SAP Acquire Qualtrix for $8bn
Courtesy of TechGenix, December 2018
- German-based tech giant SAP has been dominating the enterprise software market for years. SAP provides ready-to-use end-to-end solutions for businesses across industries. Enterprises use SAP to manage
- customer relations and business operations. The company was started in the late 1970s by five IBM engineers who focused on standardizing enterprise
resource planning (ERP). Today SAP makes the No. - ERP software, which is used by most of the Fortune 500 companies. The company operates in 180 countries with more th
an 335,000 customers. SAP touches 77 percent of the world’s transactions. This - November, the company announced that it will be acquiring Qualtrics, a cloud unicorn. So, what impact will the acquisition have on SAP’s business model? Let’s find out.
An introduction to Qualtrics
Qualtrics is a U.S.-based market-analytics company that provides survey software that can collect and analyze customer experience data. Qualtrics is all about experience management (XM), which is an inevitable part of quality control. Qualtrics is the first platform to measure employee experiences through predictive intelligence. The company has more than 9,000 users worldwide and was ranked No. 6 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list in 2017.
Since its founding in 2002, the company has been producing positive free cash flow. In Q2 2018, the company’s revenue was $97.1 million which grew at a rate of 8.5 percent and hit $105.4 million in Q3. Compared to 2017, the company’s operating cash flow has grown to $52.5 million, just in the first 9 months of 2018. According to Qualtrics’ recent announcement, the company expects its full-year revenue to exceed $400 million and a gro
What difference does the acquisition make?
SAP is hugely driven by operational data. The problem with the operational data is that it doesn’t answer certain questions about customer opinions. For example, you cannot understand why a customer feels a certain way about your brand using the operational data. So when you combine the customer experience data (X data) with operational data (O data), you can exactly understand the areas that need some fix. Such clarity in analytics can help you improve every area of your business. SAP was attracted to the ability of Qualtrics to add customer sentiment to the applications across its suite.
SAP and Qualtrics will together expand their customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. SAP CEO Bill McDermott feels that the combination of X data and O data will produce phenomenal results and has also expressed that this acquisition was the biggest idea of his lifetime.
Why experience management is a big deal
Qualtrics’ XM is all about managing the four core experiences of a business. These experiences include customer experience, product experience, brand experience, and employee experience.
1. Customer experience (CX)
Qualtrics CX gives you a wide range of options to interact with your customer, digs deep into the text responses, and converts them into meaningful insights. The platform not only gauges the customer experience scores but also help you understand why your customer feels a certain way about a certain service.
The data collection tools adapt to the feedback on a real-time basis. This will eventually enable you to get straight into the issues that matter. The insights will also help you predict what the customer will do next and act accordingly.
The software democratizes the insights across the organization. Tools like role-based dashboards put the right data in front of every stakeholder. Also, the employees can collaborate using action-planning tools that allow them to tag owners, set deadlines, get guidance etc.
2. Employee experience (EX)
Happy employees are a sign of a healthy organization. Every employee contributes to the company’s growth. Understanding employee experience is critical to bridge training gaps, reduce unwanted attritions, nurture talents, enhance team management and increase efficiency.
Qualtrics EX improves team engagement by providing managers with clear insights into the employee experiences of their reportees. Also, the platform would help you improve onboardings, training, assessments, and every experience across the employee lifecycle.
3. Brand experience (BX)
Creating a good seller persona is as important as creating the brand itself. This is why companies obsess over brand awareness and dump millions into advertisements and promotions. Qualtrics BX enables in-house employees to take full control over the branding strategy rather than depending on third-party marketers and consultants.
The platform comes with a simple interface and easy-to-use tools like drag-and-drop to enable almost any employee to build branding strategy like a pro. The software allows you to test your ads with the right customer segments and optimize them before they go live.
4. Product experience (PX)
Qualtrics PX helps you understand customer needs, measure user experience and prioritize features accordingly. This is important because the market trends are changing at a neck-breaking pace and it is difficult to survive in the market if you don’t keep up.
Qualtrics PX puts the customers at the heart of every decision and helps your product adapt to the market conditions. The platform also enables you to shorten the product development cycles and build a perfect pricing model. You can even compare with the offerings of your competitors and figure out ways to enrich your product with what they lack. Taking customer experience seriously at every point of the product life cycle will not just drive usage and revenue, but loyalty too.
SAP and Qualtrics: A good fit?
SAP and Qualtrics seem to share the same belief of equipping themselves by acquiring powerful companies. The companies also have mutual customers like Under Armour. Qualtrics has been reinforcing its strength by acquiring startups like Statwing, Delighted and Tango card. According to CEO McDermott, the duo aims to reshape the way how feedback driven businesses work. He also compared this deal with Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. If this analogy is true, Qualtrics will matter to SAP way more than what the deal price suggests.
Managing Your eCommerce Success
Retail Times, June 2017
eCommerce is your shop window on the world. The ultimate liberator for businesses trying to crack international markets. Potential customers across the globe can find you with just a few clicks of a mouse or strokes of a keyboard, and you can find them with the right Google AdWords strategy. Or is it a nightmare waiting to happen? Ultimately, web stores and ERP integration solutions deliver an improved experience for customers, increased online sales, better returns management, reduced human error, greatly enhanced logistics and fulfilment, and vastly improved financial performance but there are issues that retailers can experience along the way. Gavin Peacock, Group CEO discusses the pitfalls to watch out for.
ERP adds Flexibility Option for Customers
Sunday Business Post, May 2017
Customers expect more in today’s digital era, and the right ERP solution can help deliver it, writes Jason Walsh
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have moved into the cloud in recent years, but the real benefit is more than merely technological. “I think it’s very true that the move is toward the cloud. I think, though, that the move to the cloud is yesterday’s news,” said Gavin Peacock, group CEO of TRC Solutions. The customer takes for granted that solutions like ERP can today be either on-premise or cloud-based, he said, just as they became accustomed to the move from text-based systems to Windows. “We talked about Windows after the move from DOS, but after a few years, if you talked about Windows people would laugh. It was just expected,” he said.
Managing Your eCommerce Success
Retail Times, June 2017
eCommerce is your shop window on the world. The ultimate liberator for businesses trying to crack international markets. Potential customers across the globe can find you with just a few clicks of a mouse or strokes of a keyboard, and you can find them with the right Google AdWords strategy. Or is it a nightmare waiting to happen? Ultimately, web stores and ERP integration solutions deliver an improved experience for customers, increased online sales, better returns management, reduced human error, greatly enhanced logistics and fulfilment, and vastly improved financial performance but there are issues that retailers can experience along the way. Gavin Peacock, Group CEO discusses the pitfalls to watch out for.
ERP adds Flexibility Option for Customers
Sunday Business Post, May 2017
Customers expect more in today’s digital era, and the right ERP solution can help deliver it, writes Jason Walsh
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have moved into the cloud in recent years, but the real benefit is more than merely technological. “I think it’s very true that the move is toward the cloud. I think, though, that the move to the cloud is yesterday’s news,” said Gavin Peacock, group CEO of TRC Solutions. The customer takes for granted that solutions like ERP can today be either on-premise or cloud-based, he said, just as they became accustomed to the move from text-based systems to Windows. “We talked about Windows after the move from DOS, but after a few years, if you talked about Windows people would laugh. It was just expected,” he said.
Managing Your eCommerce Success
Retail Times, June 2017
eCommerce is your shop window on the world. The ultimate liberator for businesses trying to crack international markets. Potential customers across the globe can find you with just a few clicks of a mouse or strokes of a keyboard, and you can find them with the right Google AdWords strategy. Or is it a nightmare waiting to happen? Ultimately, web stores and ERP integration solutions deliver an improved experience for customers, increased online sales, better returns management, reduced human error, greatly enhanced logistics and fulfilment, and vastly improved financial performance but there are issues that retailers can experience along the way. Gavin Peacock, Group CEO discusses the pitfalls to watch out for.
ERP adds Flexibility Option for Customers
Sunday Business Post, May 2017
Customers expect more in today’s digital era, and the right ERP solution can help deliver it, writes Jason Walsh
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have moved into the cloud in recent years, but the real benefit is more than merely technological. “I think it’s very true that the move is toward the cloud. I think, though, that the move to the cloud is yesterday’s news,” said Gavin Peacock, group CEO of TRC Solutions. The customer takes for granted that solutions like ERP can today be either on-premise or cloud-based, he said, just as they became accustomed to the move from text-based systems to Windows. “We talked about Windows after the move from DOS, but after a few years, if you talked about Windows people would laugh. It was just expected,” he said.
Managing Your eCommerce Success
Retail Times, June 2017
eCommerce is your shop window on the world. The ultimate liberator for businesses trying to crack international markets. Potential customers across the globe can find you with just a few clicks of a mouse or strokes of a keyboard, and you can find them with the right Google AdWords strategy. Or is it a nightmare waiting to happen? Ultimately, web stores and ERP integration solutions deliver an improved experience for customers, increased online sales, better returns management, reduced human error, greatly enhanced logistics and fulfilment, and vastly improved financial performance but there are issues that retailers can experience along the way. Gavin Peacock, Group CEO discusses the pitfalls to watch out for.
ERP adds Flexibility Option for Customers
Sunday Business Post, May 2017
Customers expect more in today’s digital era, and the right ERP solution can help deliver it, writes Jason Walsh
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have moved into the cloud in recent years, but the real benefit is more than merely technological. “I think it’s very true that the move is toward the cloud. I think, though, that the move to the cloud is yesterday’s news,” said Gavin Peacock, group CEO of TRC Solutions. The customer takes for granted that solutions like ERP can today be either on-premise or cloud-based, he said, just as they became accustomed to the move from text-based systems to Windows. “We talked about Windows after the move from DOS, but after a few years, if you talked about Windows people would laugh. It was just expected,” he said.
A Horizon-to-Horizon View of the Enterprise
Sunday Business Post, April 2016
Few software vendors are as well known as SAP. What may be less well known is that SAP’s ERP solutions aren’t all aimed at massive enterprises. SAP Business One is one such example. “Business One is suitable for all sectors, bar heavy manufacturing. It’s particularly suitable for light manufacturing,” said Gavin Peacock, group chief executive of TRC Solutions. “The sweet spots for us are financial services companies, retail, and so on – anybody who is looking to put e-commerce into their business.”
Connecting Customers to all Retail Channels
Sunday Business Post, August 2015
The relationship between customers and retailers is changing. With customers connecting and purchasing through various different channels – web, mobile and in-store – businesses are increasingly finding that the technologies they use need to be linked and integrated to avoid the inefficiency created by using fragmented and outdated systems. That integrated or ‘omnichannel’ approach brings all the information the retailer needs into one place to drive sales and efficiency.
As much as it is about value, retailing is becoming about the experience and doing things that are going bring people into the bricks and mortar stores. “For instance, we’re working on RFID shelves – so you can pick up an item and put it on the shelf and all the information about the item will come up; all the reviews, price comparisons etc – retailing is going to become more of an experience, and the ICT will have to follow,” Peacock said.
Catching up with New Spending Habits
Sunday Business Post, July 2015
As shopping habits change, so too do customer expectations, but are our businesses doing enough to keep up with the demands of the customer? Gavin Peacock, chief executive of TRC Solutions, explains the importance of a solid online shopping structure for both businesses and consumers. “A retailer’s success or failure lies in the customer experience they deliver. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, online shopping and online browsing has exploded in recent years. The kind of consumer this has produced is one that not only wants but expects a consistent, personalised customer experience no matter what channel they use to interact with a brand – in store, on their website, via an app on a smartphone,” he said.
“Recent reports have shown that 87 percent of consumers see the ability to purchase from a retailer from different channels as important. To remain competitive, retailers need to introduce Omni-Channel strategies within their organisation. Omni-Channel takes Multi-Channel and puts a layer of customer service on top whereby customers’ experience is the same across all the interaction points, as are promotions and pricing. Consistency is the key.”
Dig out the value from your company’s data
Sunday Business Post, July 2015
The rapidly growing volumes of data generated by businesses have spurred IT firms into finding more efficient and effective ways to leverage that data and use it to help drive business strategy. Businesses need to be able to intelligently and easily mine data. “If they neglect the learnings that big data can deliver they run a serious risk of missing opportunities and with the continued globalisation of commerce, Irish businesses will find themselves losing out to international competitors,” he said.
For some small businesses, the advantages of using big data to drive decision-making are not clearly understood – but even the smallest businesses are generating data through adopting mobile and eCommerce strategies. “Many businesses do not realise the value in the data they produce.
How the Internet of Things is Reshaping Retail
Sunday Business Post, May 2015
Speaking about an everyday use of its SAP Business One IoT platform, Gavin Peacock, chief executive, TRC Solutions said, “Practically, it means we can tell whether or not in the dressing rooms of a retailer’s store, a lot of garments have been tried on, but still left in the dressing rooms ready to be put back on the shelf.
“We could even tell because of the footfall counters, that there are not many people in the store; it may be going through a lull. So, using our intelligent systems a task can be sent out via email, text, or dashboard to a store, prompting them to carry out a task such as removing excess garments from a fitting room and putting them back on display.”
Staying Ahead of the ERP Curve
Sunday Business Post, April 2015
To keep up with an ever-changing business environment, ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems need to be forward-thinking and responsive to customer needs. The Business One mobile application offers real-time dashboards and reports that staff can see on the move. A ‘sales catalogue’ function on Business One allows staff to use their phone or tablet to showcase products with pictures, videos, technical information and the ability to click and buy.
“It really empowers sales teams to deliver a truly interactive sales pitch when out visiting potential customers,” Peacock said. Given the low-cost pricing structures, quick start-up times and the fact that no permanent IT department is needed to run them, Peacock said the migration to the cloud was understandable. An added benefit is that it frees up existing staff to work on improving other IT-related problems across the business. The whole idea, Peacock said, is to capitalise on the internet of things’ – the concept whereby devices and objects share data over a network without requiring human interaction.
Analytics Shopping
Sunday Business Post, March 2015
With over 20 years of experience delivering point-of-sale and business management software to retail, TRC Solutions is well positioned to assess the part that analytics plays in a sector that was badly hit by the recession. “Analytics has become the differentiator,” said chief executive Gavin Peacock. “If there’s no intelligent analytics coming out of the data that is collected, there is no way that management can make informed decisions.”
He made the point that there are hundred of thousands of “data points” in retail, more than almost any other sector because of the nature of the business. These data points are stock keeping units, each one accounted for on the overall merchandising plan. Being able to identify fast moving items is the key to profitability. “A store is like a monopoly board where Mayfair and Park Lane are the most visited aisles and the Old Kent Road gets less footfall. You need to put the highest margin best sellers at the biggest traffic points,” said Peacock.
Keep it Together
Sunday Business Post, January 2015
Progressive SMEs are looking to invest in smarter and more comprehensive systems today. “Businesses today are far more strategic in their IT investments.
Today our clients range from about say 15 staff and €2 to €3 million turnover to several hundred users and may be €0.25 billion sales. What we are seeing is that they are looking both for the obvious smart efficiencies, like best possible mobile working and for that strategic path to their future expansion.” In this context Business One has some unique advantages, said Peacock. “It is the same software solution whether used on-premise, from a data centre, or in a cloud of some type. The enterprise can move seamlessly between them all when it needs to.
Real Retail Change at NRF, New York
Business and Finance, February 2015
Retail insiders are buzzing about the latest innovations in technology on display at the NRF’s BIG Show in New York last month, writes Gavin Peacock.
The retail technology landscape has evolved dramatically over recent years due to the emergence of new ways to shop; e-commerce, mobile commerce, ‘click and collect’. Brand loyalty is harder to achieve and if retailers don’t utilise the technology out there to help them engage with customers across the multiple channels they use to shop nowadays, they are at grave risk of being left behind.
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