SAP Makes Moves Into the Cloud Contact Center Space With an Eye to Enhance Omnichannel Service Delivery

SAP’s Digital Interconnect Group announced in mid-October the launch of SAP Contact Center 365. The SaaS solution is positioned in context of meeting increasing customer demands for omnichannel engagement over phone, email, chat, and SMS. Info-Tech’s research has shown that today’s customer expects to be able to request – and receive – service through these channels. The days of traditional “phone-only” contact centers are nearing an end.

While SAP has offered contact center applications on premises in the past, the new solution is a good modernization play that matures the vendor’s credibility with SaaS offerings.

The move takes SAP into more direct competition with existing giants in the contact center space, such as Cisco and Avaya. While the product launch is savvy on SAP’s part, we do expect these competitive headwinds may limit widespread adoption. The value of the new Contact Center 365 offering will be most salient for organizations that are already deeply embedded in the SAP ecosystem – particularly those that are using SAP Service Cloud or other products under the CRM umbrella.

Source: SAP CRM at SoftwareReviews, Accessed Nov. 5, 2019

Our Take

• SAP announced the launch of a SaaS platform for contact center management and omnichannel engagement.
• The move modernizes SAP’s approach to the contact center, but competitive headwinds are likely to limit the platform’s appeal to those that already have existing customer experience investments in the SAP stack.

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