The Convergence graphic that changes how you read every vendor evaluation you’ve ever seen — and why the two biggest platforms in procurement are headed in opposite directions from the same point.
Look at a graph long enough and it will tell you something no analyst report will.
We built a graphic. Three lines. Twenty-five years. One threshold. And once you see what it’s showing, you can’t unsee it.
The graph tracks the Capability-to-Outcome Gap — the measured distance between what a ProcureTech platform can do and what it demonstrably delivers — for SAP Ariba, Coupa, and the ProcureTech industry as a whole, from 2000 through 2028 (projected).
Here’s what it shows:
Three Lines, One Story
SAP Ariba (dark red, rising): The gap starts at 3.4 points in the pre-acquisition Ariba era. FreeMarkets is acquired — gap holds. Procuri is acquired — gap holds. SAP acquires Ariba for $4.3 billion — the gap accelerates. By January 2026, it reaches 4.7 points. Each acquisition added technological scope. None added readiness infrastructure. The line goes up. It doesn’t stop.
Coupa (gold, flat): The gap starts at approximately 4.2 and barely moves across five ownership transitions — founder-led, venture-backed, publicly traded, PE-acquired, PE-owned with a new CEO. The gap didn’t grow. It was always there. It was simply never visible because no evaluation framework measured it. Revenue growth and analyst validation substituted for outcome evidence at every phase.
Industry baseline (gray, gently declining): From approximately 4.8 in 2000 to approximately 4.0 in 2025. A quarter century of improvement. Sounds encouraging — until you realize what drove it and where it stopped.
All three lines converge in the same critical zone by 2025. Then they diverge.
The Tires on an Old Car
That gray industry baseline — the gentle decline from 4.8 to 4.0 over 25 years — represents the cumulative effect of every technology improvement the sector has produced. SaaS replaced on-premise. Cloud shortened timelines. APIs reduced integration complexity. User interfaces improved. Implementation playbooks matured. Consulting ecosystems professionalized.
New tires. Every few years, better tires. The car kept running. The failure rate dropped from catastrophic (~80%) to merely bad (~45%). And the industry celebrated the new tires because tires are visible, measurable, and easy to sell.
But the engine is still the same engine. The transmission is still the same transmission. The alignment is still off. The brakes are still worn. No amount of tire investment changed the fundamental driving experience.
The gray line declines to exactly 4.0 — the structural misalignment threshold — and flattens. It doesn’t cross below. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a ceiling.
Everything above 4.0 was fixable through technology investment. Better platforms, better deployment models, better tooling. Twenty-five years of tire changes brought the industry from 4.8 to 4.0.
Everything below 4.0 requires a different variable entirely: organizational readiness assessment, outcome measurement, implementation methodology that gates on whether the client environment can absorb the technology — not whether the technology has enough features.
The industry doesn’t sell that variable. Doesn’t measure it. Doesn’t incentivize it. It sells tires.
The Directional Pull: Why the Endpoint Numbers Lie
Here’s the misread that could cost you millions.
An executive glances at the 2025 convergence point: SAP Ariba at 4.7, Coupa at 4.8. SAP Ariba has the smaller gap. Looks like the better bet.
That reading is exactly wrong. And the graphic shows you why — if you look at direction, not position.
SAP Ariba’s line is accelerating upward. The gap went from 3.4 to 3.6 over five years, then from 3.6 to 4.7 in the post-acquisition period. The rate of deterioration is increasing. That’s a line with momentum. The dotted projection continues the historical curve — and there’s nothing in the current strategic response that would bend it downward.
Coupa’s line is flat with a potential downward pull. The gap sat at 4.8, stable but high. Then in 2025, two acquisitions introduced a variable that has never existed in Coupa’s trajectory before: readiness methodology. The dashed line drops toward the 4.0 threshold — a lightweight trying to pull down a giant.
The position says 4.7 vs. 4.8. The direction says accelerating upward vs. potential reversal. Direction is what determines where you’ll be in three years. Position is just where you are today.
SAP Is Building a New Car
On October 8, 2025, SAP Ariba announced it is abandoning its 25-year-old codebase and rebuilding from scratch on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
This isn’t new tires on an old car. This is building an entirely new car. And the industry is treating it as a solution.
But here’s the question the graphic forces you to ask: Why did the old car fail?
Was it the codebase? The architecture? The technology platform? Those are real problems — 25 years of acquisition-driven integration debt, bolted-together systems from FreeMarkets and Procuri and Quadrem layered onto manufacturing-origin SAP DNA. The architectural debt is genuine.
But the codebase isn’t why the OECM lost $20 million on an Ariba implementation in 2010. The architecture isn’t why the gap widened from 3.4 to 4.7. The platform isn’t why Outcome Measurement sits at 2.8/10 — the lowest score in the entire Hansen Fit Score Vendor Assessment Series.
The implementations failed because organizations deployed the technology without assessing whether their environment could absorb it. Without executive governance aligned to procurement transformation. Without process integrity, data reliability, change capacity, or stakeholder readiness. Without Phase 0.
A new car with the same driver, on the same road, in the same traffic, produces the same outcomes. It just looks better in the driveway.
The BTP rebuild addresses the Technology Capability dimension — which is already SAP Ariba’s strongest score at 7.5/10. It does not address Organizational Readiness Alignment (3.2/10), Outcome Measurement (2.8/10), or the Minimum Client HFS Required (7.5 — the highest threshold in the series, accessible to fewer than 30% of target organizations).
The dotted red line on the graphic continues upward because nothing in the BTP strategy addresses the variables that are pushing it upward.
Coupa’s Lightweight vs. the Giant
Coupa’s story is different — not better, but differently uncertain.
The gold line sat at 4.8 for years. Stable, but above the structural misalignment threshold. Then Cirtuo was acquired in May 2025 — a company that achieved 85% implementation success rates as an independent firm by doing exactly what no major ProcureTech vendor has ever done: assessing organizational readiness before deployment.
That dashed line dropping from 4.8 toward 3.6 represents the only documented path in the entire ProcureTech sector that points below the 4.0 threshold. The only trajectory in 25 years that could break through the ceiling that $30 billion in M&A investment couldn’t.
But look at what that dashed line is trying to pull down. An $8 billion PE-owned platform. Thoma Bravo’s margin optimization playbook. An exit timeline measured in years, not decades. An entire industry’s gravitational pull toward capability measurement over outcome measurement.
The question isn’t whether Cirtuo’s methodology works. It does — 85% proves that. The question is whether a methodology company acquired by a platform company under PE ownership retains the operational independence to function as a genuine readiness gate rather than being absorbed as a feature bullet on a marketing slide.
If Cirtuo is integrated as a Phase 0 prerequisite — “we won’t deploy Coupa until Cirtuo assesses your readiness” — that dashed line materializes. The gap narrows. And Coupa becomes the first major ProcureTech vendor to break below 4.0.
If Cirtuo is absorbed as a feature addition — another capability line item in the next analyst evaluation — the dashed line disappears. The gap holds at 4.8. And the one entity that knew how to close the gap gets consumed by an industry that doesn’t know how to let it.
What the Graph Tells an Executive
Stop reading the endpoint. Start reading the direction.
SAP Ariba at 4.7 and accelerating upward means the environment you deploy into today will likely be worse than the scores that were evaluated. The BTP transition introduces either continuing degradation on a declared-obsolete codebase or high-volatility migration with undefined timeline and cost. Either path compounds the historical trajectory. The 4.7 isn’t a fixed number — it’s a floor with no visible ceiling.
Coupa at 4.8 and potentially pulling downward means the risk is at least stable and possibly improving — but “potentially” and “possibly” carry weight. Unrealized acquisition potential is not the same as demonstrated capability. The probability estimate for Coupa (34–42%) reflects this uncertainty: the lower bound assumes Cirtuo is unrealized; the upper bound assumes partial integration.
Neither vendor crosses 50%. The platform with the better odds still gives you a higher probability of failure than success.
The gray line tells you why: the industry hit a ceiling 25 years in the making, and no vendor has broken through it, because no vendor has addressed the variable that would break through it.
Until now. Maybe.
The Full Assessment
The complete Comparative Assessment: SAP Ariba vs. Coupa — Practitioner Success Probability Assessment includes the full three-stage probability model, M&A impact analysis, multimodel consensus from six independent AI models, and the practitioner decision framework by organizational readiness band.
This is the assessment the industry hasn’t produced yet. The Hansen Fit Score measures what no other framework currently does: the distance between what a platform can do and what it demonstrably delivers.
It was never the technology. It was always readiness. Stop buying tires. Inspect the engine first.
Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.) | Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series RAM 2025™ Multimodel Assessment | 100% Independent — No Vendor Sponsorship Exposed. Explainable. Repeatable.
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Procurement Insights
New Tires on an Old Car: What $30 Billion in ProcureTech M&A Actually Bought You
Posted on February 7, 2026
0
The Convergence graphic that changes how you read every vendor evaluation you’ve ever seen — and why the two biggest platforms in procurement are headed in opposite directions from the same point.
Look at a graph long enough and it will tell you something no analyst report will.
We built a graphic. Three lines. Twenty-five years. One threshold. And once you see what it’s showing, you can’t unsee it.
The graph tracks the Capability-to-Outcome Gap — the measured distance between what a ProcureTech platform can do and what it demonstrably delivers — for SAP Ariba, Coupa, and the ProcureTech industry as a whole, from 2000 through 2028 (projected).
Here’s what it shows:
Three Lines, One Story
SAP Ariba (dark red, rising): The gap starts at 3.4 points in the pre-acquisition Ariba era. FreeMarkets is acquired — gap holds. Procuri is acquired — gap holds. SAP acquires Ariba for $4.3 billion — the gap accelerates. By January 2026, it reaches 4.7 points. Each acquisition added technological scope. None added readiness infrastructure. The line goes up. It doesn’t stop.
Coupa (gold, flat): The gap starts at approximately 4.2 and barely moves across five ownership transitions — founder-led, venture-backed, publicly traded, PE-acquired, PE-owned with a new CEO. The gap didn’t grow. It was always there. It was simply never visible because no evaluation framework measured it. Revenue growth and analyst validation substituted for outcome evidence at every phase.
Industry baseline (gray, gently declining): From approximately 4.8 in 2000 to approximately 4.0 in 2025. A quarter century of improvement. Sounds encouraging — until you realize what drove it and where it stopped.
All three lines converge in the same critical zone by 2025. Then they diverge.
The Tires on an Old Car
That gray industry baseline — the gentle decline from 4.8 to 4.0 over 25 years — represents the cumulative effect of every technology improvement the sector has produced. SaaS replaced on-premise. Cloud shortened timelines. APIs reduced integration complexity. User interfaces improved. Implementation playbooks matured. Consulting ecosystems professionalized.
New tires. Every few years, better tires. The car kept running. The failure rate dropped from catastrophic (~80%) to merely bad (~45%). And the industry celebrated the new tires because tires are visible, measurable, and easy to sell.
But the engine is still the same engine. The transmission is still the same transmission. The alignment is still off. The brakes are still worn. No amount of tire investment changed the fundamental driving experience.
The gray line declines to exactly 4.0 — the structural misalignment threshold — and flattens. It doesn’t cross below. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a ceiling.
Everything above 4.0 was fixable through technology investment. Better platforms, better deployment models, better tooling. Twenty-five years of tire changes brought the industry from 4.8 to 4.0.
Everything below 4.0 requires a different variable entirely: organizational readiness assessment, outcome measurement, implementation methodology that gates on whether the client environment can absorb the technology — not whether the technology has enough features.
The industry doesn’t sell that variable. Doesn’t measure it. Doesn’t incentivize it. It sells tires.
The Directional Pull: Why the Endpoint Numbers Lie
Here’s the misread that could cost you millions.
An executive glances at the 2025 convergence point: SAP Ariba at 4.7, Coupa at 4.8. SAP Ariba has the smaller gap. Looks like the better bet.
That reading is exactly wrong. And the graphic shows you why — if you look at direction, not position.
SAP Ariba’s line is accelerating upward. The gap went from 3.4 to 3.6 over five years, then from 3.6 to 4.7 in the post-acquisition period. The rate of deterioration is increasing. That’s a line with momentum. The dotted projection continues the historical curve — and there’s nothing in the current strategic response that would bend it downward.
Coupa’s line is flat with a potential downward pull. The gap sat at 4.8, stable but high. Then in 2025, two acquisitions introduced a variable that has never existed in Coupa’s trajectory before: readiness methodology. The dashed line drops toward the 4.0 threshold — a lightweight trying to pull down a giant.
The position says 4.7 vs. 4.8. The direction says accelerating upward vs. potential reversal. Direction is what determines where you’ll be in three years. Position is just where you are today.
SAP Is Building a New Car
On October 8, 2025, SAP Ariba announced it is abandoning its 25-year-old codebase and rebuilding from scratch on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
This isn’t new tires on an old car. This is building an entirely new car. And the industry is treating it as a solution.
But here’s the question the graphic forces you to ask: Why did the old car fail?
Was it the codebase? The architecture? The technology platform? Those are real problems — 25 years of acquisition-driven integration debt, bolted-together systems from FreeMarkets and Procuri and Quadrem layered onto manufacturing-origin SAP DNA. The architectural debt is genuine.
But the codebase isn’t why the OECM lost $20 million on an Ariba implementation in 2010. The architecture isn’t why the gap widened from 3.4 to 4.7. The platform isn’t why Outcome Measurement sits at 2.8/10 — the lowest score in the entire Hansen Fit Score Vendor Assessment Series.
The implementations failed because organizations deployed the technology without assessing whether their environment could absorb it. Without executive governance aligned to procurement transformation. Without process integrity, data reliability, change capacity, or stakeholder readiness. Without Phase 0.
A new car with the same driver, on the same road, in the same traffic, produces the same outcomes. It just looks better in the driveway.
The BTP rebuild addresses the Technology Capability dimension — which is already SAP Ariba’s strongest score at 7.5/10. It does not address Organizational Readiness Alignment (3.2/10), Outcome Measurement (2.8/10), or the Minimum Client HFS Required (7.5 — the highest threshold in the series, accessible to fewer than 30% of target organizations).
The dotted red line on the graphic continues upward because nothing in the BTP strategy addresses the variables that are pushing it upward.
Coupa’s Lightweight vs. the Giant
Coupa’s story is different — not better, but differently uncertain.
The gold line sat at 4.8 for years. Stable, but above the structural misalignment threshold. Then Cirtuo was acquired in May 2025 — a company that achieved 85% implementation success rates as an independent firm by doing exactly what no major ProcureTech vendor has ever done: assessing organizational readiness before deployment.
That dashed line dropping from 4.8 toward 3.6 represents the only documented path in the entire ProcureTech sector that points below the 4.0 threshold. The only trajectory in 25 years that could break through the ceiling that $30 billion in M&A investment couldn’t.
But look at what that dashed line is trying to pull down. An $8 billion PE-owned platform. Thoma Bravo’s margin optimization playbook. An exit timeline measured in years, not decades. An entire industry’s gravitational pull toward capability measurement over outcome measurement.
The question isn’t whether Cirtuo’s methodology works. It does — 85% proves that. The question is whether a methodology company acquired by a platform company under PE ownership retains the operational independence to function as a genuine readiness gate rather than being absorbed as a feature bullet on a marketing slide.
If Cirtuo is integrated as a Phase 0 prerequisite — “we won’t deploy Coupa until Cirtuo assesses your readiness” — that dashed line materializes. The gap narrows. And Coupa becomes the first major ProcureTech vendor to break below 4.0.
If Cirtuo is absorbed as a feature addition — another capability line item in the next analyst evaluation — the dashed line disappears. The gap holds at 4.8. And the one entity that knew how to close the gap gets consumed by an industry that doesn’t know how to let it.
What the Graph Tells an Executive
Stop reading the endpoint. Start reading the direction.
SAP Ariba at 4.7 and accelerating upward means the environment you deploy into today will likely be worse than the scores that were evaluated. The BTP transition introduces either continuing degradation on a declared-obsolete codebase or high-volatility migration with undefined timeline and cost. Either path compounds the historical trajectory. The 4.7 isn’t a fixed number — it’s a floor with no visible ceiling.
Coupa at 4.8 and potentially pulling downward means the risk is at least stable and possibly improving — but “potentially” and “possibly” carry weight. Unrealized acquisition potential is not the same as demonstrated capability. The probability estimate for Coupa (34–42%) reflects this uncertainty: the lower bound assumes Cirtuo is unrealized; the upper bound assumes partial integration.
Neither vendor crosses 50%. The platform with the better odds still gives you a higher probability of failure than success.
The gray line tells you why: the industry hit a ceiling 25 years in the making, and no vendor has broken through it, because no vendor has addressed the variable that would break through it.
Until now. Maybe.
The Full Assessment
The complete Comparative Assessment: SAP Ariba vs. Coupa — Practitioner Success Probability Assessment includes the full three-stage probability model, M&A impact analysis, multimodel consensus from six independent AI models, and the practitioner decision framework by organizational readiness band.
This is the assessment the industry hasn’t produced yet. The Hansen Fit Score measures what no other framework currently does: the distance between what a platform can do and what it demonstrably delivers.
It was never the technology. It was always readiness. Stop buying tires. Inspect the engine first.
Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.) | Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series RAM 2025™ Multimodel Assessment | 100% Independent — No Vendor Sponsorship Exposed. Explainable. Repeatable.
-30-
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