Bol­ster­ing its busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion port­fo­lio, SAP announced that it has entered into a defin­i­tive agree­ment to acquire dig­i­tal adop­tion plat­form provider WalkMe for $1.5 bil­lion in cash.

Equip­ping busi­ness users with advanced guid­ance and automa­tion fea­tures to help them nav­i­gate new soft­ware and exe­cute work­flows across mul­ti­ple enter­prise appli­ca­tions, the plat­form will com­ple­ment the trans­for­ma­tion suite of SAP Sig­navio and SAP LeanIX to dri­ve adop­tion and con­tin­u­ous val­ue real­iza­tion for SAP cus­tomers embark­ing on trans­for­ma­tion journeys. 

“Appli­ca­tions, process­es, data, and peo­ple are the four key ele­ments of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion,” Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO and mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE, said in a state­ment. ​“By acquir­ing WalkMe, we are dou­bling down on the sup­port we pro­vide our end users, help­ing them to quick­ly adopt new solu­tions and fea­tures to get the max­i­mum val­ue out of their IT investments.”

The acqui­si­tion, announced Wednes­day, June 5, dur­ing SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do, is expect­ed to close in the third quar­ter of 2024. WalkMe was val­ued at less than $880 mil­lion ahead of the announce­ment, mean­ing SAP’s offer of $14 a share rep­re­sent­ed a 45% pre­mi­um over WalkMe’s clos­ing share price on Tues­day night.

WalkMe’s dig­i­tal adop­tion plat­form sits over oth­er appli­ca­tions, mon­i­tor­ing them and offer­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to opti­mize work­flows. The com­pa­ny recent­ly announced plans to launch WalkMe Copi­lot, using con­tex­tu­al aware­ness and AI to offer guid­ance for opti­mal next steps in work­flows; using the platform’s adop­tion and user intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties to enhance Joule will ​“boost AI assis­tant and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains for all SAP cus­tomers,” both com­pa­nies said in an offi­cial statement. 

Call­ing WalkMe a ​“mar­ket leader in dig­i­tal adop­tion plat­forms,” Scott Rus­sell, SAP’s Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer and a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE, explained that, togeth­er with SAP Sig­navio and LeanIX, WalkMe will ​“opti­mize” sup­port for SAP cus­tomers as they nav­i­gate these trans­for­ma­tion journeys. 

“With LeanIX, we brought in a capa­bil­i­ty to help you man­age your enter­prise sys­tems land­scape, your appli­ca­tions, [and] the capa­bil­i­ty to be able to under­stand your entire tech­nol­o­gy archi­tec­ture,” he added. 

“With SAP Sig­navio, we are able to then bring process insights, process man­age­ment, process min­ing — an under­stand­ing of your enter­prise busi­ness process­es across your SAP and non-SAP land­scape,” he added. 

“With WalkMe, we’re excit­ed about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to [pro­vide] those most impor­tant peo­ple — your peo­ple, the busi­ness user that wakes up every morn­ing and is using the SAP appli­ca­tions — a behav­ioral expe­ri­ence, to be able to help them with their tasks, to be able to sup­port them on their dig­i­tal adop­tion jour­ney using the SAP and non-SAP port­fo­lio. It’s anoth­er step for SAP, anoth­er piece for us to be able to cre­ate val­ue for all parts of your busi­ness: your data, your sys­tems, your process­es, and your people.” 

For many on-premis­es SAP cus­tomers explor­ing cloud trans­for­ma­tion, ERP com­plex­i­ty is an obsta­cle. Whether cus­tomers use mul­ti­ple ERP sys­tems in par­al­lel, main­tain heav­i­ly cus­tomized land­scapes, or both, tran­si­tion­ing to SAP S/4HANA requires vis­i­bil­i­ty of one’s busi­ness process­es, IT land­scape, and both cur­rent and tar­get inte­gra­tion and data archi­tec­ture. Com­pound­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of main­tain­ing such over­sight is the grow­ing SAP skills gap, which in turn has led SAP to focus on automat­ing var­i­ous aspects of busi­ness process transformation. 

By com­bin­ing WalkMe, Sig­navio, and LeanIX, in con­junc­tion with SAP Cloud Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (ALM), SAP seeks to sup­port the entire trans­for­ma­tion life­cy­cle for SAP customers. 

Tout­ing the news as indica­tive of SAP’s ambi­tion for busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion as a ser­vice in his day-two keynote, Thomas Sauer­es­sig, Head of Cus­tomer Ser­vices & Deliv­ery at SAP, fur­ther con­tex­tu­al­ized WalkMe with­in SAP’s ambi­tion to dri­ve ​“con­tin­u­ous adop­tion and inno­va­tion” for cus­tomers mov­ing to the cloud via RISE, say­ing that the solu­tion ​“man­i­fests our clear pas­sion­ate ambi­tion to help you fun­da­men­tal­ly dri­ve this inno­va­tion adoption. “

With SAP Cloud ALM, inte­grat­ed with SAP Signavio’s process min­ing and man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties, users can man­age the inte­gra­tion of SAP and non-SAP cloud assets, such as Sales­force and Work­day, with­in SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tions or migra­tions, accel­er­at­ing deliv­ery cycles. Sig­navio, mean­while, enables orga­ni­za­tions to stream­line process­es and iden­ti­fy bot­tle­necks, sup­port­ing them in mod­el­ing, ana­lyz­ing, and opti­miz­ing busi­ness process­es. LeanIX pro­vides users with enhanced archi­tec­tur­al vis­i­bil­i­ty and with map­ping depen­den­cies between var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, a core con­sid­er­a­tion of imple­men­ta­tion and upgrade projects. 

With WalkMe, SAP seeks to fur­ther focus on improv­ing adop­tion of the under­ly­ing solu­tions and fea­tures in play through­out cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions by enhanc­ing the user expe­ri­ence with greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of process work­flows and guid­ed sup­port in under­stand­ing how appli­ca­tions can be col­lec­tive­ly lever­aged across the SAP suite for transformation.