spendmatters
 

February 07, 2012

 

Closing Frictionless

I've not heard any noise recently about where SAP is in closing its acquisition of Frictionless Commerce. If anyone has any good scoop, please chime in! But given that acquisition and due-diligence work is not the same core competency at SAP as it is at Oracle, I'm not surprised that we've not seen any news recently on the deal (nor am I worried if the closing date falls past the July guidance). Still, I wonder what -- if anything -- could be next up in the Waldorf SRM shopping cart. Might SAP's next move be to buy a real spend visibility solution? I don't know about you, but BW just does not do it for me. And I'd bet that there are a good many folks inside SAP who understand procurement that feel the same way.

- Jason Busch


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Eric Strovink's Gravatar One can't really blame BW advocates for trying to "embrace and extend" into spend analysis. After all, most spend analysis purveyors provide nothing more than (1) data services, (2) a data warehouse, and (3) an OLAP viewer -- and often some or all of these components are generic products supplied by third parties (as with the old Frictionless and Procuri offerings). So why not just stick cleansed data into BW, write a few canned reports that demo well, and go for it?

If one believes the conventional wisdom that this is all that spend analysis amounts to, one might as well leverage the data warehouse and reporting tools that one already has. Taking that point of view to its logical conclusion, SAP should hire 10 guys in Bangalore to crunch data like the other providers. And presto! A new BW-based "spend analysis" product is born!
# Posted By Eric Strovink | 7/18/06 6:29 PM
Jason Busch's Gravatar According to one reader -- who is a source I trust -- the deal closed on June 5th and organizational changes have been transparent. Shows how behind the times I am (a new kid and sleep depravation will do that to you) ...
# Posted By Jason Busch | 7/19/06 6:32 AM
Don MacLennan's Gravatar Jason,

The deal did close on June 5, which is very fast given the announcement in mid-May. The company integration process is running smoothly. While SAP tends to make targeted acquisitions, I don't know where its reputation for "not knowing how to acquire companies" came from given my experience.

Soon, customers and prospects will be briefed on product roadmap and integration scenarios to various SAP modules and releases.

The response from the market has been very positive and we expect to have the Frictionless products in the hands of many more companies.
# Posted By Don MacLennan | 7/19/06 8:13 AM
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