Content Management in SAP can be tricky. How do you add, organize and update videos, audio or product images in SAP? We show you how to manage content centrally and use it in SAP Commerce or SAP Marketing Cloud.
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SAP is the Swiss army knife among software providers. It offers a whole range of products besides the famous enterprise resource planning system SAP S/4HANA.
Where do you need content in SAP?
SAP offers everything from digital supply chain applications to analytics tools. The first challenge is to identify where marketing content is even needed in SAP.
SAP product world in a nutshell:
In 2018, SAP bundled its CRM applications under the brand name SAP Customer Experience (CX). As the name suggests, the suite focuses on customer experience and is comparable to solutions from Salesforce, HubSpot or Adobe Experience Cloud. Within this suite, content is primarily used in SAP Commerce and SAP Marketing Cloud.
SAP Product Content Management, previously Hybris PCM
SAP Commerce is a modern e-commerce platform that maps all sales and purchasing processes. It also enables a holistic customer view and omnichannel purchasing experiences.
SAP Commerce also has a product information management (PIM) system integrated. E-Commerce Manager can use it to organize how products are displayed in an online shop and other sales channels. Long-time SAP customers still know this PIM system as Hybris PCM. Hybris was transferred to SAP Commerce in 2018, after the company was acquired by SAP in 2013.
SAP Content Studio for the Marketing Cloud
Working with different types of content such as images, videos or sound files is the daily bread of marketers. Such assets can be stored in the Content Studio which is a part of the SAP Marketing Cloud. Marketers can use assets stored in the content studio for email campaigns, landing pages, forms, and marketing automations.
Is there a content management system from SAP?
SAP Commerce comes with a content framework for solving project-related content management tasks and the SAP Marketing Cloud allows you to store different content types, but SAP doesn’t offer a holistic approach to managing content.
The reason is, that content management and specifically digital asset management require a high level of understanding of the creative content creation processes. Only then, customers can implement these processes and create an outstanding user experience.
In addition, many business-relevant standard applications such as Microsoft Office products as well as publication-specific applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign must be supported. A flexible and customizable integration between CELUM as a content provider and SAP Commerce has proven to be a powerful solution over the last ten years. The cooperation between the two products has a long history of joint customers successfully following the best-of-breed approach.
SAP DAM or which content management system can be used for SAP
SAP Commerce as well as SAP Marketing Cloud allow the upload and storage of different content types. In SAP Commerce, metadata and info about users can be linked to products. However, the system comes to its limits when many users with different permission must be able to manage, upload and distribute large volumes of assets to other people and systems.
If you need to take care of those things, the use of an external digital asset management (DAM) system is worth considering for SAP. DAM software offers a whole range of additional functions and can cover the entire content supply chain. At CELUM, we divide the content supply chain into the three core areas of content creation, content management, and content distribution.
SAP Connector for content management
As a global brand, many software vendors develop SAP business connectors, which are listed in the SAP store and such is the case with the CELUM connector. With an SAP integration, a professional Digital Asset Management system can also be incorporated. For example, CELUM offers an integration for SAP Commerce and for the SAP Marketing Cloud.
A digital asset management system enables:
- A central source for all assets across multiple countries and languages.
- A better collaboration within the team and with agencies through task and workflow management tools.
- The set-up of an omnichannel strategy by reaching your target audience with aligned content across all channels.
- The full control of content with fine-grained user permission management.
A DAM system helps you to maintain content brand consistency, manage a global brand image, improve file management, quicker access assets, streamline approvals, and to maintain content compliance, as we explained in greater detail on our article about Digital Asset Management.
Combine PIM, DAM and SAP
A DAM also has the advantage that it can be connected to other systems. Some CELUM customers use an external PIM whose data is linked to related assets in CELUM and both data points are then transferred to SAP Commerce.
How Victorinox manages content
Swiss knife manufacturer Victorinox uses CELUM for the creation and release of visual content, as well as for the management and distribution of content. SAP, in turn, maps the entire web presence of Victorinox, from the e-commerce platform and brand experience to the press portal. More than 8,000 users work with CELUM – from employees to service providers and sales partner.
Victorinox’ DAM offers
- a customized, complex metadata model with a direct interface to the ERP system,
- 15 different asset types to clearly distinguish assets,
- a private and a “public” space, for the distribution of assets,
- 62 customized download formats,
- auto-crop and optimize assets for all touchpoints,
- and various integrations for automated content routing.
Victorinox not only uses its DAM to display assets in SAP. The company has also solutions connected to the DAM for web to publish, for handling returned products, and a tablet application for sales.
Why you should tackle content management in SAP
Marketing manages an ever-growing amount of content for an increasing number of sales channels. In addition, new digital applications are added to the existing tech stack more frequently. If you have set up an integrable and scalable content solution, the management will be much easier. You will be able to prevent content silos and duplicates.
How can CELUM help you?
Gain more insights on how CELUM Digital Asset Management and SAP can help your business to grow.
