Methodology
Our survey covered 700 businesses, which were divided uniformly across automotive, consumer goods, medical, chemical, industrial equipment, IT, retail, and other industries. Using a combination of social platforms, we reached out to leaders of diverse businesses from various countries with objective questionnaires to understand their perspectives.
User Distribution
We found that 355 of the 700 surveyed businesses were actively using SAP Commerce Cloud. Meanwhile, the major competitors used by non-SAP users included Oracle Commerce (70), Shopify (203), Salesforce Commerce (61), and others (11). Let’s study its user base in more detail.
Industry
Just over half of surveyed businesses used SAP Commerce Cloud and these users were spread over various industries with a concentration in retail. While its popularity varies, it is apparent that SAP Commerce Cloud has found use in diverse industries, indicating a high degree of versatility.
Business size
Notably, SAP Commerce Cloud’s versatility and scalability became further apparent as we discovered that SMEs form about 47% of its users while 53% are large businesses. This roughly uniform distribution indicates that SAP Commerce Cloud adjusts perfectly to different business sizes thanks to its advanced personalization and scaling abilities.
Geographical
Based on location, 45% of surveyed users were based in Europe while 33% were based in North America, followed by 19% in Asia, 5% in South America, and 3% in both Australia and Africa. This shows the global relevance and popularity of SAP Commerce Cloud, but its popularity is apparently higher in countries with a high concentration of large businesses.
Industry Trends and Market Position
The industry is undergoing a significant transformation, with cloud technologies playing a pivotal role. In fact, 91% of all respondents reported adopting at least one new SaaS tool in the last 1 year.
SaaS spending and data safety
As per a Gartner research, worldwide SaaS spending has been rising steeply, going from 120,686 million USD in 2020 million USD to 145,509 in 2021 and 171,915 million USD in 2022.
This steep rise is expected to continue in the foreseeable future. Moreover, data safety has taken primary importance in recent times, with 52% of all surveyed leaders considering it the most important selection criterion for a SaaS.
Growth and Position of SAP Commerce Cloud
We also found that SAP Commerce Cloud is playing an increasingly crucial role in this SaaS evolution, with 50.7% of surveyed users implementing it in their daily operations, as mentioned earlier.
Also, the time of adoption of SAP Commerce Cloud and its SAP predecessors was spread uniformly, spanning mostly over the last 5 years. This shows its consistent popularity. In fact, SAP Commerce Cloud has about 4,817 live websites as of 2023 based on a Builtwith study.
These statistics show the consistent popularity and market impact of the tool.
Results of Implementing SAP Commerce Cloud
Overall, 256 or 72% of enterprises using the tool believe that using SAP Commerce Cloud has improved their e-commerce capabilities. 52% of users in the retail segment and 65% of all users also reported a rise in profits after adopting the tool which they are able to directly attribute to it.
An impressive 8 out of 10 surveyed users expressed full satisfaction with SAP Commerce Cloud, while those that did not were partly dissatisfied mainly due to slow performance and delayed updates.
These numbers indicate that SAP Commerce Cloud’s comprehensive management capabilities, such as product content management and order management tools, clearly make it a preferred choice for a majority of businesses, especially in the retail segment. But it does have some challenges to overcome. Let’s understand the strengths and weaknesses in more detail.
Strengths: Top 3 reasons for selecting SAP Commerce Cloud
When asked for the 3 primary reasons for going with SAP Commerce Cloud instead of popular alternatives, a majority of respondents emphasized its integrations, safety, global commerce, omnichannel commerce, and personalization abilities.
- Offers most comprehensive safety and compliance measures- 179
- Integrates seamlessly with other SAP or third-party solutions- 120
- Powerful omnichannel commerce platform- 96
- Powerful and flexible product information management system- 21
- Robust personalization features- 83
- Rich set of APIs and extensions- 23
- Advanced built-in analytics and reporting tool- 11
- Effective global commerce support- 101
- Better customer support- 4
- A strong community of partners, developers, and customers- 27
- Other- 3
Safety remained the most important factor followed by integrations and personalization for most businesses when asked to rank their most important reason for choosing SAP commerce. However, the retail segment showed some unique trends in the selection criteria since over 50% of retail users considered omnichannel commerce abilities as the most important strength of SAP Commerce Cloud followed by global commerce abilities and safety.
Limitations
Despite its clear effectiveness, SAP Commerce Cloud may require optimizations to appeal to a larger customer base. Currently, 61% of those who have not adopted the tool said that the complexity and steep learning curve of SAP Commerce Cloud are the main reasons why they have preferred alternatives. 30% of these non-users said it is too costly and only 9% stated the lack of features or other limitations as the cause. As discussed, slow performance and delayed updates were the key issues faced by users who were not entirely satisfied.
Security and Compliance Taking The Center Stage
In today’s digital age, security, and compliance are of paramount importance. In fact, 185 or around 52% of all surveyed business leaders stated that security is the single most important criterion they consider while selecting a new commerce cloud software. This is followed mainly by functionality (20%), cost (12%), integrations (7%), support (7%), and other (2%) factors.
SAP Commerce Cloud is performing well in this regard as 77% of SAP Commerce Cloud users consider it to be the most secure e-commerce platform. Moreover, around 40% of those who have adopted it say that the platform’s security and compliance features were major considerations while selecting the platform. A majority of these were from the retail segment, where user privacy is gaining increasing importance.
The Retail Relevance
The ubiquity, ease of collaboration, speed, and security offered by cloud technology have clearly played a key role in SAP’s widespread adoption across industries, business sizes, and continents
However, the higher profit and adoption rate in retail across business types, sizes, and locations suggests its unique advantages in the global retail sector. As per our research, the key advantages include-
- It helps retailers scale their e-commerce operations on demand and reduces the time and cost of launching new online shops.
- It comes with pre-loaded features, which means that retailers can benefit from the best practices and industry standards that SAP Commerce Cloud offers.
- It provides a polished customer experience, which means that customers can find what they are looking for easily and quickly, get relevant recommendations and offers, and enjoy a smooth checkout process. This is great for cross-selling, upselling, and customer retention.
- It allows easy integration with other SAP solutions, especially as it is a complementary part of the overall SAP Customer Experience or SAP Hybris suite.
- Its global commerce features also create a seamless experience from anywhere in the world. These include support for multiple languages, currencies, tax calculations, and payment methods.
- It supports omnichannel commerce. This key strength means that customers can shop online, in-store, or on mobile devices with a smooth experience across platforms.
