Serial Acquirers: How SAP SE Buys (and Sells) Its Way into the Future

SAP SE: Who They Are (and Why You Keep Bumping Into Them)

If you’ve ever filed a corporate expense report, bought something online that magically reappeared in your ERP, or grumbled pleasantly at a purchase order number, there’s a decent chance SAP touched that process. SAP SE is a German multinational founded in 1972 by five former IBM engineers with a bold idea: bring real‑time, integrated business software to enterprises that were used to batch jobs and punch cards. The company is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany and is now one of the world’s largest enterprise application providers.

Today SAP describes itself as a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, reporting over €34 billion in FY2024 revenue and a workforce north of 109,000 employees. Its software underpins processes across finance, supply chain, HR, procurement, customer experience and more—hence the common industry joke that “SAP runs everything except your morning coffee.” SAP has offices in more than 78 countries, and a sprawling network of R&D labs and partner centers that give it global reach.

That geographic footprint supports a customer base measured in the hundreds of thousands across 180+ countries—and, yes, a vast amount of global transaction volume flows across SAP systems. While the exact count fluctuates, what matters for our discussion is this: SAP is embedded in the digital plumbing of the global economy, and that makes its acquisition strategy uniquely consequential.

SAP’s Acquisition History: A Quick Tour (With Some Very Large Price Tags)

Think of SAP’s M&A story as a decades‑long journey from on‑prem ERP heavyweight to a broad, cloud‑first platform with deep process capabilities. Over the past 15 years, SAP has bought a stack of market leaders to fill strategic gaps and accelerate transitions:

• BusinessObjects (2007, BI), Sybase (2010, database/mobile), SuccessFactors (2011, HCM), Ariba (2012, procurement), hybris (2013, commerce)—the early “suite expansion” era that set up SAP’s cloud pivot.
• Concur (2014) for $8.3 billion, SAP’s largest acquisition, cementing its “business network” strategy alongside Ariba and Fieldglass.
• Qualtrics (2018) for $8.0 billion, adding “experience management” data to SAP’s operational core—an O‑plus‑X thesis played loudly by then‑CEO Bill McDermott.

In the last five years, SAP’s purchases have been smaller but strikingly thematic—aimed at a unified transformation stack and AI‑age adoption:

• 2020: Emarsys (omnichannel engagement) to bolster Customer Experience.
• 2021: Signavio (~$1.2B), AppGyver (no‑code), and SwoopTalent IP (talent data/AI).
• 2022: Majority stake in Taulia (working‑capital), and Askdata (search‑driven analytics).
• 2023: LeanIX (enterprise architecture management).
• 2024: WalkMe (digital adoption platform) for ~$1.5B.

How many did SAP buy recently? Over the last five years (2020–2024), SAP acquired eight companies or IP packages. Last year (2024), SAP acquired one: WalkMe.

Biggest deal ever? Concur at $8.3 billion still wears that crown, narrowly ahead of Qualtrics at $8.0 billion. Both were highly strategic: Concur rounded out SAP’s networked spend suite; Qualtrics fused experience signals with operational data.

What kind of targets does SAP favor? Look at the pattern:

• Cloud‑native leaders with strong category positions (Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Emarsys, LeanIX, WalkMe).
• Transformation tooling—process mining and modeling (Signavio), enterprise architecture (LeanIX), and analytics/AI (Askdata).
• “Last‑mile” adoption and composability—no‑code (AppGyver) and in‑app guidance (WalkMe).
• CFO stack adjacencies—Taulia’s working capital finance.

That lineup reads like a deliberate transformation suite to surround S/4HANA Cloud: discover + design (Signavio), plan your landscape (LeanIX), adopt at scale (WalkMe), extend without code (AppGyver), get insights fast (Askdata), engage customers (Emarsys), and free up cash (Taulia). It also mirrors SAP’s published integration strategy—end‑to‑end processes across Lead‑to‑Cash, Source‑to‑Pay, Design‑to‑Operate, and Recruit‑to‑Retire.

How SAP Acquires: Method, Money, and the Deal Bench

Structure & financing. SAP generally pursues all‑cash transactions, and it isn’t shy about tapping credit facilities for large deals. For Concur, SAP used a $9 billion credit facility; for Qualtrics, it secured €7 billion to cover the purchase and costs. WalkMe closed as an all‑cash $14/share deal (~$1.5 billion).

Advisors. There’s no single “house” bank. SAP has worked with Deutsche Bank (Concur), J.P. Morgan (Qualtrics), and Goldman Sachs (WalkMe) among others—choosing global advisors to fit deal specifics.

Speed vs. separation. SAP often keeps acquired firms intact at first (Qualtrics, Taulia) while it aligns go‑to‑market and technology, then integrates capabilities into the Business Technology Platform (BTP) and Business Network over time.

Post‑Merger Integration (PMI): SAP’s Playbook (and Who Helps)

The internal model. SAP has codified an integration strategy built on “suite qualities” (unified identity, harmonized UX, process‑level integration) that it applies across products—new acquisitions included. The goal: have the new capabilities “snap” into end‑to‑end processes on BTP and S/4HANA Cloud rather than live as islands. You can see this in practice:

• Signavio and LeanIX now anchor SAP’s transformation suite—process and application landscape intelligence that feed AI‑enabled optimization.
• AppGyver became SAP Build Apps, extending low‑/no‑code inside BTP.
• WalkMe is already positioned to supercharge SAP’s copilot Joule with context‑aware help in the flow of work.

Do they use external integration advisors? For customer implementations and large change programs that follow acquisitions, SAP routinely collaborates with a who’s who of global SIs—Deloitte, Accenture, IBM, NTT DATA and more—reflecting a massive partner ecosystem. These firms co‑innovate and deliver on RISE with SAP programs and process integrations, which often incorporate newly acquired capabilities.

Translation: SAP’s PMI is less about “swallowing” brands overnight and more about composability—plugging capabilities into a consistent identity, data and process backbone so customers can consume them end‑to‑end.

Divestitures: When “No Longer Core” Frees Up Cash (and Focus)

Serial acquirers also prune. SAP has shed businesses when they didn’t fit the core platform thesis or overlapped with other products:

• SAP Digital Interconnect (SDI) was sold to Sinch for €225 million in 2020—carving out telco messaging and carrier services to a specialist.
• SAP Litmos (LMS) was divested to Francisco Partners in 2022 as SAP rationalized overlapping learning offerings.
• Qualtrics—SAP’s most dramatic move—was spun out and then sold as part of the $12.5 billion take‑private by Silver Lake and CPP Investments in 2023; SAP sold all its shares at $18.15 per share in cash.

Biggest divestiture? The Qualtrics sale is the standout by value. Strategically, SAP framed it as a way to sharpen its portfolio and focus on core cloud ERP, while remaining a close go‑to‑market partner with Qualtrics for joint customers.

The Future: What Could SAP Buy Next?

Let’s put on our forecasting hat (the one with the tasteful feather):

1. AI copilots and automation fabric. Expect tuck‑ins that deepen Joule with domain‑specific AI, task mining, and agentic automation—extensions of Askdata and WalkMe’s logic layer.
2. Data governance & quality at scale. To make Business AI bite, SAP may seek stronger data lineage, quality, and privacy tooling for hybrid landscapes—complementary to BTP/DataSphere.
3. Industry clouds & networks. Look for bolt‑ons that enrich industry‑specific processes or network effects (think more Ariba‑like nodes in regulated sectors).
4. Sustainability & Scope 3 analytics. With growing compliance pressure, a specialist in product carbon footprinting, supply chain traceability, or ESG assurance could be very on‑brand for SAP’s value chain‑wide ambitions.

Deal size outlook: The macro for 2025–2026 suggests mid‑sized, capability‑centric buys versus mega‑deals. Recent financials show cloud revenue and backlog outperformance, giving SAP strategic firepower—but leadership has been disciplined about accretive, integration‑friendly targets.

Conclusion: SAP’s Serial‑Acquirer Superpower

Some serial acquirers are financial engineers; SAP is a process engineer. When it buys, the question isn’t “Can we arbitrage EBITDA?” It’s “Will this shorten time‑to‑value for S/4HANA customers and make end‑to‑end processes smarter?” The last five years point toward a coherent suite: design your processes (Signavio), map your apps (LeanIX), build/extensibly (AppGyver), guide your people (WalkMe), analyze conversationally (Askdata), engage customers (Emarsys), and finance your suppliers (Taulia)—all sitting on BTP and wired into identity, data, and process integration.

If SAP keeps that discipline, expect more bite‑sized, high‑leverage acquisitions in AI‑assisted automation, data quality, and industry networks—not because it needs more logos on a slide, but because that’s where customer outcomes (and renewal rates) live. Now that’s a serial‑acquirer strategy you can take to the board.

What would you add to SAP’s shopping list—and why? Tell us in the comments which capability would most improve your transformation outcomes.