Selling the Digital Boardroom
Revolutionary enterprise product becomes something executives could feel, not just read about.
the challenge
SAP is one of the largest enterprise software companies on the planet.
With over €34 billion in annual revenue and software running inside the majority of the world's largest corporations, the scale of their operation is staggering. So when they set out to launch the SAP Digital Boardroom, a product that aimed to give C-suite executives a single, real time view of business performance across every department and line of business, the marketing challenge was equally enormous.
The Digital Boardroom was technology ahead of its time. First unveiled in late 2015 and rolled out through 2016, it promised to transform how executive teams made decisions by putting live data from across an entire organization at their fingertips. No more waiting for quarterly reports. No more relying on secondhand summaries.
Real answers, in real time, when the stakes are highest.
But communicating that kind of transformative capability to busy decision makers who've seen a thousand product demos is a different kind of problem entirely. SAP needed more than a brochure site. They needed an experience that would make executives feel the power of the product before they ever touched the actual software.
the approach
We proposed a two pronged strategy designed to capture attention at the top of the funnel and nurture leads through the middle.
The centrepiece was "Win the Board," a choose your own adventure style gamified web experience where users step into the role of an executive preparing for a critical board meeting. Using the Digital Boardroom, players race against the clock to pull the right data, answer tough questions from board members, and prove they can make confident decisions backed by live intelligence. The concept was bold: turn an enterprise software demo into something people actually wanted to play.
Alongside the gamified experience, we built a more traditional digital sales tool designed for SAP's field teams. This companion piece was tablet focused, built for trade show floors and in person meetings where sales reps needed to walk prospects through product features and capabilities in a more structured, information driven format. Together, the two applications created a complete marketing funnel: the "Win the Board" experience captured and engaged warm leads from key decision makers, while the sales tool gave reps a polished, interactive way to deepen those conversations face to face.
the solution
Both applications were built on Node.js and React with Sass for styling and Webpack managing the build pipeline. On the backend, both apps connected to AWS infrastructure including S3 for file storage, Redis for caching, and SQL for persistent data.
The "Win the Board" experience was where things got truly ambitious.
The site featured a dynamic, video driven storyline that branched based on user choices, with players timed and scored on their accuracy as they navigated the Digital Boardroom interface. The attention to detail was relentless: a dynamic spectrum analyzer greeted users on the start screen as they were introduced to the game, a full gameplay soundtrack and interaction sound effects brought every UI element to life, and elements that weren't video driven used subtle perspective shift animations that, combined with extensive hover and interaction effects, created an experience that felt more like a high end game than an enterprise marketing site.
The sales tool took a deliberately different approach.
Designed as a tablet first experience, it stripped away the gamification in favour of a clean, information rich interface that let SAP reps explore product features at their own pace during live events. It was built to educate, not entertain, giving sales staff the depth they needed to field questions and demonstrate capabilities without relying on a live product demo.
The SAP Digital Boardroom provides one single source of truth for critical business metrics, helping organizations effectively monitor and drive change in the digital economy.
the results
The two experiences worked in concert to create an effective top and middle funnel marketing engine for one of SAP's most ambitious product launches.
The "Win the Board" experience captured attention and engagement from the exact audience the Digital Boardroom was built for: senior decision makers who don't have time for traditional product marketing but will absolutely spend ten minutes trying to beat a score. The sales tool armed SAP's field teams with a polished, portable product showcase that elevated every trade show conversation and in person meeting.
The project demonstrated what's possible when enterprise marketing is willing to take creative risks. Instead of another product microsite with feature lists and whitepaper downloads, SAP invested in an experience that respected its audience's intelligence and competed for their attention on its own merits.
technologies
Enterprise Software Doesn't Have to Market Like Enterprise Software.
We turned SAP's most ambitious analytics product into a gamified experience complete with branching video storylines, live scoring, a full soundtrack, and interaction design that made C-suite executives want to keep playing. Then we built the sales tool that closed the loop. Two React applications, one funnel, zero boring product demos.
