Software giant SAP's $8.3 billion deal to purchase travel and expense platform Concur has closed, marking an official end to Concur's independent past and setting the tone for a combined future.
All currently outstanding shares of Concur have now been converted to $129 per share in cash, with the shares soon to be delisted from NASDAQ.
In the announcement following the release, SAP is focusing on how the Concur acquisition fits its self-billed positioning as "the world's largest business network." Concur sits alongside Ariba and Fieldglass in the recently-acquired portfolio, which aims to deliver a holistic cloud-based product suite for SAP's customer base.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott places Concur in the march towards the consumerization of all things enterprise:
Social networks have made it easier than ever for us to shop, share and consume. Companies want this same simplicity. SAP provides the largest global network of digitally connected companies for businesses to collaborate, organize and innovate business models in entirely new ways.
With the acquisition of Concur, we are expanding this network and delivering on our promise to help companies run simple. Business travel and expense management are notorious business challenges for companies worldwide. I’m thrilled for our customers that the leading solutions for travel and expense management are now part of the SAP Cloud portfolio.
For the average Concur user, the impact is not readily apparent as there are no immediate product changes or direction shifts in the works. Concur will still manage all of its client relationships, and the average user will continue to use the service as is.
When asked about how the sales approach will develop - especially related to selling Concur customers on SAP products - Tim Minahan, CMO of SAP Cloud told Tnooz:
We’re only less than 24 hours into being a single company, so a lot of the teams are just getting together to map this out. We really view this as an enabling platform for this new model for resource management. So companies can manage all of their resources from indirect spend, to travel to workforce, not only from automating the processes but having a connected community of suppliers, customers, financial institutions and partners together.From a sales execution standpoint, what makes a network so attractive is that each one of the networks have been built on an open, application-agnostic framework. One of the first things we will do is optimize for the SAP environment by providing out-of-the-box adapters, but also we will work to onboard any customer, whether also using Infor or Oracle or something else.The premise is that all of those parties should be able to collaborate in an efficient and scalable manner. That’s a key part - this isn’t solely just for customers that are using SAP technology on the backend. It’s for individuals using any technology platform.We think we were pretty smart for putting the company together, but we’re not as smart as our customers - many of whom have already put those companies together. Such as using Concur with Ariba to more holistically deliver a full spend management solution.
Concur will continue to be led by its existing management team as a division within SAP, and SAP will begin providing guidance on the impact of the brand on revenue and profits - as well as a more detailed product roadmap - early next year.