MarTech Interview with Amanda Mountain, Global Vice President at SAP Digital Commerce

Amanda Mountain, Global Vice President at SAP Digital Commerce chats about a few marketing practices that take precedence over others in today’s B2B environment is this short catch-up:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Amanda. What excites you most about marketing and communications in today’s market?

I’m most excited about the daily changes of today’s dynamic market. No two days are alike, and we’re constantly presented with new opportunities to learn and grow. Part of the fun of this job is discovering new ways to connect with our audiences, and we’ve certainly been forced to do just that over the last couple of years! I think most communicators, myself included, look forward to the challenge of evolving our strategies with the ever-changing market, and this is the ultimate time to put those skills to the test.

Tell us more about your role at SAP and about the marketing technologies that help you drive your goals?I

I serve as the global vice president of SAP Digital Commerce, where I lead a team of diverse and distributed professionals from across the marketing mix. In the most basic terms, our job is to make it simple to do business, online, with SAP. My team and I focus on internal and external communications, digital marketing, and branding for the SAP Digital Commerce line of business, social media, and virtual and live events. In short, I’m responsible for the whole kit and kaboodle, the operations and support, portfolio – both SAP and partner solutions, the customer experience on the store, etc. Right now, we are laser focused on two main goals:

• We’re expanding the sales motions that we cover online. I really believe customers deserve a true omni-channel experience, so we’re working hard to digitalize more of our sales motions.
• The other focus is the Business Technology Platform. This will serve as the basis for all our future portfolio, and is a very virtuous circle with SAP Store, so we’re focused on optimizing and marketing this platform.

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What are some of the core trends in marketing and communications that you feel will be the central focus through 2022?

The top issue we’re focusing on is customer experience. We are certainly in the age of the customer and, with our digital commerce platform, it’s crucial for us to always be looking for ways to improve the user experience. Overall, our aim is to provide customers with real-time access to innovative solutions to become intelligent enterprises and digitally transform their businesses in the simplest, most seamless way.

With many marketing leaders focusing on improving customer experiences and communication tactics through this time, what are some best practices that you feel should be adhered to?

I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but delivering a first-class customer experience is really our no. 1 goal. For us, it’s a best practice to identify and implement new/emerging technologies to not only help us deliver on that experience, but to also aid in collaboration, engagement, and bringing people together.

To that end, I’m specifically excited about SAP Conversational AI and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (IRPA). These are things that we’re selling on SAP Store but also using to our own benefit. We’re currently in the “test and learn” mode. With IRPA, we’re using chat bots for customer support on our marketplace, which is allowing us to cover about 20% of support questions, ultimately freeing up our human resources to focus on more complex issues. With conversational AI, we’re really seeing a benefit to our marketing and demand-gen efforts. It’s a new way to engage with our customers and the early results are quite promising.

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As hybrid work continues to be part of the B2B workplace scenario, how in your view should marketing leaders rethink their internal processes and communication channels to boost better outcomes and productivity?

Our employees had some experience working remotely before the pandemic, but in-person connections were always an important touchpoint for my team. I always think of in-person meetings as putting a deposit into the bank of your relationships/network. Clearly, time and distance stretch those networks, and where they used to expand and contract, there’s now a real risk that they will languish.

That said, we’ve made it a priority to find new ways to help recreate that connection through virtual on-screen meetings, the use of chat functions like Slack and Teams, and regular employee surveys. Moving into a true hybrid work environment, we intend to continue with these best practices and processes. SAP has always had a culture of listening, and it’s important for us to continue that—no matter where our employees are seated—to allow for the best outcomes for our business, but more importantly, for our employees and their well-being.

We’d love to hear a few thoughts on your views on the global B2B marketing and martech industry?

Now, more than ever, it’s crucial for the technology we adopt to have a strong human element. The martech that will win in the future is that which enhances the human experience and deepens connections. Much like any other piece of a customer-experience-oriented business, the tech has to be able to help customers and brands be more authentic and engaged with each other in the most relevant ways.