Unlocking value in a brand’s customer data is the overarching objective of the recently launched SAP Data Network. Revealing the potential of data, and using it to create drivers for innovative business models and growth, is the network’s constant mission that, ultimately, drives brand loyalty.
Helen Arnold, president, SAP Data Network, sat down with Loyalty360 at the recent SAPPHIRENOW | ASUG Annual Conference in Orlando to talk about the SAP Data Network.
“It’s so relevant for all our customers,” Arnold told Loyalty360. “We decided a year ago to invest heavily in the data business. We wanted to figure out what SAP can bring to the table that’s unique.”
Drawing on the power of SAP HANA and its team of highly skilled data scientists, SAP Data Network harnesses the transformative power of connected data. The SAP Data Network helps organizations turn their transactional business data into actionable insights, enabling them to create new value in the form of unprecedented revenue opportunities, efficiency improvements, and better customer experience.
The new data-driven insight services from SAP Data Network enable executives to benchmark, plan, predict, and simulate business scenarios using anonymized and aggregated data. SAP Data Network uses machine learning and natural language processing to normalize and enrich business data while adhering to the world-class standards SAP supports for data privacy, security, and retention.
“We want to enable customers to tap into the full potential of data, using our end-to-end cloud service,” Arnold said. “It’s more of a business outcome-driven engagement.”
Companies are asking themselves how they can leverage available data to generate added value in the form of new business models, efficiency improvements, and innovations. The SAP Data Network, fundamentally, supports customers as they implement their respective data strategies and develop new data-driven business models with comprehensive solutions and implementation strategies.
Should brands be changing the paradigm for how they view and consider data?
“You need to have a focus,” Arnold said. “Very often, we have technology conversations, but you need much more coming from a business outcome point of view. It’s very similar to a greenfield approach. It’s not about Big Data. That’s a buzzword. It’s about data in that moment that you need it for a particular business issue.”
Arnold said the SAP Data Network places value on real-time transactional data and trusted supplemental third-party data. She said business value is rapidly realized through a standardized process that begins with three days of ideation. A prototype is then developed in four weeks, and a company can begin to reap the benefits in nearly three months. The products deliver predictive modeling and simulation capabilities coupled with recommendation engines seamlessly embedded into the business processes so that customers can easily benchmark their operational excellence and execute from insights to action in real time.
Arnold cited the SAP Data Network’s work with Schindler, one of the world’s leading urban mobility providers, to deliver an insights service that connects all parties involved in Schindler’s elevator installation process. The service shares contextual information from non-SAP data sources and SAP software in real time, making the elevator installation process easier and more predictable. Real-time transparency implies full traceability of all relevant elevator data and an end-to-end digital lifecycle of the installation process.
“You should not worry about the technology, you should not worry about data science, you should entirely focus on the business outcomes you want to see happen,” Arnold added. “What can we do with data to serve our community better? If you like wine, for instance, what data did you need to have a great experience in that area. We want to create this community of interests.”
Driving a particular business scenario is the key, Arnold said.
“It boils down to what can data do to achieve a particular objective,” she said. “How can I serve my customer better?”
Arnold said many brands are looking to bridge the online experience from a digital context, and figuring out what that means when their customers go to a brick-and-mortar store to make a purchase.
“No one invested before in the data quality,” she said. “We are thinking about what data does in terms of transformative power, getting much better quality. What can we provide to our customers to solve our problems?”
With Schindler, Arnold said, the SAP Data Network aggregated data to create benchmarks based on real-time transactional data.
Arnold believes the SAP Data Network could serve many industries. The challenges that exists across all industries are deeper today than ever before, and the promise that SAP has put forth can hopefully address the ever present and growing challenge around “talking to data issues” versus creating the simplicity and context to help the brands drive measurable results.
“It’s really based on unfiltered contact data,” she said. “As we get more and more customers and learnings, we will be able to help change business processes for industries such as financial institutions, insurance companies, retailers, along with sports and entertainment.”