Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology built on evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria and derived from RFP responses and a vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated SAP and 21 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product — Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability — and two related to the vendor — TCO/ROI and Vendor Validation. To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Customer Experience (CX).

SAP is one of the largest suppliers of ERP software and other enterprise-scale platforms for managing back-office processes. It was categorized as an Innovative Vendor, ranking 11th overall in this Value Index evaluation. SAP performed best in Capability, where it was a Value Index Leader and placed third in the rankings. SAP’s CX-related components are not formally knitted into a customer experience management (CXM or CEM) suite, but a buyer can plausibly implement the combination of CRM, ERP, data management and department-specific tools as a unified whole that covers the entire customer life cycle. SAP’s target market is large enterprises and many will find that layering CX approaches over an existing back-office infrastructure makes sense.

SAP performed well in Capability, exhibiting strengths in analytics and customer journey management features. Room for improvement can be found in Manageability, where SAP can do better at documenting license and usage issues and providing notifications to users. SAP’s Adaptability ranking would benefit from more clarity around its configuration and customization options.

This assessment was based on SAP’s CXM products available in November of 2022.

SAP, like all vendors in this space, should continue working towards a holistic, integrated CX platform that addresses the needs of users across the enterprise. Connecting workflows from marketing, sales and service teams should be a key priority.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of CXM software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.