Yesterday, SAP announced that it is acquiring Qualtrics for a hefty $8 billion in cash.

For SAP, this does make some sense. SAP is often perceived as being a legacy provider that struggles to play in the consumer space, and this acquisition may help it make a larger data play. It may also enable SAP to close the loop when it comes to some of the voice of the customer (VoC) gaps in its C/4HANA customer experience suite that was announced earlier this year. But all of this is to be determined.

For Qualtrics, the benefits are more about playing in a space in which it claims greater expertise than it has. Despite its strong performance in “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q4 2018,” the enterprise space is still newer for Qualtrics, so it makes sense to be associated with a company such as SAP that is known in the enterprise space — and especially known for its scalability.

Put simply, it is still unclear what — if any — short-term benefits SAP or Qualtrics clients will gain. I know that a lot of people seem to be asking these questions:

  • Will this acquisition help SAP achieve what it has long tried, but failed, to do?
  • With the insane multiple on the revenue, the ROI is going to have to be high, but will this acquisition be able to deliver what is necessary here?

Maybe we should send a survey out and see what people think.