SAP Takes Triversity For Retail
Clint Boulton, a senior writer at CIO, covers IT leadership, digital transformation, and the CIO role. He was a content marketer for Dell APEX. Inspire IT leaders with tales about the advantages of multi-cloud infrastructures. Dunning-Kruger bias is something that keeps IT leaders sceptical, but curious nonetheless.
Proving that it isn't going to sit on its laurels while rival Oracle snaps up applications specialists, SAP AG
agreed to acquire retail software maker Triversity for a private sum.
Toronto, Canada-based Triversity is a top maker of point-of-sale (POS) software,
which helps computers in retail stores execute purchases. The company makes
applications that cover traditional and enterprise POS, store inventory
management, POS loss prevention, customer loyalty and multi-channel customer
service.
SAP isn't filling a hole with the purchase, but it is beefing up its broad
retail software portfolio after losing its bid to acquire
Retek to top competitor Oracle.
SAP said in a statement that Triversity's software is “highly complementary” to
its existing retail solution offering, which includes applications for
financial management, human resources, supplier relationship management and
customer relationship management.
SAP's software also helps prop up merchandise management and planning, store
and channel management, demand forecasting, replenishment and workforce
management to help companies sell products to consumers.
SAP also believes the deal, expected to close in October, shouldn't faze
Tiversity's 250 customers much because the vendors share common customers,
including Trader Joe's, The Body Shop and Wawa.
The German applications leader also said more than 2,700 retailers worldwide
are SAP customers, 400 of which are using applications from its retail
portfolio.
Applications makers like SAP and Oracle see the retail industry as a
significant, multi-billion-dollar growth opportunity because more and more
retailers have ceased making their own proprietary software to run
operations.
Vendors are aggressively pushing so-called open software standards, in which
software from one vendor will work with applications from a competing
vendor. Enterprises are listening, seeking out solutions from Oracle, SAP
and others.
“The acquisition of Triversity falls right in line with our strategy of
acquiring companies to enhance product functionality and extend our leading
position within key industry verticals,” said Bill McDermott, president and
CEO of SAP America, in a statement. “Our acquisition strategy is not to
acquire customers, but rather to help serve our customers better.”
Oracle, meanwhile, has been on a tear in the applications space, acquiring PeopleSoft,
Retek and most recently Siebel
to better compete with SAP, which is still the largest applications maker in
the world.
SAP's bid to buy Triversity can be viewed as more than just a competitive
coup: It's a marketing ploy to detract attention from Oracle's Open
World conference this week in San Francisco, where the company announced a third iteration of its Application Server 10g.
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