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German business software maker SAP SE is expanding its offering through the acquisition of survey software specialist Qualtrics International Inc, for which SAP is depositing eight billion dollars. The deal was announced strikingly enough on Sunday night, just before Qualtrics was planning to make an IPO.

The takeover has already been approved by the boards of both companies. It is also an all-cash deal and seems to be the largest acquisition ever of a business software company that benefited from venture capital support. It is also the second largest sale of a software-as-a-service company, just behind the acquisition of NetSuite by Oracle in 2016. The takeover involved $9.3 billion.

Software optimization

Qualtrics sells survey software, which is especially useful as a feedback platform. Companies can, for example, ask customers for experiences with their products, so that they can optimise them for specific cases of use. Qualtrics’ main competitor is SurveyMonkey, which went public last September.

Thanks to the acquisition, SAP can combine the operational data it has itself with the experience data and insights. In this way, CEO Bill McDermott says in a statement, SAP can better manage its supply chain, networks, employees and core processes. This therefore reinforces the cloud offer, which is necessary in a highly competitive market.

Helping companies

Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, states that his mission is to help companies deliver the experiences that turn their customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, products into obsessions and brands into religions. The idea is that SAP’s support, with its team of 95,000 employees, will help to grow faster, scale up and reach more people.

Qualtrics expects to achieve a worldwide turnover of 400 million dollars this year. The company also expects growth of 40 percent. The synergy with SAP will lead to even better results.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.