The Importance of Creating Strong Customer Communities

Last month we hosted the latest SAP Enterprise Cloud Services Customer Council in Singapore to connect with customers from across Asia Pacific and Japan. The Customer Council program was launched in 2017 as an interactive forum for our customers to provide feedback on the SAP Enterprise Cloud Services offering and discuss the role the cloud plays to accelerate their digital business transformation. Since then, the Customer Councils have become a critical channel for obtaining deep customer insights on how we can better support our customers to run a modern, intelligent ERP system in the cloud and accelerate their transformation into an intelligent and sustainable enterprise. We now host events in five different regions worldwide. The Customer Councils created a strong community for our customers with more opportunities to connect, collaborate, and share experiences with peers.

Looking back at how our SAP Enterprise Cloud Services Customer Councils have evolved, here are five lessons learned on how to create an impactful customer community:

1. Tell it like it is. One of SAP’s values is to tell it like it is. This also applies to receiving feedback. In the meetings, we encourage our customers to tell us like it is, without any filters and sugarcoating. This honest exchange is the foundation for driving continuous improvement of our product portfolio, services, and operations. For example, many customers shared that they prefer “a local hand to shake” for engagement and support. As a result, we revamped our customer engagement model to have more empowerment in each region and accelerate response times.
2. Share the Customers’ Perspective: A key component of our council meetings is customer sharing. At every meeting, we provide a platform for customers to share their cloud adoption journey, experiences, and best practices. These customer case studies are among the most popular sessions. They provide valuable insights into our customers' perspective and priorities, leading to fruitful discussions about moving to and operating in a cloud ERP environment. For example, in one of our sessions we discussed how a customer setup a successful internal governance that drives continuous innovation in the cloud.
3. Drive innovation together: Our team’s mission is to accelerate and simplify our customers’ transformation into an intelligent and sustainable enterprise by running their SAP ERP Value stack with a world class level of availability, security, and resilience on their preferred cloud infrastructure. We continuously innovate our products and services for our customers, focusing on productivity, security, ease of use and access to new operational features. Our SAP Enterprise Cloud Services portfolio is continuously evolving to give our customers access to the latest technologies and innovation capabilities. The feedback that we get at the Customer Councils directly flows into the development of our portfolio and services roadmap.
4. Invite business network partners to the table. Driving innovation together includes our business network partners, such as hyperscalers and implementation partners. And, in some cases, our partners have also become our customers. We include business network partners in our Customer Council network for a holistic view of the cloud transformation journey.
5. Share the latest technology trends. At each meeting, we spend time on the latest technologies trends and hot topics. Recent sessions featured deep dives into cyber security and data privacy in the cloud and into how to embrace innovation on the Cloud ERP journey and drive continuous innovation with SAP Cloud Application Services .?Other discussions evolved around the role automation plays to become faster and more productive.

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Today the SAP Enterprise Cloud Services Customer Council is a strong community where customers not only engage with us, but with each other and expand their peer networks. At all meetings business cards are exchanged and new friendships are forged. Best of all, the vibrant discussions about driving innovation with the cloud continue in our customer community across channels and networks until we meet again.