SAP Services and Support teams have long played a critical role in the deployment of SAP solutions in businesses all over the world.
With the SAP Support Portal destination and SAP ONE Support Launchpad, customers are succeeding with a Web experience unlike anything they have seen before.
Between smooth go-lives and maximized success factors, all SAP tools, best practices, and methodologies — as well as the experts and partners who know how to leverage them — are helping every customer succeed.
Examples of our effective support services include built-in support, SAP Solution Manager, access through mobile devices, and Web properties such as the award-winning SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad.
Nicole Dery, manager of the SAP Support Portal, and Arno Helmling, product manager of SAP ONE Support Launchpad, recently shared their plans for moving the two closer together.
Here we explore the benefits of streamlining and harmonizing customer success and the Web experience across well-established Web properties:
Which roles do SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad fulfill for customers?
Helmling: Supporting upwards of 90,000 unique users each day from more than 150 countries, SAP ONE Support Launchpad is the third-most visited SAP Web site. Currently, 70 service and support applications are offered for more than 1 million support users, and our catalog of offerings will continue to grow.
Dery: On the other hand, SAP Support Portal provides more than 500,000 visitors each month access to our portfolio of tools, services, programs, and applications, as well as our latest news and initiatives.
What should our heterogeneous, global community of support users expect from SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad?
Dery: Our vision is to move SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad closer together, to make the connection between customer success and the Web experience. This focus is delighting our users as they benefit from an innovative, seamlessly integrated Web experience that is both effortless and personalized.
For example, design thinking workshops have shown that our customers experience the benefits of service and support applications within a broader context, such as upgrading a system or setting up an internal support project. The applications become contributors to the successful completion of such tasks, instead of running as isolated, standalone tools. More importantly, they provide fast access to the right information at the right time, which is a critical enabler of business success.
Helmling: The key is to foster ongoing customer engagement and collaboration with one consistent voice, retaining the high value of today’s Web properties and simultaneously enabling fundamental capabilities such as:
- Delivering customer success
- Unifying user experiences
- Connecting relevant support assets in the context of tasks
- Providing proactive and predictive recommendations and insight
Can you offer examples of real-life experiences that can be expected with SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad?
Helmling: Let’s start with the sharing of the same profile between SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad. Knowing our users’ background – including their authorizations, favorite systems, behaviors, and even their company’s products – helps us better guide them through the SAP service and support environment.
We take into account everything from SAP Notes they read and software they download to the search terms they use. This information is collected not only in one Web property, but also across both as a connected landscape.
Dery: Exposing applications and information based on a user’s expertise is another excellent example. Information about expertise exchanged between the two Web properties can be consumed on SAP Support Portal as well as in SAP ONE Support Launchpad, which is delighting occasional users as much as power users with the best possible experience.
A harmonized onboarding process helps minimize ramp-up time because the two offerings are always exposed to role-based content. Our users are never asked the same question twice, regardless of which Web property they were onboarded on and are currently using. All activities, such as adding favorites and providing feedback, are planned and synchronized so that they can behave in the same manner.
Helmling: Navigation is one of the keys to a seamlessly integrated user experience. Harmonizing the navigation, for example, by moving the one for SAP ONE Support Launchpad closer to a Web site through the Web site capabilities of SAP Fiori apps is another example of capabilities that could be tackled.
Finally, all relevant service and support information, tasks, and user context should be exposed in an integrated, harmonized manner.
What are the roles of the customer success and the Web experience in the context of new Web properties such as the SAP for Me portal?
Dery: SAP for Me gives customers personalized access and a transparent view of their entire product portfolio. The portal will serve as the central gateway to all digital post-sales touchpoints for SAP, including onboarding, operation, adoption, renewal, and expansion.
Helmling: At the end of the day, service and support is a key touchpoint. With customer success Web experience, our customers have online access to the domain expertise of SAP support, regardless of the type of service- and support-related tasks and information required. In the long run, SAP for Me will become the central point of access, but this advantage is readily available at our users’ fingertips and accessible with ease through SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad – the winning combination for Web-based interactions with SAP Service and Support.
