SAP integrates with Gainsight and ChannelEngine

SAP today announced integrations with customer success and product experience vendor Gainsight and online marketplace integrator ChannelEngine. It also released the SAP Emarsys annual Customer Loyalty Index. The announcements coincided with SAP CX Live, an online event.

The integrations are clearly aimed at enterprise-level SAP customers. Gainsight is likely to be of more interest in the B2B space while ChannelEngine offers opportunities for ecommerce businesses.

The Gainsight partnership. The integration between SAP Sales Cloud and Gainsight Customer Success seeks to provide a seamless, continuing customer journey beyond conversion, supporting customer retention and growth. With Gainsight data accessible within the Sales Cloud platform, customer success managers will be able to expand cross-sell and upsell opportunities while sales representatives will be able to incorporate customer satisfaction and product usage insights into subsequent sales cycles.

The ChannelEngine integration. Online marketplace and sales channel integrator Gainsight will integrate with SAP Order Management Services (SAP OMS) and SAP Commerce Cloud. This will make it possible to activate some 950 new sales channels within SAP systems, helping merchants automate and manage their third-party marketplace outlets within SAP. The integration will offer ecommerce insights across first- and third-party channels.

Gen Z values innovative marketing. Perhaps unsuprisingly, the annual Customer Loyalty Index from SAP Emarsys reported that Gen Z valued creative and personalized marketing efforts. If anything stands out, it’s the relatively small gap between Gen Z and other (older) demographics.

“33% of Gen Z, compared to 28% of all demographics, have tried a new brand because of its ‘creative marketing.’ Additionally, one-third of Gen Z (33%) are enticed by brands that use ‘cool’ content or imagery, compared with 27% of other age groups. Meanwhile, 26% of Gen Z, compared to 20% of other generations, seek out brands that deliver ‘memorable experiences.’”

Why we care. While Gainsight does offer AI-powered insights, it’s almost refreshing to see product announcements that are not entirely about AI agents and copilots. What the SAP news does signify is a continuing drive to pull the various pillars of customer experience together, joining up the dots between first- and third-party ecommerce, customer satisfaction and product experience — creating a flywheel effect where post-sales insights feed back into the selling process.

Are we looking at a future where marketing, sales and customer success merge into one revenue team? Some people are betting on that, but perhaps it’s some way down the road.