ORLANDO, Fla. — SAP has agreed to acquire digital adoption platform vendor WalkMe for $1.5 billion. The acquisition was unveiled on Day 2 of the SAP Sapphire conference.
WalkMe, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, provides a software platform that can help employees understand and use enterprise applications more effectively.
SAP expects to integrate WalkMe into its portfolio of applications that aids companies through transformations from on-premises systems to cloud systems ready to support technologies such as AI. That portfolio already includes Signavio, which SAP acquired in 2021, for understanding business processes; and LeanIX, which SAP acquired in 2023, for understanding an IT application architecture as a whole.
The WalkMe platform sits on top of an organization’s IT applications layer and determines where users might experience difficulties such as getting stuck when performing a process or task. WalkMe then provides guidance and automated processes that help the user complete the task.
WalkMe currently supports SAP and other enterprise applications from Oracle, Salesforce and Workday. WalkMe will continue to support these applications, according to SAP.
WalkMe helps the user and the CIO
SAP acquired WalkMe because of its modern software that can help both users perform work tasks more effectively and CIOs understand what’s working or not in a changing IT environment, said Rouven Morato, general manager at SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX.
“In the cloud, there are so many changes happening all the time and innovations coming, such as AI,” Morato said. “End users can’t keep up, but the CIOs need to make sure the functionalities are adopted, because why should they spend a lot of money on AI capabilities if no one knows about them or uses them?”
The addition of WalkMe to a portfolio that includes SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX is about the people side of transformation around change management, he said.
“It’s taking the end user by the hand and explaining to them the why and the how of what’s changing, and how it will affect their work,” Morato said. “Value is not created because IT rolled something out or the process owner changes a process. It’s created once the end user adopts the [application or the process].”
Currently, about 80% of WalkMe’s business is with non-SAP applications, and it will continue its support because SAP recognizes the drive for a platform approach to business transformation across the IT environment, he said.
“If you have Salesforce for CRM and S/4HANA for finance, and want to have cross-application processes, you need to be able to manage both,” Morato said. “We’re putting WalkMe into a business transformation area that includes Signavio and LeanIX, which are both tools that also go across SAP and non-SAP applications.”
HR departments increasingly use digital adoption platforms for onboarding and training, and WalkMe can play that role for SAP, according to Mark Feffer, contributing analyst at 3Sixty Insights and editor of the WorkforceAI Substack.
“It makes a lot of sense in that respect, especially now where there’s so much new technology coming out,” Feffer said. “Training’s going to be a problem, and WalkMe is a neat solution to that. Given the scope of SAP’s platform, especially in the enterprise, this is a handy tool for HR and training and development to have.”
Read the full article here: SAP snaps up WalkMe for $1.5B