SAP is acquiring business process management (BPM) software company Signavio, the two enterprise software companies have confirmed. Financial details were not disclosed, but the rumored price tag was roughly $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reports.
This is M&A deal number 72 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2021. See all technology M&A deals for 2021 and 2020 listed here.
Signavio, backed by growth equity investment firm Apax Partners, develops cloud-based BPM software to help customers track and manage workflows. Signavio’s Business Transformation Suite enables customers to "effectively mine, model, monitor, manage and maintain their business processes," the company says.
SAP and Signavio are very familiar with one another. Indeed Signavio co-founder and CEO Gero Decker along with several executive team peers previously worked at SAP. Also, Signavio's BPM software integrates with SAP's ERP software.
SAP Acquires Signavio: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the deal, Rouven Morato, General Manager, Business Process Intelligence, SAP, said:
"Signavio's capabilities in making business processes intelligent are highly complementary with our own. While we are providing insights using our deep understanding of business processes running in our applications and based on that can provide unmatched benchmarking capabilities, Signavio's approach to transformation is process model–centric. Signavio's process modeling and management functionalities, and its process governance and collaboration solution, are among the market leaders in the industry and are the missing component for providing our customers an end-to-end process transformation suite."
Added Decker:
"By joining SAP, we tap into the broadest business application software portfolio in the market, running the processes of the world. Considering the positioning of SAP, its geographical coverage and financial muscle, SAP is the biggest and best platform to bring process intelligence to every organization. For us, it's a massive jump start and a major opportunity to help SAP become a key player in the business process management and intelligence space."
The SAP-Signavio deal arrives at a critical time for SAP. The German software company, led by CEO Christian Klein, faces pressure from customers and investors amid a shift toward cloud services and recurring revenue opportunities.
Meanwhile, M&A activity in the BPM, workforce and workflow automation software sectors has been strong. For instance, ServiceNow recently acquired Element AI to meld artificial intelligence (AI) with automated workflows. And Citrix Systems is acquiring Wrike from private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $2.25 billion.
Blog originally posted January 25, 2021. Updated January 27, 2021 with confirmed deal information.
