Engagement-First Businesses Need More than Just Connected Technology
Brands need to function as a connected unit grounded in a solid customer data foundation or else they risk missing hidden signals across their organisation, says Varun Sharma, VP & Head of SAP CX – Middle East Africa, SAP.
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Customer engagement is becoming harder to define by a single interaction, campaign or channel.
As AI becomes embedded across the customer journey, brands are navigating a more complex engagement landscape where customers increasingly expect relevance, convenience and consistency at every touchpoint. In some cases, those interactions may not even be initiated directly by the customer.
According to the SAP Engagement Index 2026, 30% of consumers are already using AI agents to make decisions and act on their behalf when buying from a brand. For organisations, this introduces a new challenge: how do they build meaningful relationships when technology is increasingly influencing how customers discover, evaluate and engage with them?
The answer, according to Varun Sharma, VP & Head of SAP CX – Middle East Africa at SAP, lies in moving beyond the idea that engagement belongs exclusively to marketing.
As customer expectations become more connected, engagement must become a shared business outcome, supported by a strong customer data foundation and technology that enables teams and AI systems to act with consistency and trust.
“Ultimately, engagement is about building meaningful relationships that make customers’ lives better and easier,” says Varun Sharma.
In this interview, Sharma discusses what defines an engagement-first business, where organisations are going wrong with CX modernisation, how AI is already influencing engagement, and why the future of martech may belong to the best-connected technology stacks rather than simply the best individual tools.
Excerpts from the interview;
How do you define an engagement-first business in 2026, and why does it matter now more than ever? What does engagement look like for brands today?
I think an engagement-first business in 2026 is one that puts meaningful customer engagement at the centre of how it operates.
We are already seeing how quickly this is evolving. 30% of consumers are using AI agents to make decisions and act on their behalf when buying from a brand, according to the SAP Engagement Index 2026.
For brands, that means building trust with their customers, and engagement is the path to do that. Each interaction needs to be grounded in business truth and the right context.
Ultimately, engagement is about building meaningful relationships that make customers’ lives better and easier.
What does it take internally—culturally and operationally—to treat engagement as a shared business outcome? What does successful cross-functional collaboration look like when engagement is no longer owned solely by marketing?
The biggest shift is actually recognising that engagement is a business-wide responsibility.
74% of organisations are still stuck in pilot mode with no clear path to scale, according to BCG. Every enterprise talks about becoming customer-centric, yet customer data often remains fragmented across functions. Interoperability has become a business-wide challenge rather than simply an IT problem.
Brands need to function as a connected unit grounded in a solid customer data foundation, or else they risk missing hidden signals across their organisation that could bring significant impact to growing loyalty.
We see the impact of this challenge in real organisations. Jon Martz, CMR Manager at Gibson, described how legacy systems and customised platforms can leave data sitting in different places and not always in a clean or usable state.
For them, getting that data foundation right became a key priority because it creates a foundation needed to unlock the potential of autonomous AI.
Teams need to align on common customer outcomes and the KPIs that matter across marketing, product, operations and service to achieve a dedicated centre of excellence.
Across the Middle East and Africa, where are organisations making the biggest mistakes when modernising their customer experience technology stacks?
One of the challenges I see is not having a clear ownership of where engagement “lives” within the organisation to ensure it has influence, visibility and a measurable impact.
My advice for organisations would be to set up a company-wide mandate for engagement that breaks down silos and aligns all teams to shared customer outcomes.
Another important step is getting involved, ask questions and create a dedicated centre of excellence with a point person from each department who can stay connected across the business and understand each unique measure of success.
We have seen the impact of this approach with customers like Gibson. Josh Ehren, Global Head of Direct to Consumer at Gibson Brands, shared how they moved from a fairly basic CRM setup to using SAP Engagement Cloud to identify different personas and reach different types of fans in ways that are relevant to how they want to connect.
For years, enterprises pursued the idea of a ‘single customer view.’ Is that still the right goal, or should organisations be focusing on connected customer context instead?
I believe the organisations need to start thinking about how they can responsibly incorporate AI into their engagement strategy without compromising trust, privacy, or transparency.
It could start from simple actions, like when asking for data, make sure it’s filling a gap and have a game plan for how you will use it. Then help the consumer understand (and truly genuinely feel) how it’s being used.
Progressive Profiling is one of the examples on how brands can build that understanding over time.
Where is AI already influencing engagement in high-performing organisations?
AI is already influencing engagement in a number of practical areas. We are seeing it used for send-time optimisation, identifying the most profitable campaigns and target audiences, content creation, and report building.
For global organisations, AI can also help with campaign translation across multiple languages. These are practical applications that can help teams work more efficiently while making engagement more targeted and relevant.
Is the era of the ‘best-of-breed’ martech stack giving way to the era of the ‘best-connected’ stack? Explain
As brands work to create governance models that allow them to activate AI responsibly across the enterprise, they are increasingly focused on aligning governance, security and brand considerations from the start.
That connected foundation matters because both teams and AI agents can be built on a trusted foundation to act with precision, consistency, and accountability.
A connected tech stack makes it possible to bring those elements together and create the foundation needed to activate AI responsibly across the organisation.
