Introducing Contextual Marketing
Contextual Marketing is the next evolution of “personalized” marketing. It blends together three types of customer information:
- Past interactions (Purchases, campaigns, orders, etc)
- Propensity scores (Cross/upsell, retention)
- The customer’s “in-the-moment” intentions
Hybris Marketing Solution
Hybris Marketing Solution comes in play with the data part: integrating data loads from other systems different than SAP CRM (otherwise problem would have been solved). But most of clients don’t use an all SAP solution with SAP CRM included. The product being released every quarter, improved by 200 developers based on customer feedbacks.
Hybris Marketing Solution comes in play with the data part: integrating data loads from other systems different than SAP CRM (otherwise problem would have been solved). But most of clients don’t use an all SAP solution with SAP CRM included. The product being released every quarter, improved by 200 developers based on customer feedbacks.
The number one question one should wonder is - how to collect the most effective data? no one wants to collect data from 40 # sources. It is recommended to prioritize based on the sources that bring the most value. I can elaborate on the topic in a follow up article, but getting back on topic for now, let’s look at the key definitions of the solution:
Hybris Marketing Data Management renders full 360 view of customer’s interactions and enable scoring them according to their implicit and explicit behavior across all channels. Rich cockpit management for segmentation, orchestration/campaigns, and insights/KPIs.
Hybris Marketing Recommendation translate customer interest into conversion through real-time personalized recommendations. For hybris commerce (products), Recommendation module is appropriate, and is shipped as part of data management module license.
Hybris Marketing Segmentation provides high-performing audience segmentation in real time, from any data source.
Hybris Marketing Loyalty enables organizations to create loyalty programs that deliver premium customer experience to drive true brand loyalty.
Hybris Marketing Orchestration lets you seize opportunities and optimize marketing campaigns by analyzing customer journeys, budgets, permissions and customer preferences. You gain the data you need to translate real-time customer activities into action and build long-term loyalty.
Hybris Marketing Campaign Management provides full email campaign features, automation, and analytics (real time tracking, success key figures). 3 types of campaign: standard no periodic, periodic, trigger. Trigger based ones don’t have a Target Group. Note that anything happening in the campaign journey is stored as interactions as well.
Rapid deployment tool gather helpers and accelerators to load various types of data, sap and non-sap. See sap center for further details.Other modules and/or roadmap items include:
- Planning (license required)
- Conversion / scoring module (separate license), originating from seeWhy.
- It is different from the recommendation module.
- Real time 1:1 contextual marketing. can be purchased standalone. available public cloud only.
- Predictive (intelligence part to hybris marketing)
Architecture
- Underlying engine (DB): SAP HANA (Hana rules, predictive algorithm library, processing language)
- Logic layer: run on application servers (NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.4, HANA XS)
- UI layer: html6, fiori
- Sizing consideration in 2 places:
- Application sizing based on number of users (concurrent)
- Hana sizing based on data volume.
- 3 different schemas based on which sap system is used by client: SAP CRM & SAP ERP. SAP SID (interaction model, Data Hub) is used for external systems, non-sap.
Note: one needs SAP GUI in order to change the data management mappings. This client is required for Hybris Marketing.
Data Management Essential
Contact engagement or Structured Data
Target Group is fundamental concept of marketing: targeting for campaigns # spamming. Target Group can be created by selecting interest - interest is tied to interaction model. Target Group can be static or dynamic.
Sentiment engagement or Unstructured Data
Text analysis from different channels (emails, twitter, feeds, social, etc…), in place for 12 languages. HMS allows filtering on positive/negative.
Both types above are tied to ‘contacts’, also called master data. HMS has capability to load Interactions capability via CSV, but a real world project is likely to use data from an ERP(e.g SAP ECC) via RFC.
Interaction Model reflects the following:
Who did (contact attributes)
What
By which means
why
When (timestamp)
Above information provides the minimum data (attributes) to load. More details on this in the “Segmentation” section.
Segmentation
This section is a briefing of the Interaction modeling, its DB structure. When interactions are loaded via the SI schema, all following models are eventually loaded.
Root table for core interaction, also called Transaction table: CUAN_CE_IA_RT, standing for CUstomer ANalytics, Customer Engagement, Intelligence, RooT.
Contact table containing contact data.
Facet Table: FCET, one entry for each unique contact entry with interaction.
Interest table (1:n - each interaction can have 1 or more interests).
Segmentation Modeling and Customization
Hana studio is used to connect DB layer directly via sql queries (sap hana modeler).
From the SAP Client we can see the data source of a specific calculation/segment, which can then be customized in the hana modeler by finding the corresponding package;
Using the Segmentation Generic Device provides ability to do the mapping of segmentation generically, from a database view (similar to hmc). Any mapping can flow down from a contact to a target group here. UI is powerful in that regards.
Best Practices and deployment
This section tackles sample generic questions to properly scope a project: scoping specific customer target market, as well as planning and estimating effectively.
Which modules?
- All start with fundamentals: Data Management, Segmentation, Acquire modules.
- B2B usually start with Insights module.
What deployment mode?
Cloud, on premise, is data on hana or not, etc.. HEC (private cloud) ?Which inbounds? (inbound data sources)
- Ask about all data sources, archive feeding etc.. not just the primary DS
- SAP / Non-SAP sources
- 5 days per source for load if simple source
- 10 days if more complex, with need to build KPIs on top etc..
- Get samples to check data quality (duplicates, missing fields, extra semi-colons…)
- Limit the sources to 5 in phase 1
Which outbounds? (outbound channels for campaign)
- SAP/non-SAP
- SAP: CRM Anywhere, leads in C4C, Hybris Commerce - Product Offers)
Customer segmentation profile?
Attribute group, name, definition of formula if defined. Client to provide all KPIs and/or customer touchpoints. Key is to define marketing segments; whether or not the data source is available comes only after.
Q&A
What’s the recommended maximum number of # sources to collect from? 5, initially at least.
Data load: format and process of load? can it be xml? Yes, integration can be of various types - for a manual load it would be csv (similar to impex).
Data scientist / hana customization: is it a skill that hybris experts should have? (e.g hybris experts portal) > Yes for basic operations, at least the hybris experts orienting to SAP infrastructure.
Do we need sap hana (sap gui) for interactions mapping & segmentation customization? Yes.
Is marketing based only on ERP attributes? how about hybris commerce specific ones? Based on interaction table in hybris marketing (sap hana DB), produced from sap crm data.
Key Take Aways
- Core solution (hybris marketing RDS) built on Hana
- Licensing is based on contact records (except for planning). 5k per 100k, 1k per 100k for +20M, or 3.5k for +5M.
- Data management is foundation and mandatory for Hybris marketing.
- Structured data = interactions
- Unstructured data (emails, social data etc..) = sentiment analysis (using hana text analysis)
- Added value of the product: calculation on the fly when requesting KPIs or analytics in the UI, because it’s based on Hana. (no more jobs etc…)
- Data Interaction / contact master data from SAP is replicated(SLT) to hybris Marketing. The product recommendations come from the metadata stored on interaction tables.
- If one wanted to add additional product attributes, one would be adding the specific meta data in the interaction model.
- Product data is not fully replicated, only references are created based on sales orders and association models.
Challenge
Except the UI for end users, the application and DB layers can only be manipulated via SAP product and not directly from Hybris applications > Need of Hana Model Architect expertise.
Limitations
Still limited around: multiple ERP or CRM clients, multiple currencies (display in UI), HANA model extensibility.
Terminology
HMS Hybris Marketing Solution. CRM term deprecated in SAP world, refer to "customer line of business". C4C (Cloud for Customers). BTG (Business Target Groups), or Advanced Personalization. ESP (Event Stream Processor), integration tool from SAP. OOTB (Out Of The Box).
Reference
SAP Labs Hybris Marketing Bootcamp, August 4 2015.