SAP Completes Acquisition of Callidus Software

SAP has completed its acquisition of Callidus Software, a company that offers lead-to-money applications—including sales performance management and configure-price-quote (CPQ)—under the umbrella of CallidusCloud. The deal, first announced in January, is valued at $2.4 billion.

According to SAP, the acquisition will yield a differentiated, cloud-based CRM solution, and the company plans to consolidate CallidusCloud assets within the SAP Hybris cloud portfolio.

SAP asserts that the acquisition completes its design of a new front office that extends beyond legacy CRM to offer what it dubs an intelligent customer experience suite. This suite consists of five components: CallidusCloud solutions, Gigya solutions (which SAP acquired last September), SAP Hybris marketing solutions, SAP Hybris service solutions, and SAP Hybris omnichannel commerce and revenue capabilities.

CallidusCloud solutions aim to provide companies with tools that empower sales professionals to follow leads. Gigya solutions aim to help businesses adopt a digital approach to marketing, sales, and service, with the goal of beginning and building relationships with online customers via appropriate collection and management of customer data. SAP Hybris marketing solutions aim to assist marketers in engaging customers throughout the buyer’s journey in a data-focused way, and SAP Hybris service solutions focus on retention, aiming to help businesses keep customers by predicting how to serve them best. Finally, SAP Hybris omnichannel commerce and revenue capabilities aim to enable businesses to engage customers on any channel and device, with the goal of immediately converting transactions to revenue and growth.

"SAP is connecting the back office to the front office in this consumer-driven growth revolution," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, in a statement. "Our customers are focused on reinventing sales, service, marketing, and commerce. The addition of CallidusCloud aligns perfectly to SAP's innovation strategy to transform the front office. SAP gives CallidusCloud the global scale to accelerate its already impressive growth. These two strong companies will be better together, help the world run better, and improve people's lives."

"We are super excited to join forces with SAP," said CallidusCloud's CEO, Leslie Stretch, in a statement. "This move gives customers precisely what they want, the market-leading Sales Performance (SPM), Sales Execution (CPQ) and Sales Enablement clouds combined with SAP Hybris and S/4HANA. This is true lead-to-money, beyond CRM and beyond quote-to-cash. It's the joined-up Front Office and Back Office Cloud everyone needs for 21st century business."

Sheryl Kingstone, research director of customer experience and commerce at 451 Research, says the move "was a great strategic acquisition for SAP that provides differentiating functionality."

"Sales teams need a platform that augments the buying process to provide insight, guidance, and interactions to ensure that the right message is used for the right prospect across formats and channels. Those capabilities currently are spread across a fractured sales technology landscape that is consolidating to become the next-generation modern sales platform," she says. "Sales technologies will continue to change dramatically over the next few years primarily due to the maturation of machine-learning algorithms."

SAP's acquisition of Gigya can't be overlooked, Kingstone adds. "The identity platform combined with CallidusCloud can offer relevant insights and intelligent recommendations to sales users, such as uncovering the many-to-many relationships between contacts, accounts, products, locations, and contracts," she points out.

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