“Engagement Is an Enterprise-Wide Strategy”: Q&A with SAP CX President Balaji Balasubramanian

Customer experience strategies are evolving, and so is SAP CX. SAP is pushing a broader view of CX that is tied not just to engagement, but to profitable growth, connected data, and execution across the enterprise.

In this conversation with SAPinsider, Balaji Balasubramanian, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Customer Experience and Consumer Industries, discusses changing customer expectations, the ongoing challenge of disconnected systems, and how AI is shifting from assisted experiences to more autonomous, agentic workflows. He also explains how SAP is positioning CX as an enterprise-wide strategy that connects front-office functions with the operational backbone.

Q: You’re coming up on a year as President of SAP CX. What have you learned about how companies are thinking about customer experience now compared to when you stepped into the role?

BB: The biggest shift I’ve seen is that customer experience is no longer viewed as just a front-office conversation. It’s not only about marketing, sales, or service teams anymore. Companies increasingly see CX as an enterprise-wide growth strategy.

That’s important because the conversation is moving beyond engagement just for engagement’s sake. Customers have invested in CRM and engagement tools for years, but many still struggle to turn those investments into business outcomes. The focus now is on profitable growth at scale that retains and grows existing customers, wins new ones, and builds loyalty.

At the same time, disconnected systems remain a major challenge. Many organizations still can’t connect customer-facing systems and data with their operational backbone. That gap gets in the way of the seamless, personalized experiences they want to deliver.

Q: SAP has been talking about a shift from insight to action in CX. What does that mean in practical terms for organizations trying to use customer data more effectively?

BB: It means execution. Many companies already have data and systems in place, but the real issue is whether those systems work together in a way that lets them act.

For us, profitable growth comes from using connected data to drive outcomes. That means understanding what’s happening with customers, but also being able to recommend and execute the next best action. If your systems are siloed, you may still generate insights, but it becomes much harder to operationalize them across the customer journey.

The goal is to connect front-office functions with the operational backbone so decisions can be made in context. That’s where SAP CX becomes an execution layer for growth.

Q: How is AI changing the way companies approach customer experience, and where are you seeing it make the biggest practical impact today?

BB: AI is evolving very quickly. If you go back 12 to 18 months, most enterprise AI use cases were what I’d call assisted experiences. Generative AI helped people with tasks like drafting emails, summarizing information, or pulling up relevant context. Those are useful productivity gains.

Now the shift is toward agentic experiences. Instead of only assisting an individual user, AI is starting to orchestrate workflows across systems, domains, and data sources. That matters because assisted AI alone doesn’t solve fragmented systems or disconnected business processes.

Take sales as an example. Sellers spend a huge amount of time manually entering data—meeting notes, contacts, pipeline updates, closing dates. Agentic AI can reduce that burden by gathering information automatically, surfacing insights, and helping drive action. The shift is from productivity assistance to more autonomous execution, while still keeping humans in the loop where approval or judgment is needed.

Q: What does that look like from the customer side? How does the end customer experience AI in a way that feels meaningful rather than just technical?

BB: The key design principle is customers shouldn’t have to think about AI as a separate thing. It should be embedded in the flow of what they’re trying to do.

For the employee using the system, that may mean the system automatically surfaces pipeline risk, identifies fulfillment issues, or recommends the next best action. For the end customer, it could mean a much more intuitive buying or service experience.

A good example is shopping. Traditionally, when you went to a website, you had to know what you were looking for and search for it yourself. With AI, the customer can state an intent, and the system can guide them all the way through to a more complete solution. If someone wants to build a home theater system, for instance, the system can recommend the components that fit together rather than force the customer to piece everything together manually.

The same applies in service. AI can make service more proactive by identifying that a product needs maintenance, arranging the right parts, and scheduling service before the customer has to chase it down. That creates a more contextual and personalized experience.

Q: A lot of companies still struggle with CX tools that sit in silos. How is SAP approaching the challenge of connecting sales, service, commerce, and marketing into a more unified customer journey?

BB: Our view is you won’t get the best outcomes if you treat customer experience as a collection of disconnected tools. The real value comes from connecting customer-facing functions with the operational backbone—ERP, supply chain, fulfillment, finance systems—because that’s where context and execution come together.

If you’re making a personalized offer to a customer, for example, that offer can’t be disconnected from margin considerations, inventory realities, or fulfillment constraints. It should be informed by finance, supply chain, and the customer relationship. When those layers connect, the experience becomes more relevant.

That’s why we think of CX as an enterprise-wide strategy supported by enterprise-wide data. The more breadth and depth of data you can provide, the more context AI has, and the more meaningful the resulting experiences become.

Q: SAP recently launched Engagement Cloud. What gap in the market were you trying to address with that announcement?

BB: The idea behind Engagement Cloud is to connect customer signals and operationalize them across the entire journey, from pre-purchase through post-purchase experiences.

Marketing tools have existed for a long time, but we see engagement as something broader than a traditional marketing function. Engagement is an enterprise-wide strategy. Yes, it applies to customers, but the same core ideas can also apply to employees, suppliers, and business partners.

Our first focus is customers—building top-tier marketing and engagement capabilities that are real time, personalized, and connected across the journey. But the larger idea is to create a framework for engagement that can be applied across the business. And the foundation for all of that is data. AI is only as good as the context you provide, and context comes from the breadth and depth of the data available to the system.

Q: Retail has featured prominently in recent CX announcements and demos. What are you seeing there that is shaping investment in CX technology?

BB: Retail is a strong example because the customer experience is very visible, but the same principles apply across many industries. At SAP, we serve customers across more than 26 industries. We bring together horizontal capabilities like data, AI, and autonomy, then apply them in an industry context.

Retail makes the value of connected systems easy to see. If a customer is shopping online and a brand wants to present the right product, the right offer, or the right fulfillment promise, that depends on much more than a front-end interaction. It depends on inventory, supply chain, pricing logic, and finance. When those systems are connected, the journey becomes more profitable. We see similar patterns in consumer products, utilities, and other industries.

Q: For SAP customers thinking about modernizing their CX stack, what is the first step you recommend they take?

BB: Start with the journey, not the technology. Most enterprise customers already have a mix of tools in place. The challenge usually isn’t that they have nothing; it’s that the tools don’t work together.

The first step is to understand what journeys matter most and what capabilities are needed to support them end to end. From there, the priority is the data foundation. That foundation has to be harmonized across the landscape, current rather than stale, and able to bring together both system data and external data so organizations can make contextual decisions. If you get the data foundation right, AI has the context it needs, and orchestration across systems becomes much more achievable.

Q: Looking ahead, where do you see customer experience evolving over the next couple of years, and how is SAP CX positioning itself for that shift?

BB: We’re moving quickly toward autonomous orchestration and execution at scale. Over the last year or so, many organizations began experimenting with AI. They’ve been testing use cases, trying pilots, and exploring where it can add value. The next phase is scaled execution. Companies want outcomes, ROI, and the ability to deploy these capabilities broadly rather than in isolated pockets.

That means moving from insights to actions, from experimentation to execution, and from narrow pilots to enterprise scale. Our focus at SAP is on building the data foundation and the connected enterprise context that make that possible. When CX is framed around enterprise-wide profitable growth, the payoff comes from better execution, not just more engagement.