SAP acquires Abakus - A Snap Analysis

This week Abakus and SAP announced the acquisition of Abakus by SAP.

Abakus is building marketing measurement and optimization software based upon a patented technology platform that analyses marketing activity across channels in real time and helps explaining what works, what does not, and suggests how and what to change to improve marketing performance. With its real-time ability Abakus makes it possible for customers to change marketing campaigns on the fly. It also supports budget planning and optimization by delivering improved forecasts.

To achieve this the platform utilizes a game theory based model.

SAP intends to integrate this software into the SAP Hybris Marketing Cloud. Doing so they deliver a little jab into the Oracle and Salesforce corners by also claiming to be “the fastest growing enterprise cloud company” – hot competition also on the claims frontier ...

The goal of the integration is offering an end-to-end marketing solution that, in an omni-channel environment by

• Reducing complexity by integrating data from multiple sources into a single unified view of the customer across disparate systems;
• Simplifying marketing through automation of planning, personalization and optimization; and,
• Providing trusted measurement by using advanced analytics attribution to show what is driving sales.

My Take

The functionality that Abakus delivers will significantly improve SAP’s ability to help customers optimising and directing marketing spend, even for ongoing campaigns. SAP already has sophisticated profiling, segmentation and automation capabilities in place, which can get a further boost by the additional insight that can get delivered via Abakus. This additional insight piece is where SAP currently has a gap in its solution. I can see some immediate advantage not only for companies doing direct sales to consumers but also for brands that sell through retailers – if they can afford the combined solution, that is.