Traditional CRM systems are too outdated to engage with modern customers, according to SAP and e-commerce hybris.
SAP today announced a flurry of new sales software, including hybris’s eponymous e-commerce platform powered by in-memory database HANA, a year after the German tech giant bought the smaller firm.
Hybris’s product strategy director, Stefan Schmidt, told CBR the platform enables firms to engage with customers on a variety of "touch points" including social media and different devices, declaring traditional CRM software obsolete.
He said: "The CRM system as we know it is probably not the right thing anymore. It’s very slow moving for what you need to do with it.
"Fundamentally what’s changed is traditional IT systems are systems of record, giving organisations [customer] data they can store. The customer couldn’t dictate how they would engage with them."
He claimed that organisations’ presence on Twitter, Facebook, the web and other mediums has given customers the initiative in choosing how to contact them.
He added: "The offering allows you to first of all really engage with the different customers on different touch points. Each touch point should be an enabler, it should be compelling for the customer and functional too, because customers won’t look at your product on their mobile then call you to order it.
"That doesn’t mean systems of record don’t have a place in organisations anymore, just that they need something on top."
SAP’s global VP of product marketing, customer engagement and commerce, Jamie Anderson, said the acquisition of hybris was the "centrepiece" to SAP’s new CRM strategy.
"What we’re seeing with the explosion of devices and adoption of social media is that the customer journey is a very fragmented, non-linear process and customers want a similar experience across multiple channels," he said.
"Traditional businesses see a need to change and adapt to that and certainly for us hybris is the centerpiece to our strategy."
He explained that SAP’s new SAP Cloud for Sales, SAP Cloud for Service, SAP Cloud for Marketing and SAP Cloud for Social Engagement tools, in addition to the hybris platform, are powered by the fast data-processing power of HANA to provide real-time offers to organisations’ customers.
Microsoft last week announced its Dynamics CRM 2015 offering would link marketing and sales by giving them a single cloud to work from, and Anderson said SAP would use APIs to increase interoperability between hybris’s platform and SAP’s new range of tools in the next couple of years.
