SAP SE Acquires Concur Technologies
Thursday October 9, 2014
SAP SE, the German enterprise software vendor, made the news on September 18th after they announced their plans to acquire Concur Technologies for a price tag of $8.3 billion, making this the biggest purchase SAP has ever made. Concur Technologies is considered a leading provider of expenses management and cloud-based travel solutions.
Why Concur Technologies?
SAP already offers specialized software services on its computing networks. With the purchase of Concur, SAP will be able to increase its online product offerings as well as strengthen its position in the travel sector which should result in increased software revenue.
The acquisition will likely be an efficient way for Concur to scale its business in locations outside of the United States and to sell what it offers in the way of business travel solutions to all of the SAP customers that don't already use Concur. However, it is also apparent that SAP is planning to make it a priority to sell their business enterprise solutions to customers of Concur.
SAP Cloud Growth
The primary motivation for this purchase by SAP is to accelerate cloud growth. Concur is considered the leading innovator in the corporate travel industry. This cloud- based provider of expense management and integrated travel solutions currently has 20,000 clients worldwide and is used by over 25 million individuals. With this acquisition, SAP has plans to strengthen the presence it already has in the networked economy
Along with Ariba, which was purchased by SAP in 2012 for $4.3 billion, the integration of Concur Technologies expense management and travel offerings are planned to expand the company in total transactions each year across 25 different industries.
The acquisition of Concur will increase the SAP cloud users population from 38 million to 50 million.