check in fine, the cabins as expected, switching people of our group of 7 between cabins worked fine, too (This is a security topic; on a cruise ship it must be known in emergency situations people out of which cabin are already made it to the evacuation points). Associating the right credit cards to  the right cabins and people: ‘Of course, sir’. Only that it did not work. Checks were pretty consistently booked against the wrong card, which after the first incident leads to a drastic loss of trust – so we did it four times. And found mistakes four times. Of course, this also has an impact on the checkout process, where you feel the need to check the invoice in detail instead of just rushing through. After all you have a plane to catch… Food was OK, especially considering that there are nearly 2,500 people, guests and staff, who want to eat several times a day. Adding a beverage package went fine, too. OK, add a small chuckle when we were presented with an additional card for the beverage package; kind of really –a second card? But hey, clip it to your lanyard and go on. And no, it is not possible to have several beverage cards run against one room card. 5 people? Please give me your five room cards for swiping. Still, remember Murphy’s law: If it is possible to pull the wrong card … you will pull the wrong card. Of course it happened; more than once. And by the way, these mistakes cannot be corrected on the spot. So here you go to the reception desk. Even more annoying is the fine print to the packages. It doesn’t work everywhere. Get your coke here, but not there. The difference: Here it comes in a bottle, there it gets served out of a dispenser. So, it is about the price. Come on! There is an easy fix for this, which doesn’t cost a thing. It is hard to consistently drink up to the price of the beverage package. Believe me, I tried. Luckily there are some forward thinking waitresses who just say ‘I’ll bring you one from the restaurant next door’ – which almost fixes the original blunder. Sitting in the Aida bar ordering a drink – you need to be patient thereafter, even if it is not crowded. The reason: Lack of staff. Still, most staff smile at you all the time – which must be hard for them, given their work times and work conditions. Remember, this is the ‘meets needs’ level of the house, with a little detour into the ‘it’s easy’ side of the house. And important expectations weren’t met already on this level. I said it was easy to change the cabins. We opted for having 2 kids in one. They caught a fever so I asked for getting an additional card for their cabin to be able to check on them without waking them in case they are asleep. Impossible: ‘Sir, there are only two people in that cabin, so I can give only two cards’. Matter of fact. Just like that. Experience? Customer orientation? Getting the verbal equivalent of a slap on the fingers for pulling the daily schedule (which is there for the guests) from the staff side of the counter pales in comparison. I have seen that happen multiple times. Guess what! There is an easy fix for that. Just put it on top of the counter.

Build your processes from the customers’ point of view

One might say that most of the observations above are about little things. Some of them admittedly are. But then these little things add up. And some others are not so little. And then the list might go on. The real point is that companies more and more compete on experiences, not on products or services. This is especially true for cruise operators which happen to deal in experiences. So, what went wrong? Critical processes are not created wearing the customer lens but rather towards answering the question: How can I do this or that? This is inside-out thinking as opposed to the necessary outside-in thinking. The result are processes that work, but that are optimized for the company, and not for the customer. Hence they cannot deliver an engagement process that can result in the best possible experience, or only exceed customer expectations. And, belonging to Carnival Cruises, this is part of Aida’s mission. How can this be fixed? Surely not via consistently exceeding customer expectations. Instead go for excellence at the meet needs level of the pyramid of customer expectations, being good at making things for customers achievable with minimum (customer) effort, while showing appreciation through the smart creation of the occasional wow moment. In summary:

1. Make it effective Design your processes with the customer, not with internal or operational priorities, in mind. Look through the lens of the customer while designing them. This means building your processes so that customers do get the specific relevant offers through the right channel at the right time, or the answers they want. Make sure customers get products that they want, which includes the avoidance of much fine print. What do you think of a waitress being in the need to say to a kid with a beverage package that asks for a soft drink: ‘Sorry I need to charge you here but if you go to the board restaurant next door you will get it for free’.
2. Make it efficient Pay attention to details. Being available, meticulous and accurate is the foundation of creating consistent experiences. This includes making sure that customer expectations are met across channels. This doesn’t mean serving all channels, but the ones that are important to your customers - and that lie within the limits of your budgets … as frictionless as possible. Make it simple for the customer!
3. Make it enjoyable Think of and create little ‘Wow Moments‘ that convey human appreciation to the guest. These moments add up to a lasting great experience. They are also easier to achieve than big experiences.

 

The year 2018 is coming to an end, which means it is high time for some interesting product and roadmap news. Here’s some Nimble news (ok, not THAT fresh anymore, I have been incredibly busy recently). For starters, Nimble released its long awaited Mobile 3.0 for Android, complementing the iOS version that got released earlier this year. Nimble unifies contacts from teams’ mobile, cloud-based, and desktop records into an all-in-one relationship manager. With minimal taps, sales and marketing professionals can prepare for meetings by quickly scanning social insights, sales intelligence, and contact engagement history from their portal device. To keep the momentum going, Office 365 and G Suite users can send personalized responses using template, trackable emails, and monitor opportunities across all deal stages from their portable devices. “People buy from the people they know, like, and trust,” said Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara. “We therefore designed Nimble Mobile to give users the insights they need to build confidence, engage in productive discussions, and follow through promptly anytime, anywhere.” With this milestone, Nimble has now truly achieved a vision of being a simple, smart ‘CRM’ for MS Office and G-Suite users that works for the user. I put the CRM into quotes as this term for me and most other people relates to a stragegy or system that includes marketing, sales and service capabilities and not only Sales Force Automation (SFA). And SFA, particularly contact management, is what is at the core of Nimble. Still, Nimble combines key ingredients of the digital workplace that a mobile, sales person needs, into one single place. It provides the user with vital information about the next person to interact with. The ongoing redesign around the contact person and the Nimble Today page, that makes Nimble more enterprise ready helps, too. It is targeted at making it even easier to view, edit, enter, and report on data. All this is recognized by a good number of well-reputed analysts. The re-hosting from AWS to Azure is completed and Nimble now embeds PowerBI and PowerApps as well as the ability to significantly customize the various screens using PowerApps. This is an important capability for enterprise support.

So, what comes next, Jon?

In brief: A lot! And it is mainly geared towards enterprise support. Nimble did already offer some marketing and campaign management elements, which will be extended into offering more marketing automation. There will be automation capability on segments/profiles that enables triggering workflows on entering or leaving defined segments. This allows for real-time interaction that works in the customer’s or prospect’s context. This has become an extremely important capability in the past years. As this is also necessary to support multi step campaigns it would be interesting to see this in detail. Nimble is also slated for scaling into larger teams, therefore closing the gap between Nimble’s SMB focus and Microsoft’s enterprise focus. The goal here is to allow customers a seamless growth from small to enterprise, while using the same CRM tool that grows together with them. Further, Nimble will be fully ported to the Azure stack. That way the app will be able to take full advantage of the power of Microsoft’s extensibility capabilities and later on also the full power of it’s AI stack. Additionally, there is an ambitious plan of adding more Microsoft resellers to the ones that are selling Nimble as part of their Microsoft reselling agreement. The for me most fascinating news is that there finally will be an embedded version of MSDynamics that adds Nimble functionality to the MS Dynamics contact person and puts the Nimble UI on top of MS Dynamics.

MyPoV and Analysis

Founder Jon Ferrara has continuously and skillfully evolved Nimble from a simple contact management application to a serious SFA application with enterprise ambitions. Doing this he followed the blueprint he created himself during his Goldmine days: He embeds Nimble deeper and deeper into the Microsoft ecosystem with the goal of offering an integral value proposition for both, resale partners and Microsoft. Being of value for other parties increases the value of Nimble. This outside-in approach creates a virtuous circle. One of the key strengths of Nimble is that it can be run as a layer on top of other business applications as well as inside a larger, already existing social sales and marketing application itself. That makes it extremely versatile and almost the perfect tool to start off with and grow. Both, Microsoft and Nimble have an MS Outlook add-in that gathers and provides users with additional information about persons they are interacting with: Microsoft’s Outlook Smart Contact add in and Nimble’s Sidebar. Given the strength of Nimble and the strength of the Nimble – Microsoft partnership I suggest replacing the Outlook Smart Contact add-in with the Nimble Sidebar. Two tools are one too many and the Nimble sidebar seems to be far more powerful than Microsoft’s own Smart Contacts add in. In addition the Nimble Sidebar is available for more platforms than just Outlook. Using Nimble here would also increase the probability of getting more customers as a great user experience, as the Nimble side bar offers it, is always convincing. By using Nimble this way Microsoft, with the help of Nimble, can cover the entry levels of CRM up to enterprise class CRM. This is a very powerful value proposition that none of the other tier one players can or does offer. Neither can the other ones. Having said this, it might be interesting for at least SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle to have a closer look at Nimble as they also cannot offer (yet) the power of Nimble’s integration into Outlook. I have said times and again that Nimble needs more marketing capabilities. In times of account-based marketing this becomes even more crucial. So, here we are. Adding some lead-scoring mechanisms that assures a smooth handover from marketing qualified leads to sales out of the box will be a good next step. I have also said a couple of times that Microsoft should acquire Nimble, e.g. here and I cannot but repeat this assessment. Nimble is the perfect complement for Microsoft to cover the small business end of the SFA market. This also makes Nimble a perfect target for the other (aspiring) tier one vendors. Looking at it this way, it is paramount for Microsoft to cover its flank. Just a thought from Down Under, of course.  

The News

On November 11, 2018 SAP announced that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Qualtrics, the “global pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category”. Here is the full announcement for you to read: WALLDORF, Germany, PROVO, Utah, SEATTLE, Wash. — SAP SE(NYSE: SAP) and Qualtrics International Inc. (Qualtrics) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which SAP SE intends to acquire Qualtrics, the global pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category that enables organizations to thrive in today’s experience economy.

• Together, SAP and Qualtrics to accelerate the new XM category by combining experience data and operational data to power the experience economy
• Creates a highly differentiated offering for businesses to deliver superior customer, employee, product, and brand experiences
• Ryan Smith to continue to lead Qualtrics; Qualtrics to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Wash.

Under the terms of the agreement, SAP will acquire all outstanding shares of Qualtrics for US$8 billion in cash. SAP has secured financing in the amount of €7 billion to cover purchase price and acquisition-related costs. The purchase price includes unvested employee incentive compensation and cash on the balance sheet at close. Subject to customary closing conditions and attainment of regulatory clearances, the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2019. The Boards of Directors of SAP and Qualtrics have approved the transaction. Qualtrics’ shareholders have also approved the transaction. SAP CEO Bill McDermott said: “We continually seek out transformational opportunities – today’s announcement is exactly that. Together, SAP and Qualtrics represent a new paradigm, similar to market-making shifts in personal operating systems, smart devices and social networks. SAP already touches 77 percent of the world’s transactions. When you combine our operational data with Qualtrics’ experience data, we will accelerate the XM category with an end-to-end solution with immediate global scale. For Qualtrics, this introduces a dynamic new partner with the belief, passion and scale to bring experience management to millions of customers around the world.” McDermott added: “The combination of Qualtrics and SAP reaffirms experience management as the groundbreaking new frontier for the technology industry. SAP and Qualtrics are seizing this opportunity as like-minded innovators, united in mission, strategy and culture. We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better. We can’t wait to stand beside Ryan and his amazing colleagues for the next chapters in the experience management story. The best for Qualtrics and SAP is yet to come!” Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, said: “Our mission is to help organizations deliver the experiences that turn their customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, products into obsessions and brands into religions. Supported by a global team of over 95,000, SAP will help us scale faster and achieve our mission on a broader stage. This will put the XM Platform everywhere overnight. We could not be more excited to join forces with Bill and the SAP team in this once-in-a-generation opportunity to power the experience economy.”

SAP and Qualtrics Will Together Deliver the Transformative Potential of Experience Data (X-Data) Combined with Operational Data (O-Data)

XM focuses on obtaining and tapping the value of outside-in customer, employee, product and brand feedback. Combining Qualtrics’ experience data and insights with SAP’s unparalleled operational data will enable customers to better manage supply chains, networks, employees and core processes. Together, SAP and Qualtrics will deliver a unique end-to-end experience and operational management system to power organizations.

SAP Will Accelerate Qualtrics’ Growth and Further Its Mission by Offering Global Scale, Reach and Resources

Leveraging SAP’s more than 413,000 customers and global salesforce of around 15,000, Qualtrics will be able to scale rapidly around the world. SAP has a strong track record of accelerating growth for the innovative companies it acquires, as exemplified by the rapid success of SAP’s recent acquisitions. Qualtrics expects full-year 2018 revenue to exceed US$400 million and projects a forward growth rate of greater than 40 percent, not including potential synergies of being part of SAP. Following the closing of the transaction, Qualtrics is expected to maintain its leadership, personnel, branding and culture, operating as an entity within SAP’s Cloud Business Group. Ryan Smith will continue to lead Qualtrics, and Qualtrics is expected to continue to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Washington. Qualtrics was advised on the transaction by Qatalyst Partners and Goodwin Procter, LLP. J.P. Morgan acted as financial advisor and Jones Day acted as legal advisor to SAP. The plan is to improve the ability to build “customer experiences” by combining SAP’s existing access to more than three quarters of business transactions with data about actual experiences, which is what Qualtrics does deliver. SAP pays the enormous amount of 8 billion USD for Qualtrics, a company that predicts to have revenue of 400 million USD in 2018. This makes it the biggest acquisition ever done by SAP. Additionally, a multiple of 20 on the revenue is high; even considering a growth rate of 40 per cent. Even more interestingly, SAP makes this an all cash acquisition.

The Bigger Picture

Data rules the world. The market of consumer data and data about business relationships is largely distributed between Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Apple, the media companies, and Microsoft. Where there still is a gap, is in the actual linkage of transactions and experiences. This is what companies usually try to cover with surveys. Experience is not only about customer experience but also about other stakeholders, for example employees. On the other hand, customer experience, as a category, is not manageable. Customer experience is the customer’s perception of a company that was developed over time. Once could define it as the sum total of all interactions and experiences that a customer had with the company in this time. What is manageable, are the individual engagements that at the end of the day create this customer experience. At least it is possible to influence these experiences. So, on an atomic level companies can work on how they are perceived. And one of the core ingredients for this is asking the customers.

My PoV and Analysis

While I have my issues with “Customer Experience Management” being a software category Qualtrics is a good fit. It delivers a lot of data that is complementing SAP’s existing data sets, plus the AI capabilities that are necessary to convert the raw data into insight. Qualtrics is capable of providing insight into individual experiences, which then using SAPs vast product portfolio, can get used to improve those very experiences in real time. The coverage of not only customer experience but also the related brand experience and product experience plus employee experience that Qualtrics sells is a very good strategic fit for SAP. It emphasizes on the SAP Customer Experience Suite story that got unveiled during SAPphire and the intelligent enterprise messaging that surrounds it. As a side effect SAP gets access to a strong survey suite that augments the existing one. Qualtrics, on the other side, gets the power of a huge sales force and partner ecosystem. This should enable it to scale globally fast.

But what do customers get?

In the near term … not much. Integration of the two solution sets will take some time. Even more so, if the Qualtrics software shall get migrated onto the SAP Cloud Platform (which I doubt). An exception might be pre-trained models and/or the corresponding algorithms. And finally there is the 1,000 dollar question: How about the Open Data Initiative? ODI is all about connecting data. Adding the capabilities of Qualtrics to the mix is of value to all customers. Hence it is to all members of the initiative. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. If Qualtrics becomes part of it then ODI is truly open. Else it is a line of defence also against Microsoft (as Oracle and Salesforce are no members of ODI).

The News

In the past few weeks there have been two interesting announcements by Nimble. First, on June 14, 2018 Nimble announced a partnership with Velosio, one of the largest Microsoft Dynamics VARs in North America. Velosio and Nimble entered into a global reseller agreement. As a part of this agreement Velosio’s 200 channel partners can purchase, manage and resell Nimble CRM bundled with Microsoft Office 365. Velosio is the latest prominent name in among the growing number of Microsoft/Nimble partners. One week later, on June 20, 2018 Nimble announced a revamp of its application homepage with the Nimble Today page. This dashboard page gives the user a clear and customizable view of their sales pipeline, calendar appointments, tasks and social signals with relationship insights directly embedded in the widgets. As a start the page offers 6 widgets

• Deals
• Events
• Tasks
• Highlighted Contacts
• Signals
• Stage Funnel

that can get freely rearranged. The Today Page is also available for iOS users now and will be available to Android users soon.

The Bigger Picture

The enterprise CRM market is saturated. There are at least 4 tier one players for every major CRM function that are competing for supremacy. Customer demands have evolved from requiring transactional applications to getting high value solutions that allow the delivery of high-end customer (and user) experience. The market itself has morphed from a suite market to a best-of-breed application market, and now to a platform and ecosystem market. In this market it is important to excel in two, maybe three areas:

• Platform as a Service (PaaS). The platform itself must support current and future technologies that enable the fast and easy creation of value through applications that are developed within its ecosystem
• A broad ecosystem. This creates the reach and relevance that is necessary to become and remain a relevant player in the enterprise software market.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). While IaaS in itself is a commodity, it can become an asset when it is combined with a strong application platform (PaaS) and ecosystem. The right combination affords the tremendous opportunity to provide (anonymized) data for machine learning models that can then provide value to all customers

This is exactly the chance for young and hungry SMB players with enterprise ambitions like Zoho or Freshworks to become significant players, to name just two. The risk for enterprise software makers is to be disrupted from below – similar to what Salesforce did to the Oracle’s and SAP’s of the world when CRM was still more of a suite game turning into a cloud-based best-of-breed application market. The big players have understood this. All of them. And they are pursuing different strategies to achieve, maintain, or protect their respective leadership positions.

My PoV and Analysis

Microsoft is one of these contenders. With the help of Nimble, Microsoft has one of the stronger strategies in the field. Here is why, coming from the Nimble perspective. I will write about Microsoft’s side when I refresh my Clash of Titans article. It’s been almost two years since I wrote it and all vendors have moved enough to warrant this update. So stay tuned. But I digress; so let’s get back to our topic. Nimble’s latest partnership with Microsoft channel partners, as well as the revamp of what I would call their app home page, cater to the needs of, but not only, small businesses. They also show that Nimble is quickly maturing as a valuable part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Partnerships like the one with Velosio are a tremendous growth opportunity for Microsoft, Velosio, and Nimble, because they provide high value to their joint customers. This can potentially have a very good impact on Nimble’s growth figures and give Microsoft quite an edge in the contest for winning the race for the fast growing SMB CRM business. Following my definition of a CRM system as an enabler of the marketing, sales, and service pillars, I still wouldn’t name Nimble a CRM system; but then contact management, account management and SFA are some of the core challenges facing every business, especially the smaller ones. So, with the Nimble partnership Microsoft has a solid and credible foot in the SMB CRM market. That foothold is solid and credible for two reasons. First, because both Nimble and Microsoft have strong, smart ecosystems plays and because Nimble’s functionality is maturing at a rapid pace. Nimble is an important entry point for fast-growing companies into the Microsoft ecosystem. Because Nimble can enrich Dynamics profiles and deliver them in the browser, in Office 365 and on social media, these companies can grow via Nimble into the Dynamics suite of software. Second, because Nimble is hungry. The company is essentially following the successful strategy of Goldmine, Jon Ferrara’s earlier CRM play. This includes partnering with Microsoft and partnering with a range of high profile resellers while providing helpful functionality. This is evidenced by both recent announcements: the strong ecosystem play that Nimble is pursuing by partnering with Microsoft, and its announcement regarding the new Today Page. Providing this dashboard seems to signify a move away from the focus on Social Media that was seen until now. This dashboard page makes the application a bit more mainstream but at the same time gives users what they need and want – support for outreach beyond social media. Now, after all this raving, I have some suggestions for Nimble on how to become even better. Although Nimble relies a lot on Azure there could be more usage of Azure’s machine learning/AI capabilities. This holds true especially for lead scoring and opportunity scoring. Providing enabling functionality like this becomes increasingly important with the complexity of deals handled. The goal is to provide even more value to sales representatives and their managers by indicating which customers and opportunities to focus on. Companies like Clari are showing the way here. Salesforce and SAP have solutions for this, too. Azure offers the technology – and Nimble already collects the data for providing pre-learned models that can be optimized for its customers. This sounds like a clear win-win situation to me.

Businesses are in a difficult situation. Today’s customers demand more experiences and contextually relevant engagements than they are equipped to deliver. The secret behind the abbreviation CEM is more important than ever. This places the businesses on a difficult and challenging trail that they need to carefully navigate in order to be and stay successful. The business challenge is that technology helps everyone, especially customers. This is because to the increasing proliferation of consumer technology, it is far easier and cheaper for customers to implement and use technology to their advantage as it is for businesses. A director of merchandising of a 1 Bn+ retailer put like this: “By the time we catch up to technology it will have moved past us again.” Examples for the truth of this statement in the past decade include the meteoric rise of messaging services and, before that, social media, powered by smartphones that made the Internet ubiquitous. As a consequence of this today’s customer is less depending on company marketing- or sales organizations and has a far higher reach when it comes to satisfying an information need. Consequently, Google finds that a whopping 99.8 per cent of all online ads are simply … ignored. Sales representatives are on the verge of becoming irrelevant. An increasing number of studies find that customers contact a sales representative only after a product decision has been made. Other studies determine that customers are abandoning shopping carts already following a single poor service experience. While these studies often are commissioned by vendors there still are too many of them to not indicate that there is a problem. After all there is bound to be a fire where there is smoke.

Then and Now

The 1990’s customer happily believed in corporate messaging that got delivered via unidirectional channels like TV, radio, or the newspaper. Today’s customer is always online, digitally connected and socially networked. She trusts peers, ‘people like me’, far more than corporate executives, spokespersons, or consultants/analysts/influencers. This trend is clearly shown by the ongoing changes in the Edelman Trust Barometer and it gave birth to notions like ‘a company like me’ or the debatable one saying that ‘the customer is in charge’. Today’s customers are using technology to navigate their individual journey. This journey stretches across devices and channels. It is non-linear and proceeds at the customer’s pace, and it doesn’t end with the purchase. Customers are simply following their own preferences, not a company’s. Yet customers have precise demands to the companies:

• Customers want the company being available on their communications channels of preference.
• Customers want the company to know more about the product or service that they are inquiring about than they already know themselves.
• Customers want the company to know and address their intentions and not being bombarded with irrelevant and out of context messaging. Information they volunteer to the company needs to be used to their benefit.
• At the same time customers do not want their data being used outside the boundaries of their interests. They do not give a perpetual license to use their information.
• Most of all, customers want to feel valued by the company. And one of the most valuable commodities customers have is their time.

Pre- and post sales, companies need to address these demands by offering a menu of interlinked contact points that collect the right data and offer meaningful information in real time, so that the customers can proceed on their journey with minimum friction and loss of time. This includes the usage of the product or services – which, of course, doesn’t necessarily give or collect data (anyone seen a can of chili collect usage data?). Pre- and post sales, and interaction with products, are also why I chose the term contact points instead of the better known touch points, as the term touch points is nowadays somewhat delimited to marketing. Anyone having a better term please let me know… Companies that succeed in building this menu have established a technical foundation for engaging in a way that results in good experiences. Of course a technical foundation is not enough. Companies also need to cover the even more important aspects of people, process, or culture. But: Why do experiences matter? And how to get there?

Experiences Are Created Through Engagements

In an operationalized adaptation of a definition given by Paul:

“Customer Engagement is the ongoing interaction between company and customer, using contact points that are offered by the company and chosen by the customer.”

This is where the traditional notion of CRM falls short and where we need to turn it into Customer Engagement Management – CEM. CRM in a traditional sense, rightly or wrongly, focuses on making the transaction and is mainly driven by a strategic focus on internal needs. As a consequence there is no view on a long-term customer relationship and therefore the value added for the customer is comparatively low. Once can also see this in many traditional loyalty schemes that are rather built for ring fencing customers than for making them loyal. It is an inside-out view that emphasizes the interests of the company over those of the customer. What if a company took a different stance? A position where not the transaction and the company needs are taking center stage but customer interactions, conversations, and service and where strategic decisions are taken around fulfilling the customer’s needs? This way the company is able to offer a high value to the customer during a long-term relationship. Conversely, the customer shares this added value with the company through repeat transactions. The transaction is no more a goal but an engagement amongst others, an engagement that leaves an experience. In a way one can say that businesses serve themselves best by serving their customers best. But how does this tie into customer experience, I hear you ask. According to Wikipedia “Customer Experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship.” Of course there can be positive and negative experiences. And there is another catch: Experiences, good and bad, fade over time. The most recent ones supersede older ones. This is why companies can ‘turn around’ bad experiences with good customer service. But this observation also says that it pays off to be consistent – after all customer service can be expensive. On the other hand there is also no point in striving for consistently exceeding customer expectations. For one this ambition leads to a vicious circle; expectations rise endlessly.

The Simplified Maslov Pyramid of Customer Expectations

Similar to Maslov’s hierarchy of needs customer expectations form a hierarchy that stretches from basic to ones of higher order. It is simplified in the sense of having only three layers that start from rationality and bring more and more emotions into the picture. And there is no point in concentrating on the higher order expectations if the basic ones are not met before. Efficiently selling a customer something that she doesn’t want nor need is probably not going to be a (lasting) good experience. Customer experience is not about continuously exceeding expectations but about first consistently fulfilling the customers’ needs and then using the change created by that to create little ‘wow’ moments. First and foremost the customers need you being available their way and you reliably and accurately providing them, initially with accurate and reliable information, then with what they really want. There is nearly no chance of impressing or wowing customers at this level. Failing at this level, however, creates negative experiences and frustrations. Think “Your call is important to us – due to an exceedingly high call volume …” or different company representatives giving different answers to the same question., or a dress not being available in the right size in one store with the associate not being able or willing to look up whether it is available in another store. First, meet the needs! From then on make it easy and joyful for your customers. The secret sauce lies in finding the right way. What is easy and joyful for the customers? The easiest way to find out is usually asking them, even in times that are as digital as ours. But does it pay?

Improving Customer Experience Is Good For Business

It does. Meeting expectations provides the customer with a confirmation, a positive reinforcement. Consistently meeting expectations then leads to various positive results for the business, starting from a higher customer satisfaction, the chance of repeat purchases and leading to an improved and positive attitude towards the brand, ultimately creating a loyal customer who does not return because of a discount but because of being convinced of getting the best value. This is also confirmed in a number of studies that tie a focus on customer experience to tangible, measurable business outcomes. Focusing on a good customer experience through delivering the outcomes that a customer desires in an efficient and – for the customer – joyful way pays off for the business. Don’t look at yourself but at the customer and reap the benefits.

The News

On February 14, 2018 Nimble announced the launch of Nimble Mobile CRM 3.0, their new powerful mobile contact, relationship and pipeline manager for Office 365 and G-Suite. The company also announced a bundling of PieSync’s B2B cloud integration platform to become an end-to-end social relationship management platform for all company contact records, regardless of where those records are stored. The new mobile app “unifies contacts from siloed mobile, cloud based and desktop records into a comprehensive relationship manager. It delivers the history of conversations and social context for everyone you meet, and it enables you to easily follow up and follow through on opportunities …” Besides introducing important features like business card scanning, the ability to send templated and tracked emails, and a mobile pipeline manager for tracking follow-through, Nimble Mobile 3.0 provides easy access to all company contact records, including social enrichment and history of email and Twitter interactions. In addition, the software introduces the ability to research new contacts on the fly via a deep integration with the iOS share menu. The latter enables users to stay within one app instead of toggling between them, which is a drag on mobile productivity. The ability to research new contacts on the fly gives teams and professionals valuable sales intelligence by using the iOS Share menu to “Nimble” a person, i.e. discover their social profiles, areas of influence, company, work description, etc. In other words, it is possible to build a Nimble record for contacts in your email, calendar and contacts apps, on the Internet or for a variety of other apps, in real time. The application is available for iOS now and will be available for Android later this spring. Bundling of PieSync into Nimble extends Nimble’s ability to sync conversations with contact data from more than 100 SaaS applications.

The Bigger Picture

Salespeople are mobile by definition. They need to have access to all the relevant information to initiate or close a deal at their fingertips. On the road, they are likely to use a tablet or smartphone; fewer rely on a laptop. They surely cannot rely on data that is locked up in a back office database. Sales is, and always has been, a relationship play. However, in a B2B world the process typically includes an entire sales team, and not just a single person. There is also more to a CRM than just contact management and sales. A true 360 degree view of the customer needs to include data from all business applications and social sources. To accommodate for this, Nimble has partnered up with PieSync to be able to sync contact data from more than 100 business SaaS apps into Nimble. This allows Nimble to become a part of an ecosystem of applications that enables especially small companies to run their complete business in the cloud, and to grow from there.  

My PoV and Analysis

Now, every CRM or only SFA application that is worth their salt offers a mobile component. What distinguishes Nimble Mobile 3.0 is its ability to integrate into the iOS Share menu and to immediately build new contact records for data stored in multiple sources. The new contact is only two clicks away. What impressed me most, though, was the sheer performance this process showed. Surely, Santa Clara is a lot closer to the big Internet pipes than Christchurch, NZ, but still … I walked away from the briefing feeling impressed. The ability to build new contact profiles for mobile contacts alone makes Nimble Mobile 3.0 the most powerful contact management tool I have seen so far. The only minus that I could see is that Nimble customers need to wait a little longer for an Android version. Nimble is squarely targeting small companies that are looking at a fast growth trajectory. Because they are focused on social contact and relationship management Nimble’s partnership with PieSync is almost as important as the partnership with Microsoft. It makes Nimble part of an ecosystem of SaaS vendors that jointly enable small companies to run their businesses in the cloud, with ample opportunity to grow. This, as well as a growing number of reseller agreements like this one announced earlier this week with Giacom, is an important move that should spur additional growth for Nimble. It also makes Nimble somewhat less dependent on Microsoft. All in all small businesses that consider social contact management as a core part of their business strategy and that are pursuing a best-of-breed IT strategy over an IT suite now get even more value. Nimble’s mobile app is very strong, as is the integration capability that is delivered via PieSync. Lastly, growing companies have a clear path to enterprise scale software via Nimble’s partnership with Microsoft. This is certainly something to look at.

The most important tool that enterprise software vendors have in their respective arsenals is their platform. While Vinnie Mirchandani rightfully states that Enterprise Software Platforms have so far underwhelmed, Denis Pombriant proclaims them the new battleground. In my opinion it is not that new a battleground but as part of the Clash of Titans it is becoming more evident as a battleground. An enterprise software platform was always part of the battle for dominance in the customer engagement – or putting it into (marketing) industry lingo – customer experience market. It is actually an integral part of it. This is largely because of the ongoing commoditization of transactional business applications. But it was sexier to talk about shiny topics like engagement and experience than to talk about the grease and the machinery behind that drives and enables the technical delivery of engagements – note, that there are systems of engagement, but there is nothing like a system of experience. And now topics like chatbots, machine learning, AI, ambient computing, IoT, to name a few, made the machinery – the platform – the new black.

A – perhaps not so – brief history

When looking at the broad topic of CRM, customer engagement or customer experience, we have seen a lot of change happening since the early days of Sales Force Automation, SFA. Back in the early 90s one of the first topics has been SFA, with a focus on making a distributed sales force more effective and efficient. Contact management came even earlier, call center software and field service quickly followed. The emerging industry was dominated by little players that mostly got acquired by bigger enterprise software companies (anyone still knows a company called Kiefer & Veittinger?). Essentially we lived in a best-of-breed world. Nobody really talked about user- or customer experience. Times were all about efficiency. But what happened was that these point solutions brought an improved customer engagement, and with it an improved experience. Sales cycles shortened, got more predictable, which led to increased customer satisfaction overall. One of the players, Siebel, stepped up the game by coining the term Customer Relationship Management, CRM, and with it came the solution suite that increasingly covered all areas of CRM: Sales, Service, and Marketing. The advantage was clear: Having a highly integrated system not only allows for more efficient internal collaboration but also enabled one consistent face to the customer – better engagement possibilities and therefore potential for improved experiences again. The first real protagonist of this was SAP, but let’s not forget Oracle. In the mid 2000s Cloud Computing fully arrived, or rather took off. One could say, that this was also propelled by Salesforce with its then disruptive Software as a Service model. With this model we arrived at best-of-breed software again, as nimble SaaS players could offer quick solutions for departmental problems, something the big software houses could not do – nor did they want to. SaaS was born, and with it came the possibility to nimbly react to increasing customer demands, which in times of social media and the communications revolution that mobile devices caused, came very handy. The big incumbents realized this, too; some faster than the others. All of them, SaaS players or not, had their own development platforms, with different strengths, with or without own databases. This is important as it allowed them as well as their partners to efficiently enhance their software to offer more specialized functionality. Again, without talking about it, one result was better user- and customer experience through improved engagement. At the same time players like Google started to offer their environments as development platforms, too. PaaS – platform as a service was born. Add a vast number of little players and great software that got built using available open source technologies only. Shortly after, with the arrival of AWS, Infrastructure as a Service became a hot topic. However, a problem arose of all this, too. The many SaaS applications that were built using the different technology and development platforms had a hard time integrating, which ate up a lot of the advantages the SaaS applications themselves offered. Consistent engagement, and with it customer experience suffered. To address this, middleware services became part of PaaS offerings. Additionally there was also an increasing trend of consolidation on a smaller number of offered platforms, increasing the economies of scale for all involved parties. As a side effect the suite reappeared on stage, but with a twist. Instead of being a kind of supermarket it had converted to something more like a mall. Specialized software was integrated via a (fairly) common data layer, based upon one platform. While this is not entirely true you get the picture. This happened towards the end of the first half of the 2010s, and, along with increasing commoditization of enterprise software, gave birth to the ‘platform war’. Just that, sticking to military terminology, CEM, CEX, Martech, etc., have been the proxy wars. In came topics like chatbots, AI, machine learning, IoT, ambient computing. And this brought the platform topic into the foreground. A well-architected and comprehensive platform is the foundation for integrated business processes. This, in turn is the precondition for being able to deliver great engagements and therefore for the end customer to perceive a great experience. There is no experience without engagement. The platform is the customer experience platform.

But wait, what is a platform?

Now, this is a good question! There are probably as many definitions as there are enterprise software and infrastructure vendors. And these definitions are largely based upon the vendors’ legacy and core business. The industry largely distinguishes between two layers of platform:

• Infrastructure – IaaS
• Software – PaaS (and to some extent SaaS)

Infrastructure is the skeleton

While IaaS is fairly simple (no disrespect meant) as it mainly deals with the many hardware aspects of a distributed cloud platform, it is challenging on its own. And, supplying the compute, storage, and networking abilities, IaaS is literally fundamental. That makes it a part of the platform to reckon with. IaaS is a core element of Oracle’s strategy, and increasingly gets Microsoft’s attention. And then there are players like AWS, Google, Ali Baba, IBM, Rackspace, etc. that are providing cloud infrastructure to businesses as (a part of) their main business. The importance of IaaS is evidenced by all major enterprise software vendors heavily investing into their own datacenters. Although infrastructure is a commodity it is a commodity that the big software vendors are depending upon – at a scale that makes them vulnerable.

Software are the muscles

PaaS is more complex than IaaS. It is the foundation for building thriving application ecosystems. It therefore needs to supply all services that are needed to efficiently build, deploy, sell, and manage business applications and business application services (aka micro services). It also needs to provide the foundational services that enable business application developers to concentrate on solving business problems. That’s why analytics, IoT services, machine learning infrastructures, AI services, middleware, database engines, and much more, are part of it, too.

Choose your platform wisely

It is the software platform that lays the foundation for being able to consistently engage in a way that can deliver positive experiences. The IaaS part of the platform makes sure that the software platform itself can deliver with low latency and the performance that is necessary at any time. The ability to consistently engage in a way that can deliver positive experiences is why especially the PaaS platform is that important. And then there is the challenge of on premise software and/or “private clouds” as well as increasing regulatory pressure that places demands on the storage location of data with the latter becoming a non-issue soon, as every significant IaaS vendor will be able to support upcoming regional legislation – doing so is a matter of survival for them. The other matter of survival for them is whether and how they can attract business workloads to their infrastructures. And this means partnerships. No big enterprise software vendor – who all provided PaaS – will make itself dependent on one single, or only two IaaS providers. Which means that the software platform will remain the decisive factor. Of which we have largely four: Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP, discounting for specialists and ambitious startups like Freshworks or Zoho, amongst others.

So, which platform to go for?

As bland as it sounds, this is an individual decision. There is no one size fits it all. The main criteria are:

• Fit to the existing (on premise) back end
• Fit of current offering to current needs
• Fit of offering in 3 years to perceived needs
• Adaptability to changing needs
• Ecosystem
• Willingness to accept a given IaaS by choosing a PaaS
• Cost

The four vendors have very different strategies. All of them have their own infrastructure, but Microsoft and Oracle strongly prefer its own, while Salesforce and SAP are partnering, which also helps drive cost down. Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are full suite vendors, with offerings covering the full value chain, while Salesforce concentrates on the customer side of processes. Microsoft on top of this has a strong productivity suite and essentially ‘owns’ the office. Microsoft, Salesforce and SAP are running thriving ecosystems, with Microsoft and Salesforce clearly having an edge over SAP. Oracle is less strong. All four are investing heavily into important technologies like machine learning, blockchain, VR and AR. Oracle’s investments into AI based database security is something unique in this area; until Microsoft goes that route, too – followed by SAP, which has least data on database attacks – but likely lots on attacks on the application server. Microsoft, followed by SAP have best access to data, Microsoft via LinkedIn and its stake in InsideSales, SAP via the Ariba network and now Gigya.

Tl;dr – Which platform will win?

In brief: The race is on. My personal view is that Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP have an edge over Salesforce, as these companies offer more of the value chain, in breadth and depth. Salesforce, on top of it, is not overly profitable. The company surely provides high value, but also at a high price. What if other vendors provide (or are perceived to provide) similar value at a lower price point? After all one major driver for a move into the cloud is lowering cost. On the other hand at least Oracle and SAP, probably even Microsoft, can learn from Salesforce about eco systems.

My advice?

Look out for what Microsoft is offering, especially if you are not (yet) a large enterprise but consider yourself upper end of mid market. If your concern is the whole value chain and you want to grow, look for SAP. Look for Oracle if you are an Oracle shop. If your main, or only, concern is customer engagement, have a good look at Salesforce. But always keep your existing infrastructure in mind.  

The News

Well, it is already more than two weeks ago that this news hit the wires, but SAP announced the acquisition of Gigya, a leading Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) platform vendor. Gigya got placed in the top position of Forrester’s Wave for Customer Identity and Access Management Platforms Q2 2017, a position that is owned by SAP, if the company manages to address customer (and hence analyst) concerns that arise from the merger. SAP, in turn, with its SAP Hybris branded software, provides a suite of commerce and engagement solutions that allow organizations to build and leverage in real time a 360 degree view on the customer, across channels and devices. Gigya is an SAP (Hybris) partner since 2013 or so, and has integrations with SAP Hybris Ecommerce, SAP Hybris Marketing and SAP CRM. SAP intends to make the Gigya platform part of its Hybris portfolio. The transaction is expected to be closed by end of 2017.

The Bigger Picture

The CIAM market is evolving fast, coming out of the area of providing social logins with the purpose of simplifying web site logins only a decade ago. This purpose remains but along with solving registration problems there are now a lot regulation challenges that are to be addressed. Just think, management of consent and preferences across sites, or GDPR, which imposes data residence requirements on top. With the additional data collection capabilities of CIAM solutions there is quite an upside for CRM vendors – especially for ones with strong marketing automation and profiling capabilities, like SAP. There is an increased ability to accurately address individual customers based upon their behaviour and across devices, therefore improving engagement capabilities, which in turn serve the goal of better experiences. This will become more and more important in an emerging IoT world, where a user will have many devices. The combination of managing logins with profiling enables moving IoT scenarios away from being device centric to becoming customer centric. This is more of a revolution than of an evolution.

My PoV and Analysis

This acquisition is a great move by SAP because it improves SAP’s solution portfolio on at least two dimenstions:

• SAP now is a considerable CIAM player
• CiAM adds important glue to the current offerings

SAP itself so far is not known for its abilities in the area of Identity Management – especially outside of SAP applications. With acquiring Gigya this changed. After completing the transaction SAP boosted itself from a nobody into the CIAM pole position. The acquisition nicely rounds off the Hybris suite of products and adds something that Microsoft acquired with LinkedIn, or Google and Facebook have natively: Data about preference and behaviour of customers, across many sites. This data does not only allow for increased profiling capabilities that enable a more accurate and relevant customer engagement; it also forms an invaluable source for additional, data based offerings, from Data as a Service to the delivery of AI as a service. This, in turn fits into the Leonardo concept. Thinking further than ‘just’ Hybris, SAP now has a software that can help modernizing its own (internal) identity and access management and something that can be used as an improved SSO. There may be some benefit for the GDPR offerings of SAP, but then especially requests to delete personal data regularly need to be fulfilled in several business systems, so I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on this topic. SAP already had the technological foundations for this before the acquisition. On the concern side we will see how Gigya moves on from a (trusted) independent vendor to become part of a larger entity. This certainly has the potential of introducing some bias and raises questions like: How will other vendors’ software still be supported? Think of marketo, to name but one. SAP needs to provide reliable guidance to Gigya prospects and customers – as well as partners – fast. I can already see a tsunami of FUD being created. Where I do perceive a real issue is the direction the CIAM market itself seems to take. It looks like being built upon an inside-out thought that targets at delivering benefits to the businesses and seems to address customer/consumer interests only as an afterthought. A solution that focuses on adding value to companies by being valuable to their customers’ needs to be built around the outside-in notion that all collected data first and foremost belongs to the customers/consumers instead of selling more accurate targeting of ads as a value to them. The inside-out notion can be read in the Forrester report and becomes abundantly clear in Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer’s statement that got quoted in the SAP announcement: “Combining the data matching and enrichment capabilities of Sap Hybris Profile with Gigya’s consent-based identity data and access management platform will allow us to identify consumers across channels and offer a robust single consumer profile. This is a vital step for digitalizing businesses because companies need to be able to draw accurate conclusions seamlessly across all channels, including web, mobile, in-store or connected devices, and the Internet of Things, as well as collect data about consumer preferences. Together we are well positioned to drive more effective marketing, sales and service through data, while the customer stays in control of how much data is shared.” The consumer as an afterthought – and we all know what choices usually are offered to consumers: Accept our terms or go away. SAP now has the chance to prove me wrong.