Let’s say you are a global consumer products brand – and you see big opportunities in transforming B2B e-commerce, while adding B2C channels.
Ah, but there’s a catch. You’re already knee-deep in a global, ERP-driven transformation – in this case, SAP S/4HANA. And: you’ve learned the hard way that there are big downsides to a local approach to CX. You need a global CX template that makes new experiences viable across regions. But how do you get buy-in?
Essity’s global CX rollout – not to be overshadowed by S/4HANA
That’s exactly the situation faced by Essity, a global hygiene and health company that produces an array of consumer goods, including personal care, health and medical products.
At SAP Sapphire 2026 in Orlando, I caught up with two members of Essity’s CX implementation team. After the event, we continued that conversation, and delved into their results to date.
When I met up with Essity in Orlando, I was struck by the well-honed partnership between Kiet Nhu, Essity IT Manager, and Daniele Tedesco, eCommerce & CX Transformation Leader. Migrations are one thing. But if you’re talking about business transformation, you better have a strong tie between IT and business leaders. Nhu and Tedesco are at the point where working together is just how things are, but you could sense they have tested each other, as you would in any rollout of this magnitude.
To get their CX goals on track, Essity’s CX team managed to basically attach e-commerce transformation to their overall S/4HANA project scope – a tactic more organizations should consider. Nhu explains:
There’s a bigger overall program, which is the S/4HANA migration. As part of that, the program realizes that e-commerce – let’s say improvements – was a value-add. So it was tagged into the major program as a value-add activity, which is consolidating and streamlining the e-commerce solutions.
Then the selection process was really managed from an overall perspective. Since we’re going with S/4, were there any other reasons for us not to go with SAP for commerce as well? There were not a lot of things that said no, and there were a few things that said ‘Yes, in terms of out-of-the-box integration, SAP understands. SAP does that’ – and on the other end, the support and all of that.
Thus, buy-in was achieved. But now, the real fun begins: migrating from legacy commerce applications. Essity’s commerce transformation was driven by two goals: provide a consumer-grade B2B commerce experience, and roll out new B2C channels. Tedesco adds:
We also have a kind of plethora of other solutions; some of them needed to be sunset. So there was a business driver to consolidate solutions, and there was a need to use a global template. We pushed hard centrally to standardize.
That started with us strategizing on what a template would look like. How would we support this? We made some decisions: ‘Okay, for B2B, we can have a standard template. It will have these attributes, because this business unit wants headless – and then for B2C, we will have these attributes, and they’ll be intentionally separate, so that they have their own dedicated backlog.’
B2B and B2C rollouts – from obstacles to compliant experiences
As with any transformation, the Essity team hit obstacles:
It was a bit of a build-as-you-go scenario, and certain attributes or capabilities we wanted to add. Quickly, we ran into a need for consent management, which was driven a lot by regulation that helps a company like us get motivated to do something. So GDPR was a big topic six years ago, and we weren’t compliant, and then we brought in CDC [SAP Customer Data Cloud] to help solve that.
But hold up –if you want agile and responsive commerce/service channels, why would you want a global template? Short answer: Essity’s team says if they can execute on this, they will have the best of both worlds: global scale and localized experiences. It’s a hard-won realization, borne out of the proliferation of disparate B2B and B2C e-commerce solutions Essity had built up in different regions. Legacy sprawl happens before you know it.
Essity’s new approach: build reusable templates to serve B2B and B2C channels – built on streamlined processes, and a shared platform/code base.
How is it going so far? In 2024, Essity rolled out the new B2B platform in the United States, in support of two different business units. Both units now run on the same commerce framework and subscription service model. This new SAP Commerce Cloud deployment connects to the SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC), SAP Service Cloud, SAP Product Information Management (PIM), and other SAP integration components. Essity’s B2B customers now have a more integrated experience, with real-time tracking, secure payment, and GDPR compliance.
For Essity, “scale” means serious scale: 70 manufacturing facilities, selling in 100 countries. The B2C template is in full rollout mode this year across regions; Tedesco says the B2B template rollout is about three-quarters of the way there, “but again, to be synchronized with the larger program.”
CX project results to date
Even with an ongoing rollout, the results are starting to show. Nhu says:
It’s going as expected; in our case, very well. The transition to this new platform – we see immediate growth there, in two major business units. So for all intents and purposes, it has been a success story for us.
The numbers bear that out: by December 2024, eight months after the initial B2B template launch, Essity hit 10,000 e-commerce orders in one month. That number is the highest in a decade of site history. By February 2025, approximately 50% of all orders were digitally generated.
So I asked Nhu:when you talk about immediate growth, what do you attribute that to? Nhu says B2B is not about who has the flashiest web site. It’s about fast service and easy logistics:
If you look at the manufacturer-to-distributor interaction, it’s more of a way of doing business, and providing some sort of easier way to access and to see our products – and to place orders.
The global CX template has already proven its worth; it’s easier now for different regions to come online. That also contributes to the e-commerce growth. Tedesco explains:
A simple example of that: we couldn’t roll out our legacy service solution to a market like Canada because credit card [payment] wasn’t enabled for a number of different reasons. But when we took on the template approach, we made it scalable, so market access helped with that growth.
The wrap – on frictionless commerce, B2C brand equity, and AI
Giving B2B users an Amazon-like experience is a must. Yes, B2B customers care more about frictionless ordering than “experiences” per se. But as Nhu says, it’s a win on both sides:
Whoever we can steer to this channel reduces the customer service time, the manual order entry time, and all of the other activities that come to light. So I think it’s a win for us in that way. If you look at it from that perspective, providing a frictionless way of doing business has come to be expected – even if you’re a B2B buyer.
Essity’s B2C play is an interesting one to watch; the interface and back-end data are ready. Will consumers make that direct purchase push? For now, B2C is a small percentage of Essity’s sales. Some of Essity’s health products are more sensitive to buy online (such as incontinence solutions), and Essity also doesn’t plan on trying to undercut established B2C channels. But there is still the opportunity to earn consumer trust. Nhu:
The B2C web shops are much more about brand equity. So if you’re learning about a product like incontinence as a medical condition, you might be inclined to purchase from us directly. You might want to see pricing information.
You may have noticed we got this far without talking about AI. It’s not like Tedesco and Nhu don’t see the potential to build AI solutions on top of the CX foundation they’ve built. But for now, it’s about getting the rest of Essit’s business units on the new CX platform – which includes a rigorous testing protocol.
As our Orlando interview ended, I tried to get Nhu and Tedesco to share their secrets of IT/business collaboration. But in their case, it’s really just how they work – day in, day out. As Nhu says, “We’ve been at it for years now.” As it should be.
