Guilherme Scorsin Krüger
SAP Company is closely related to a complex system, at least in the Brazilian market, but I believe this image goes beyond our borders.
Some characteristics of the SAP systems include this huge brand's unique positioning inside clients' and users' minds, mixing lovers and haters. For me, it is a brand that delivers fantastic solutions, but some important points need to be studied and considered before making the choice.
To explain my point of view, I will talk about my experience directly with SAP over the last three years.
After building a career in marketing áreas, working for International companies, such as Ferrero and Subway, and other Brazilian companies like Nutrimental (food), Madero (restaurants), O Boticário (beauty), I was invited for a new challenge at Condor (supermarket chain), and what a challenge. So let´s talk about it. Firstly, what is the link between SAP and marketing? Well, the role that I assumed was new, and during that time, I would be responsible for CRM, media offline and online, business intelligence, and martech!!! So, here was THE challenge
Some characteristics of the SAP systems include this huge brand's unique positioning inside clients' and users' minds, mixing lovers and haters
Throughout all my experience in other companies, I have led many projects, including tech ones, but never before at a complex level like a SAP implementation. It was one of my responsibilities as a marketing manager in this case.
With this part of the story told, the point here is to explain what the reality of daily work in a project like this could have taught me, being practically a rookie here.
The company had already contracted 4 SAP modules (E-commerce, Marketing, Service, and Customer Data Cloud-CDC), and I assumed to lead the implementation process since the beginning, considering that we didn´t have an implementation partner at this time.
Resuming the first step, after an immersive and intensive period of understanding, contacts, research, budget, and supplier evaluations, we were able to contract a partner to start the job.
Since then, in January 2021, we passed by two integration partners (yes, the first one did just part of the job, MVP for Marketing, Service, and CDC, and couldn`t deliver the E-commerce platform).
So, today, we have all the implementations done, and now we are preparing the E-Commerce rollout for more than 15 stores. After two and a half years of hard work with the SAP implementation and discovering so much about the system, we can have a better, wider, and panoramic view of the situation.
So now, let´s talk about what really matters. The important points to consider in your company to make this process shorter, or even to know if the SAP Platform is the best choice for you.
1. Consulting Partner – a good partner needs to have an expert team and enough people to assume and build the project on time and with excellence, even if there is some turnover in the team.
2. Internal Structure – this is the first thing you really need, but the last thing that the companies want to invest in. In a perfect scenario, there will be a team dedicated to the project, with a P.O. (Product Owner), a P.M. (Project Manager), and developers who will need to pass through a good understanding period to know details of the new platform, and after start helping the consulting team. Better than this, only by hiring a team with previous expertise. Another good possibility is to have the consulting team allocated inside your company working daily with the IT Team to draw the solutions and speed up the process.
3. Key User - for each CX module, choose an expert that will be the person who will be the point of contact for the internal team to determine things like:
a. Describing needs (in detail)
b. Determination of the MVP (minimum viable product)
c. Prioritizing the backlog
4. Leadership – It needs to be clear to the company who will lead the platform implementation. In my opinion, the best results will be achieved if this leadership is inside the IT Area but building the project extremely close to the key users.
5. ERP – is your ERP an SAP platform? Why is it important? Native communication between platforms is not a must, but it is recommended because it is easier to connect things and flow with the information, so if your company already has a SAP ERP, connecting CX SAP Platforms is supposed to be a good and simpler choice.
These are the main points to get started. The closer your company reaches this ideal situation, which I pointed out above, the better the evolution and success of the project will be in the end.
