SAP is acquiring customer identity and access management platform vendor – and SAP partner – Gigya to ramp up its Hybris eCommerce platform's capabilities.
No transaction details were provided.
SAP says it will use the transaction to become the first organisation to offer a cloud-based data platform enabling companies to profile and convert new customers, gather accurate conclusions from disparate consumer engagement sources and collect data for enhanced consumer choices that are in line with regulations.
Carsten Thoma, SAP Hybris president and co-founder, says Gigya brings a wealth of skills and expertise which will significantly enhance the SAP Hybris Profile solution 'and allow us to take leadership of the emerging customer identity and access management market'.
"Consumer trust is the main currency to succeed for customer-driven organisations," Thoma says. "This is what Gigya is known and recognised for.
Gigya, which was founded in Israel and is now headquartered in California, was recently placed as a leader in Forrester's Customer Identity and Access Management wave and is used by more than 700 enterprises including 50% of the comScore top 100 US web properties.
The platform helps companies manage customers' profiles, preference, opt-in and consent settings, with Gigya managing 1.3 billion customer identities.
"Gigya's technology provides new capabilities to consumers across channels and touch points, builds rich intelligent profiles and creates a consent-based approach to personalisation across sales, service and marketing," SAP says.
Gigya has been an SAP Hybris partner since 2013 - prior to Hybris' acquisition by SAP - with customers using an extension from SAP Hybris and Gigya.
"This acquisition will enable the teams to further build upon this existing strong relationship," SAP says.
Patrick Salyer, Gigya chief executive, says combining the data matching and enrichment capabilities of SAP Hybris Profile with Gigya's consent-based identity data and access management platform will allow the companies to identify consumers across channels and offer a 'robust' single consumer profile.
"This is vital for digitalising businesses because companies need to be able to draw accurate conclusions seamlessly across all channels, including web, mobile, in-store or connected devices, and the internet of things, as well as collect data about consumer preferences," Salyer says.
"Together we are well positioned to drive more effective marketing, sales and services through data, while the customer stays in control of how much data is shared.
Gigya will become part of the SAP Hybris business unit for customer engagement and commerce once the transaction closes, which is expected to be in the final quarter of 2017.
