A mobile-first, fast-to-market, minimum viable product-style, eCommerce experience. Even given the ingestion of Hybris DNA, it seemed an uncharacteristic offering from SAP, known for the deployment of elaborate enterprise systems (many still on prem). I decided I needed to take a closer look at SAP Upscale, which I described last week as “a pop-up commerce offering, complementary to the more sophisticated capabilities of the flagship Commerce Cloud:…mobile first, cross-channel, (allowing) nimble deployment of online stores.”
To learn more, I sat down at SAP CX Live with Chris Hauca, head of strategy and go-to-market for SAP Enterprise Commerce.
“It’s not what you would expect from SAP,” he agreed, “but neither was how Hybris was integrated into SAP. There’s a realization at SAP that this front-office world is different, and that what worked for the traditional ERP segment won’t work here. I think a spirit here to be creative, be disruptive, is alive and well, and sure, it came with some of the cloud acquisitions; it certainly came with Hybris. Frankly, it’s what brought me here.” As managing director, North American eCommerce for Accenture, Hauca had been an external Hybris partner for several years; he knew Hybris, in effect, before he knew SAP.
Although Upscale is currently being presented as an easy on-ramp for the mid-market to SAP Commerce, I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t have at least as much appeal to business units within the enterprise. “Of course,” said Hauca. “There are lots of organizations which are price conscious, and ‘midmarket’ is an easy way to describe that, but the reality is there are many good candidates for this. Large CPG companies exploring new ways of connecting with consumers, or test products in-market quickly. Many of our big CPG customers which run on the Commerce platform have these needs, and this allows us to have a solution that can stand on its own, and be used to test new market ideas quickly.”
The question for Hauca: :”How do we get our customers hooked on this idea that they can be much more creative than just have a website?” Upscale avoids the need for the investment of time and money in enterprise-scale mobile or website properties, trying to solve every problem in advance. “They can fail fast if they need to.”
The requirements for a complete, end-to-end, enterprise commerce solution, driving huge revenues, just aren’t consistent with creative experimentation, let alone failure and reiteration. “Is it what you need when you just want to test some new ideas, or have a very narrow focus?” Nevertheless, Hauca insists Upscale isn’t an alternative to the Commerce Cloud. “We see the two as being able to blend over time; customers can have their cake and eat it too.”
Large enterprises using the big commerce solution will be able to connect their product data into Upscale, and have orders flow back through to the enterprise commerce pipeline. “We see it as a complementary tool.” Hauca offered a use case. A company needs to go to market with a new toothbrush, and an associated app which alerts customers to the need to replenish the head. The executive responsible doesn’t want to go through what would be required to roll this our through the enterprise Commerce Cloud, checking off all the questions about regulation and compliance. “He told me ‘I know I’m not going to get it right the first time.'” Upscale offers a much lower barrier to entry to the market.
I had a few remaining questions of detail. For example, is Upscale for SAP Commerce Cloud customers only? “No. This is maybe unexpected from SAP, but you do not need to be a Commerce Cloud customer, or an existing SAP customer for that matter. We want it to be able to stand on its own, but also work with the broader product.”
Also, it’s billed as mobile-first. Is that non-negotiable? “The mobile-first objective came about because that gives us the canvas on which to create the richest experiences around payment and one-touch buy. It’s super-simple for a consumer to find something, react to it, and buy it. If you want to have a traditional web browser-scale page instead, it does require a bit more work laying out the page, and maybe creating a check-out process, using the micro-services we provide; but that’s something an agency-level organization would be able to do.”
How does AI play into Upscale? “The core services in the SAP CX platform are AI-driven, so regardless of whether you’re on mobile, or a web browser, or any other channels, you can have AI-driven experiences.”
Finally, SAP CX will be extracting their own insights from Upscale’s performance. “It will help keep us on our toes. We’ll be able to see clearly what’s going to resonate and what we can bring into the enterprise platform. We serve so many different markets, it’s sometimes a challenge to put something in, and know how it’s going to react across all these industries. Here we have a canvas to be able to play with new ideas for an industry, and test adaptations to other industries. It allows us to move from an idea to a test, to a proof of concept, to reality, much quicker.”
SAP CX covered DMN’s expenses to attend SAP CX Live 2018.
