Why SAP Data is the Key to Customer Experience and AI
Meet the Authors
Key Takeaways
Organizations need to harmonize their data across various systems to transform customer experiences, as many companies are data-rich but information-poor due to siloed data.
A comprehensive Customer 360 experience should integrate not just front-office data but also ERP, supply chain, and finance data to provide a complete view of the customer.
A successful AI strategy depends on a clean and harmonized data foundation, which is crucial for leveraging generative AI in customer interactions and improving service efficiency.
As organizations rethink how they connect with customers, SAPinsider’s Customer Experience (CX) Expert Exchange explores how technology, data, and AI are redefining engagement across industries. In the first part of our series, we established that the lines between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) are collapsing. However, the question remains: how can organizations deliver that changed customer experience?
The answer—and the biggest barrier for most established companies —lies in data. In the second episode of SAPinsider’s Customer Experience Expert Exchange, Sourajit Ghosh (SG), Chief Expert for SAP Customer Experience, discussed the data dilemma with Robert Holland, Vice President and Research Director, at SAPinsider.
According to Ghosh, most organizations, especially long-running SAP customers, are data-rich but information-poor. He explained that the problem lies in the silos that lock data, applications, and processes.
Explore related questions
This creates what Ghosh called a “heterogeneous so-called ‘kitchen of many knives’”. Simply put, it is a landscape of disconnected tools where customer data is trapped. For example, an organization using this method could have transactional data in ERP, service history in one system, marketing engagement in another, and sales activities in a third. The result? No one has the whole picture, and the customer feels the friction.
Redefining Customer-360 in an SAP World
Ghosh argued that this concept has become obsolete for the modern enterprise. “A true Customer 360 is all about your front office,” Ghosh explained. “However, it is also about your ERP data, your supply chain data, your finance data, and your HR data.”
For example, customer service agents can’t solve a problem if they can’t see the order status in SAP S/4HANA, and salespeople can’t make a relevant offer if they don’t know the customer’s payment history or service entitlements.
According to Ghosh, the solution lies in a “horizontal data platform or business data cloud that sits across all applications”. This layer harmonizes the data.
He illustrated this point with an example of a global leader in the chemicals industry, which used SAP Customer Data Platform in SAP Customer Data Cloud to harmonize data. “The company didn’t just want a golden record,” he said. “They used the SAP Customer Data Platform to harmonize the data, create segments and activities, and run B2B marketing campaigns that they could finally measure.”
Data is the Fuel for AI
This harmonized data strategy has a key second payoff; it’s the only way to make AI work. “AI is only as good as the data it’s fed,” Ghosh stated. “You can’t have intelligent automation if your AI is drawing from a polluted data lake.”
This is where SAP’s built-in, not bolt-on, AI strategy comes into play. By building AI on top of this harmonized business data platform, the tools become instantly powerful and context aware. Ghosh painted a practical picture: “Imagine I’m a service agent. I get a service ticket. I get an AI-generated summary of who this customer is, what kinds of orders they have placed, the last five service tickets they have created, and their sentiment. That agent can now solve the problem on the first call.”
From the customer’s perspective, Ghosh noted that AI for CX revolutionizes customer connections by embedding agentic AI experiences across their journey. “Customers find products through agentic AI shopping helpers, get instant help from autonomous self-service agents that handle issues end-to-end, and enjoy personalized interactions powered by your business data,” he said. “You as business users of CX applications can solve problems faster with AI agents that act independently, deliver smarter recommendations, and create seamless experiences across all marketing, sales, service, and commerce touchpoints.”
In the third part of our series, we’ll give the end user’s perspective on how this data-driven foundation is powering the next wave of intelligent, generative AI-driven customer experiences.
What This Means for SAPinsiders
Stop chasing a golden record and start harmonizing your data. The biggest challenge for SAP users is being data-rich but information-poor. Thus, disconnected ERP, CRM, and supply chain systems are the real enemy of good CX. For SAPinsiders, the goal should be to build a horizontal data platform that harmonizes data from all sources, giving the organization real-time, actionable segments.
A valid customer 360 must include SAP ERP data. For an SAP customer, a customer experience that only shows marketing and sales data is incomplete. The true customer 360-degree experience that unlocks value is the one that combines front-office data with ERP, supply chain, and finance data. SAP CX solutions are designed to bridge this critical gap, providing that 360-degree context that an organization’s teams and its customers need.
Your AI strategy will fail without a clean data foundation. Generative AI is the future, but it is only as useful as the data fed into it. Therefore, to get to AI built in, not bolted on, organizations first need a data cloud that cleans, harmonizes, and respects consent and preferences. This data foundation is the essential fuel for AI, enabling practical use cases such as an AI-generated summary of a customer’s entire order and service history for an agent.
