During the SAP Hybris Live Global Summit 2017 held in Barcelona on October 16-18, SAP Hybris executives shared the organization's strategy and vision for enabling digital customer transformation. The event provided insight on the organization's customer engagement and commerce portfolio of products along with marquee presentations from SAP Hybris customers themselves discussing their business transformation strategies. At the event, SAP Hybris made a few announcements. It released a commerce accelerator for telecommunications and media industries, new machine-learning functionality to optimize shopping experiences and a program for co-innovation strategies specifically for cognitive applications.
The 451 Take
SAP Hybris is prioritizing research and development toward creating intelligent business applications that can understand, contextualize and embed data intelligently into business processes. Digitalization can be used to automate many core processes, and adding new layers of data also adds contextual relevance to those processes. Yet businesses still struggle to understand how to embed the right information at the right time for the right processes. SAP Hybris is transitioning its applications to provide more prescriptive guidance that capitalizes on first- and third-party data to achieve desired business outcomes. The data layer is critical to the overall process for prescriptive action. Applications will become more intelligent over the next few years as they take advantage of the abundance of data growth coupled with the maturation of machine-learning algorithms.
Context
SAP Hybris' vision of digital transformation sees its customers moving beyond the emphasis on increasing operational efficiencies toward the capture of actionable customer data that can be used to execute on contextual experiences. SAP Hybris positioned its Digital Business Framework as the heart of the company's future. The interconnectivity of data, along with intelligent machine-learning algorithms, analytics in the cloud and the SAP Data Hub, is the power of the digital core. The digital core will be at the center of the next generation of its enterprise applications across the front office, middle office and back office. With a comprehensive approach to customer experience and commerce, SAP Hybris is creating a more competitive digital transformation strategy designed to challenge Oracle and Salesforce head-on.
SAP and most other enterprise business application vendors are continually under pressure to adapt to new business environments. SAP applications are primarily used as systems of record to manage customer records, finances, logistics and human resources. Digital transformation trends have played a pivotal role for SAP to expand beyond traditional systems of record and adapt to the new reality of systems of engagement.
Products
The SAP Hybris Live Global Summit 2017 was not centered around record-setting news announcements, but articulating the continued evolution of the company's vision for how SAP Hybris products support businesses' digital transformation initiatives today and into the future. The company is evolving its architecture to embrace more modern approaches demanded by businesses shifting to native cloud applications, including support for microservices, Docker, containers and Kubernetes. The shift to subscription- and sharing-based models, desires for hyper-personalization strategies and an emphasis on experiences (not products) drive its technology roadmap. For example, the sharing economy demands a new way to develop, create, deploy and deliver software. The company is positioning the combination of SAP Leonardo, SAP Hybris as a Service (also known as 'YaaS') and SAP Cloud platform as the end-to-end platform for digital transformation.
The company articulated its investments in modernizing applications for the cloud, an intelligent digital core and continued frameworks for specific industries. The new telco and media accelerator for SAP Hybris Commerce addresses industry-specific functionality for engaging, retaining and acquiring customers. In conjunction with IBM, the accelerator is a framework that enables service providers to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including digital self-service and assisted forms of interaction with physical channels, such as in-store clienteling enablement and in-store pick-up services. The industry requires the ability to create flexible bundles, promotions and complicated checkout flows to meet customer needs.
SAP Hybris has been making significant investments in marketing through both organic and acquisition-related advancements. At the event, SAP Hybris also introduced facial recognition, machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) tools to enable retailers to create targeted marketing campaigns and optimize shopping experiences. Associated with SAP Leonardo, the machine-learning facial recognition used within SAP Hybris Marketing Cloud can be used to engage in-store shoppers to intelligently connect shoppers' genders and ages to company products or IoT devices. That allows for personalized product recommendations presented on in-store displays or on triggered campaigns.
Abakus (acquired by SAP in December 2016) is now SAP Hybris Customer Attribution, which provides marketers with accurate measurements of marketing campaigns and activities that lead to a customer purchase. Data is collected across both physical and digital touch points along the customer journey to improve insight on conversions. While there wasn't much mention of the intent to acquire Gigya during the event itself, SAP Hybris aims to capitalize on the identity platform to help businesses synthesize information about customers from across channels and devices into a customer profile that is privacy- and regulation-compliant. Gigya's customer identity and access management platform includes data collection features like registration as a service, which allows users to build custom web forms that integrate data collection across web and mobile applications. The transaction closed on November 1, and Gigya is now part of SAP.
SAP Hybris Commerce had key innovations for the product over the past year:
SAP Hybris is articulating to its customers that digital transformation is really happening – it wants to be the partner that helps its customers through the transition. It is an inescapable truth that every business is becoming a digital business controlled by software, which is the manifestation of these digital transformations. As businesses continue to align around a digital culture, they need to invest in new approaches to remain relevant in the eyes of their customers. The overall – but seldom-voiced – goal is survival; just ask some of those in industries that have already seen their physical products turned into digital ones and did not survive the transformation.
There will be a seismic shift in growth strategies for business and consumers to subscribe to services, rather than buy products. The subscription model changes the short-term economics and long-term relationships with customers bringing a completely new business model to businesses. The result will be a stronger focus on loyalty and relationships that build upon consistent, positive interactions with customers. A key success factor will be the ability to capitalize on a true customer identity, particularly as the amount of data about customers soars. To create seamless customer experiences and orchestrate them successfully, businesses must manage data about transactions, contexts and behaviors, and tie each piece to a unique customer identity and profile. This is needed to identify customer opportunities and determine how to best engage with customers across multiple channels and devices. SAP is investing in products that help customers move beyond 'business as usual' to embrace organizational change, agile business processes and systems to support transformation.
Competition
The competition for SAP Hybris varies across product sets. However, the most direct competitors are Oracle, IBM and Salesforce. Other digital commerce players include Digital River, Magento, Shopify, Elastic Path, CloudCraze and Apttus. Oracle, IBM and Salesforce offer marketing applications, primarily through acquisitions. Oracle acquired Responsys and Eloqua. IBM acquired Silverpop, and Salesforce acquired ExactTarget. Adobe Marketing Cloud is a strong competitor with tools for digital marketing and partnerships for omni-channel commerce.
Another competitor is Infor, which has made acquisitions to enhance its customer-experience and e-commerce capabilities, and there are many competitors for traditional CRM tools, including SugarCRM, Microsoft and Salesforce. SAP Hybris Profile competes with not only a few SAP Hybris partner applications such as Certona, but also with Adobe and Evergage. SAP Hybris as a Service competes with a combination of Salesforce's Force.com development environment and AppExchange application marketplace.
The 451 Take
SAP Hybris is prioritizing research and development toward creating intelligent business applications that can understand, contextualize and embed data intelligently into business processes. Digitalization can be used to automate many core processes, and adding new layers of data also adds contextual relevance to those processes. Yet businesses still struggle to understand how to embed the right information at the right time for the right processes. SAP Hybris is transitioning its applications to provide more prescriptive guidance that capitalizes on first- and third-party data to achieve desired business outcomes. The data layer is critical to the overall process for prescriptive action. Applications will become more intelligent over the next few years as they take advantage of the abundance of data growth coupled with the maturation of machine-learning algorithms.
Context
SAP Hybris' vision of digital transformation sees its customers moving beyond the emphasis on increasing operational efficiencies toward the capture of actionable customer data that can be used to execute on contextual experiences. SAP Hybris positioned its Digital Business Framework as the heart of the company's future. The interconnectivity of data, along with intelligent machine-learning algorithms, analytics in the cloud and the SAP Data Hub, is the power of the digital core. The digital core will be at the center of the next generation of its enterprise applications across the front office, middle office and back office. With a comprehensive approach to customer experience and commerce, SAP Hybris is creating a more competitive digital transformation strategy designed to challenge Oracle and Salesforce head-on.
SAP and most other enterprise business application vendors are continually under pressure to adapt to new business environments. SAP applications are primarily used as systems of record to manage customer records, finances, logistics and human resources. Digital transformation trends have played a pivotal role for SAP to expand beyond traditional systems of record and adapt to the new reality of systems of engagement.
Products
The SAP Hybris Live Global Summit 2017 was not centered around record-setting news announcements, but articulating the continued evolution of the company's vision for how SAP Hybris products support businesses' digital transformation initiatives today and into the future. The company is evolving its architecture to embrace more modern approaches demanded by businesses shifting to native cloud applications, including support for microservices, Docker, containers and Kubernetes. The shift to subscription- and sharing-based models, desires for hyper-personalization strategies and an emphasis on experiences (not products) drive its technology roadmap. For example, the sharing economy demands a new way to develop, create, deploy and deliver software. The company is positioning the combination of SAP Leonardo, SAP Hybris as a Service (also known as 'YaaS') and SAP Cloud platform as the end-to-end platform for digital transformation.
The company articulated its investments in modernizing applications for the cloud, an intelligent digital core and continued frameworks for specific industries. The new telco and media accelerator for SAP Hybris Commerce addresses industry-specific functionality for engaging, retaining and acquiring customers. In conjunction with IBM, the accelerator is a framework that enables service providers to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, including digital self-service and assisted forms of interaction with physical channels, such as in-store clienteling enablement and in-store pick-up services. The industry requires the ability to create flexible bundles, promotions and complicated checkout flows to meet customer needs.
SAP Hybris has been making significant investments in marketing through both organic and acquisition-related advancements. At the event, SAP Hybris also introduced facial recognition, machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) tools to enable retailers to create targeted marketing campaigns and optimize shopping experiences. Associated with SAP Leonardo, the machine-learning facial recognition used within SAP Hybris Marketing Cloud can be used to engage in-store shoppers to intelligently connect shoppers' genders and ages to company products or IoT devices. That allows for personalized product recommendations presented on in-store displays or on triggered campaigns.
Abakus (acquired by SAP in December 2016) is now SAP Hybris Customer Attribution, which provides marketers with accurate measurements of marketing campaigns and activities that lead to a customer purchase. Data is collected across both physical and digital touch points along the customer journey to improve insight on conversions. While there wasn't much mention of the intent to acquire Gigya during the event itself, SAP Hybris aims to capitalize on the identity platform to help businesses synthesize information about customers from across channels and devices into a customer profile that is privacy- and regulation-compliant. Gigya's customer identity and access management platform includes data collection features like registration as a service, which allows users to build custom web forms that integrate data collection across web and mobile applications. The transaction closed on November 1, and Gigya is now part of SAP.
SAP Hybris Commerce had key innovations for the product over the past year:
- Ability to manage complex ordering and products. The company added functionality for advanced dynamic bundling, improved product configurability and CPQ integration. B2B businesses are now demanding the ability to deliver experiences that is expected from B2C businesses – simple, quick and digital-first.
- Orchestration across multiple networked environments. Micro-services architecture helps to ensure execution of complex order management across multiple different systems of records and third-party systems.
- Expanded capabilities for customer engagement. Simplification of workflows and BPM tools for improved customer journey management, customer self-service and marketing support. Additionally, advanced support for cloud services including containerization, Docker support and framework for enhanced 360-customer view.
SAP Hybris is articulating to its customers that digital transformation is really happening – it wants to be the partner that helps its customers through the transition. It is an inescapable truth that every business is becoming a digital business controlled by software, which is the manifestation of these digital transformations. As businesses continue to align around a digital culture, they need to invest in new approaches to remain relevant in the eyes of their customers. The overall – but seldom-voiced – goal is survival; just ask some of those in industries that have already seen their physical products turned into digital ones and did not survive the transformation.
There will be a seismic shift in growth strategies for business and consumers to subscribe to services, rather than buy products. The subscription model changes the short-term economics and long-term relationships with customers bringing a completely new business model to businesses. The result will be a stronger focus on loyalty and relationships that build upon consistent, positive interactions with customers. A key success factor will be the ability to capitalize on a true customer identity, particularly as the amount of data about customers soars. To create seamless customer experiences and orchestrate them successfully, businesses must manage data about transactions, contexts and behaviors, and tie each piece to a unique customer identity and profile. This is needed to identify customer opportunities and determine how to best engage with customers across multiple channels and devices. SAP is investing in products that help customers move beyond 'business as usual' to embrace organizational change, agile business processes and systems to support transformation.
Competition
The competition for SAP Hybris varies across product sets. However, the most direct competitors are Oracle, IBM and Salesforce. Other digital commerce players include Digital River, Magento, Shopify, Elastic Path, CloudCraze and Apttus. Oracle, IBM and Salesforce offer marketing applications, primarily through acquisitions. Oracle acquired Responsys and Eloqua. IBM acquired Silverpop, and Salesforce acquired ExactTarget. Adobe Marketing Cloud is a strong competitor with tools for digital marketing and partnerships for omni-channel commerce.
Another competitor is Infor, which has made acquisitions to enhance its customer-experience and e-commerce capabilities, and there are many competitors for traditional CRM tools, including SugarCRM, Microsoft and Salesforce. SAP Hybris Profile competes with not only a few SAP Hybris partner applications such as Certona, but also with Adobe and Evergage. SAP Hybris as a Service competes with a combination of Salesforce's Force.com development environment and AppExchange application marketplace.
Sheryl Kingstone
Research Director, Customer Experience & Commerce
Sheryl Kingstone leads 451 Research’s coverage for Customer Experience & Commerce, which covers the many aspects of how customer experience is a catalyst for digital transformation. She oversees the company’s coverage of a variety of customer experience software markets spanning ad tech, marketing, sales, commerce and service.
Sheryl Kingstone
Research Director, Customer Experience & Commerce
Research Director Sheryl Kingstone focuses on improving the customer experience across all interaction channels for customer acquisition and loyalty. She helps operator and enterprise clients make decisions regarding the use of technology, business processes and data to boost revenue and optimize business performance. She also assists vendors with custom research projects, messaging and positioning, as well as product road map evaluations. Kingstone researches and writes on the top trends in mobile marketing and commerce along with cross-channel customer experience technologies.
Keith Dawson
Principal Analyst
Keith Dawson is a principal analyst in 451 Research's Customer Experience & Commerce practice, primarily covering marketing technology. Keith has been covering the intersection of communications and enterprise software for 25 years, mainly looking at how to influence and optimize the customer experience.