In savings to the business over one year
In savings after expenses
Increase in reach through on-demand webinars
As many customers getting expert, personalized support
Name: SAP Ariba
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Founded: 1996
Employees: ~5,000
Funding: Public (NYSE: SAP)
Industry: Procurement
SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On the Ariba Network, buyers and suppliers from more than 3.6 million companies and 190 countries discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions and grow their relationships. Buyers manage the entire purchasing process, while controlling spending, finding new sources of savings and building a healthy supply chain. And suppliers can connect with profitable customers and efficiently scale existing relationships — simplifying sales cycles and improving cash control along the way. The result is a dynamic, digital marketplace, where over $2.28 trillion in commerce gets done every year.
The rise of digital disrupted the procurement industry, transforming it from a heavy-handed and laborious paper exchange to a streamlined, instantaneous digital marketplace. SAP Ariba is leading the way — helping companies modernize procurement and supply chain management through cloud-based solutions. Introducing this new innovative model for procurement to traditional suppliers and buyers can’t happen overnight. SAP Ariba needed a comprehensive customer engagement strategy that helped customers understand the benefits of the cloud, adopt and integrate this technology into existing operations and eventually foster super-users and evangelists of the SAP Ariba way of doing business.
“From the first moment that we got onto the ON24 Digital Experience Platform, we realized we would be able to actually create a video version of our presentations that were less arduous and less stressful while still making it very engaging.”
Kevin Schultz
Software Customer Service Specialist
SAP Ariba discovered that, despite all the benefits the cloud brings, most businesses were apprehensive about introducing such a radical change to day-to-day operations. To reduce anxiety, SAP Ariba had to educate its customers with an approach that was comprehensive, global and always-on while not too overwhelming for their external audience to consume and internal marketing team to produce. And, the company needed to maintain the supportive, high-touch customer experience that its users count on.
For a trend as complex and challenging as digital transformation, traditional training materials just wouldn’t cut it. So, SAP Ariba decided that an on-demand webinar strategy offered the perfect balance of in-depth, informative content and self-service, scalable delivery.
First, the company set up its onboarding process using a one-to-one communication tool. But, that approach wasn’t dynamic or flexible enough to give SAP Ariba customers an engaging education process that was personalized for different learning styles and levels. Internal SAP Ariba specialists were constantly running into issues with new customers — they were having to repeat and re-train on topics already covered in previous sessions, potentially ignoring more advanced users and delaying the maturation of the onboarding program.
Then, the team went down the path of one-to-one training and demos through a video solution. However, this was too much of a burden on its internal resources and the customer service team would have to dedicate days to delivering support to clients individually. Conversations were derailed with a lot of questions from customers that prevented the sessions from being productive. Frustration from both SAP Ariba and its clients ensued — rather than helping customers as intended, the one-to-one sessions had the reverse effect, ultimately decreasing customer satisfaction and hindering SAP Ariba’s ultimate goal of customer success. SAP Ariba needed a new solution fast.
Scalable, self-paced learning through the ON24® Platform
To meaningfully engage customers across their journey, SAP Ariba turned to the ON24 Digital Experience Platform to produce and deliver a mix of live and on-demand webinar programs.
Now, SAP Ariba creates an ongoing educational series of content, Success Sessions, for always-on access to the latest information on SAP Ariba. The solution gives new clients an easy-to-access, dynamically updated product education hub after their initial onboarding. The Success Sessions webinars give users the information and the forum to ask about product questions, find answers to frequently asked questions and learn about new product updates. SAP Ariba also uses live Q&A in each Success Sessions webinar to provide a direct connection between its users and internal experts, strengthening the overall customer relationship.
SAP Ariba furthers customer engagement, and efficiency, by turning its on-demand webinars into “Quick Tips,” a digestible, curated video series for suppliers to watch at their leisure. In addition to supporting another set of stakeholders in the SAP Ariba marketplace, this creates a solution for SAP Ariba’s international markets by making snippets of content available to clients from around the world with a content library explicitly tailored to each client’s industry, region and language.
With an on-demand content hub, SAP Ariba has a powerful new tool to support its onboarding process. New users can get the support and answers they need without draining valuable resources. Quick Tips Videos To get its best content in front of users as fast as possible, SAP Ariba boils its best practices down to quick tip bites. Doing so ensures both longtime users and new attendees can quickly get key messages and updates that surface the key take-aways within a webinar.
Customized Content for Global Expansion
Almost every supply chain today involves some level of global coordination. That means SAP Ariba has to customize its content for global languages, which the company does through ON24 localization services.
By reducing the support team’s volume of customer and supplier requests, SAP Ariba saved the company nearly $50,000 in its first year of working with ON24. These savings were the result of a more efficient education process and effective training; the company’s support team now easily reaches more buyers and suppliers than before with SAP Ariba’s new combination of live and on-demand webinar content. Now, buyers and suppliers have the tools they need to succeed, at a pace that the SAP Ariba team can sustain. Most importantly, SAP Ariba is achieving its promise to customers, giving them the confidence and knowledge to make their digital transformation a reality.
“Launching our Success Sessions webinar program housed in geospecific ON24 Content Gateways has been critical to how we’ve scaled our customer support and engagement efforts globally.”
