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My clients mainly use SAP Marketing Cloud for campaign management, sales force effectiveness, and marketing analytics that is supposed to be captured and insights need to come out of that data side of marketing activities.

SAP Marketing Cloud integrates effectively with the SAP data, ensuring all the master data gets aligned effectively with marketing. The campaign management allows for budgeting and planning exercise for marketing activities. The solution enables dividing the marketing roles to different organizational blocks so that they provide inputs to the marketing process. It also helps with marketing spend, determining how much to spend on a particular activity, and subsequently doing a planning exercise around the marketing expenditure.

It is useful for data management because when I have data, all the customer master data can be segmented into multiple types of customers. These customer profiles can be maintained and are helpful for marketing campaigns where I assign a particular campaign to certain marketing segments and customer segments that I target. Whether it's large size mega customers, medium ones, small ones, or customer segments which are B2B or B2C, all these elements can be developed as part of the profiling exercise.

Predictive Analytics in SAP Marketing Cloud is effective, but it requires two essential elements. The data should be correct and sufficient enough to run Predictive Analytics, and the right algorithms need to be included in the marketing decision-making process. In Predictive Analytics, certain algorithms can be used, but it has limited use because it does not cater to the complete business needs of the client.

The solution is easy to customize, but it requires having the right data model attached to the dashboard. If the data model is correct, the data on the dashboard can be manipulated very easily. However, if the data model is incorrect and does not bring in the right elements of KPIs and dashboards, upgrading the data model becomes a challenging exercise. SAP's user interface from a user story point of view rates six to seven out of ten. The user experience could be improved, but in terms of flexibility, it functions adequately when data is available. Without available data, none of the dashboards can function.

There are three main areas for improvement in SAP Marketing Cloud. The user experience side needs enhancement to improve the interface so that more marketing analytics can be used. Pre-configured content would be helpful for people to avoid starting from scratch, providing built-in options to work with. The integration and accommodation of third-party non-SAP applications needs improvement to better facilitate metadata and data exchange.

I have been working with SAP Marketing Cloud for about one and a half years.

Integration with third-party solutions is challenging with SAP Marketing Cloud.

For stability, SAP Marketing Cloud rates seven out of ten.

The scalability of SAP Marketing Cloud rates seven out of ten.

SAP has good support, and it rates eight out of ten.

Positive

I have moved from SAP to Accenture.

Options are available and people can experiment, but it is still in a nascent stage. It requires more features that are present in the competitive space.

The implementation is simple, not difficult, but it requires specialized SAP professionals to complete the work.

SAP Marketing Cloud helps in planning finances for marketing activities. It has maximum usage because cost centers and profit centers are associated. While it helps financially, marketing analytics requires third-party solutions that can integrate with Marketing Analytics for greater usage. Running these applications independently is challenging.

The pricing for SAP products rates four out of ten.

Comparing SAP Marketing Cloud with Oracle shows Oracle as a strong competitor. There are many niche small players in the market that perform better and are less expensive. For enterprise editions, Oracle and Salesforce are the primary alternatives.

I am currently working on SAP and data management, including SAP Analytics Cloud portfolio. I work with Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Supply Chain, and other SAP line of business solutions which are on the cloud, helping businesses align themselves to these products.

SAP Marketing Cloud is appropriate, though third-party solutions require substantial effort. Many AI/ML functions are possible, especially with good quality data. Features can include security improvements, better user history protection, and enhanced elements for user stories. The cloud-based deployment ensures seamless changes and upgrades without requiring additional effort from businesses.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

We use the solution for customer segmentation and campaign management. It allows us to capture customer information in a single system.

Segmentation and campaigning are very important features.

Email response could be improved. 

SAP Marketing Cloud may be difficult to sell to a sports club. Sports fans can be numerous, often in the millions or even billions. If you want to reach them, this product might not be the right choice.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The volume of records is a challenge. Scalability allows for an increase in the number of users without affecting system performance. However, when dealing with a high volume of customer records, such as hundreds of millions, even a single user may find it challenging to perform segmentation tasks efficiently. The issue arises from the distinction between user services and customer data.

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

Deployment is not complex and takes six to eight weeks. You need to understand what exactly it entails. The customer is the client, the business that will use and benefit from the software. We need to understand their business processes, particularly how they want to build the customer profile. Once we understand that, we may need to integrate with various source systems where interactions occur. For example, a customer may purchase many products through Amazon, and the client may want to integrate data from these Amazon transactions to understand the customer's buying patterns. This is a typical e-commerce scenario, not limited to Amazon. So, you connect to a third-party system to extract data and capture it in the Marketing Cloud. You create a customer profile to analyze behavior, such as if a person buys expensive items when they get their salary or during promotional periods. Based on this profiling, you can push targeted marketing campaigns to customers, such as promotions during a long weekend or Easter holiday. Understanding the customer profile is crucial for effective marketing.

Integrating any in-house product with Marketing can be a challenge. However, integrating standard products is much easier. If you have purchased a Marketing Cloud, integrating it with your e-commerce platform is simple. Similarly, integrating with Twitter or other social media platforms is also straightforward. Additionally, exporting your data to Azure is a simple process once your data is ready.

SAP is expensive and depends on the number of users.

It is a collection of information that consolidates all kinds of customer data in one single place.

Segmentation features are essential for identifying the right group of people to whom we can promote our products. For example, if I promote a laptop to people 50 or 60 years old, they may not be interested.

Technically, we handle two incidents. The first incident involves performing the necessary tasks overnight, ensuring thorough testing and validation. Once you are satisfied with the results, you can promote the changes to the production environment.

AI in SAP Marketing Cloud is good but not at the same level as Google's AI capabilities. While certain built-in algorithms are available, they cannot be used on a massive scale."

I recommend the solution to use.

Overall, I rate the solution as seven to eight out of ten.