SHORT VERSION FOR BUSY EXECUTIVES
Between 2000 and 2025, the procurement technology industry’s ten largest acquisitions transferred more than $30 billion in enterprise value. SAP bought Ariba. Thoma Bravo bought Coupa. Vista bought Jaggaer. IBM bought Emptoris. Workday bought Scout RFP. Coupa bought LLamasoft. The platforms got better every time. The outcomes didn’t.
We tracked Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement across all ten deals. The gap between them widened 330% — from 1.3 points to 5.6. Every acquisition was evaluated on platform features, market position, and network scale. Not one included an independent assessment of whether the organization could convert that capability into practitioner results.
The graph below tells that story in a single image.
There isn’t much to add to what the graph already shows.
The gold line is what the industry bought. The burgundy line is what practitioners got. The red space between them is where $30 billion went.
Each of these acquisitions made the technology objectively better. More features. More AI. More integration. More scale. And each one widened the gap between what the platform could do and what organizations actually achieved with it.
The pattern isn’t vendor-specific. It shows up in SAP’s $4.3 billion Ariba acquisition — which we documented in detail last week. It shows up in Thoma Bravo’s $8 billion Coupa deal. It shows up in every PE-driven consolidation that evaluated technology capability without measuring organizational readiness.
If capability were the variable that determined success, this graph would be impossible. You can’t spend $30 billion making tools better and have outcomes get worse — unless the tools were never the determining variable.
They weren’t.
Readiness was. It still is.
HOW WILL THIS GAP EXPANSION TREND HOLD UP ON AN INDIVIDUAL 2024 CASE
In May 2024, KKR acquired mdf Commerce for C$255 million (~US$189M) and took it private. By August, the company had rebranded as SOVRA — consolidating Bidnet Direct, Periscope, and MERX under a single public procurement brand. By August 2025, the founding CEO had been replaced, six business units had been sold, a new acquisition (Ontopical) had been bolted on, and a new CEO from the GovTech sector had been installed.
At no point in this sequence — before the acquisition, during the rebrand, or after the restructuring — was an independent assessment conducted to determine whether practitioners on the platform were achieving their stated implementation objectives.
The graph below tracks Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement across all four phases.
MACRO AND MICRO GRAPH COMPARISON
In May 2024, KKR acquired mdf Commerce for C$255 million (~US$189M) and took it private. By August, the company had rebranded as SOVRA — consolidating Bidnet Direct, Periscope, and MERX under a single public procurement brand. By August 2025, the founding CEO had been replaced, six business units had been sold, a new acquisition (Ontopical) had been bolted on, and
- Capability keeps rising while outcomes stagnate or fall.
In both charts the yellow “Technology Capability” line trends sharply upward over time or across deals, while the red “Outcome Measurement” line is flat or declining, making the capability‑to‑outcome gap steadily widen.
- M&A money is optimizing the wrong variable.
The 10‑deals graphic shows more than $30B invested across acquisitions with the gap widening from roughly 1.3 to 5.6 points, and the SOVRA case shows C$255M spent over four phases with outcomes deteriorating and no verified practitioner success data.
- Readiness was never measured, and that’s the common failure mode.
Both visuals highlight “Zero readiness assessments” or “No readiness assessment” and “Zero verified practitioner outcome data,” making it explicit that none of these large transactions included independent checks on organizational readiness or post‑implementation outcomes—exactly where the Hansen Fit Score and Phase 0 would have intervened
The full evidence for the SAP Ariba pattern is available in the Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment Report. The Coupa Software Consolidated Assessment is available here.
Jon Hansen has covered the procurement technology market independently since 2007 through Procurement Insights. The Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series is a product of Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.).
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Procurement Insights
10 Deals. $30 Billion. Zero Readiness Assessments.
Posted on February 10, 2026
0
SHORT VERSION FOR BUSY EXECUTIVES
Between 2000 and 2025, the procurement technology industry’s ten largest acquisitions transferred more than $30 billion in enterprise value. SAP bought Ariba. Thoma Bravo bought Coupa. Vista bought Jaggaer. IBM bought Emptoris. Workday bought Scout RFP. Coupa bought LLamasoft. The platforms got better every time. The outcomes didn’t.
We tracked Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement across all ten deals. The gap between them widened 330% — from 1.3 points to 5.6. Every acquisition was evaluated on platform features, market position, and network scale. Not one included an independent assessment of whether the organization could convert that capability into practitioner results.
The graph below tells that story in a single image.
There isn’t much to add to what the graph already shows.
The gold line is what the industry bought. The burgundy line is what practitioners got. The red space between them is where $30 billion went.
Each of these acquisitions made the technology objectively better. More features. More AI. More integration. More scale. And each one widened the gap between what the platform could do and what organizations actually achieved with it.
The pattern isn’t vendor-specific. It shows up in SAP’s $4.3 billion Ariba acquisition — which we documented in detail last week. It shows up in Thoma Bravo’s $8 billion Coupa deal. It shows up in every PE-driven consolidation that evaluated technology capability without measuring organizational readiness.
If capability were the variable that determined success, this graph would be impossible. You can’t spend $30 billion making tools better and have outcomes get worse — unless the tools were never the determining variable.
They weren’t.
Readiness was. It still is.
HOW WILL THIS GAP EXPANSION TREND HOLD UP ON AN INDIVIDUAL 2024 CASE
In May 2024, KKR acquired mdf Commerce for C$255 million (~US$189M) and took it private. By August, the company had rebranded as SOVRA — consolidating Bidnet Direct, Periscope, and MERX under a single public procurement brand. By August 2025, the founding CEO had been replaced, six business units had been sold, a new acquisition (Ontopical) had been bolted on, and a new CEO from the GovTech sector had been installed.
At no point in this sequence — before the acquisition, during the rebrand, or after the restructuring — was an independent assessment conducted to determine whether practitioners on the platform were achieving their stated implementation objectives.
The graph below tracks Technology Capability and Outcome Measurement across all four phases.
MACRO AND MICRO GRAPH COMPARISON
In May 2024, KKR acquired mdf Commerce for C$255 million (~US$189M) and took it private. By August, the company had rebranded as SOVRA — consolidating Bidnet Direct, Periscope, and MERX under a single public procurement brand. By August 2025, the founding CEO had been replaced, six business units had been sold, a new acquisition (Ontopical) had been bolted on, and
In both charts the yellow “Technology Capability” line trends sharply upward over time or across deals, while the red “Outcome Measurement” line is flat or declining, making the capability‑to‑outcome gap steadily widen.
The 10‑deals graphic shows more than $30B invested across acquisitions with the gap widening from roughly 1.3 to 5.6 points, and the SOVRA case shows C$255M spent over four phases with outcomes deteriorating and no verified practitioner success data.
Both visuals highlight “Zero readiness assessments” or “No readiness assessment” and “Zero verified practitioner outcome data,” making it explicit that none of these large transactions included independent checks on organizational readiness or post‑implementation outcomes—exactly where the Hansen Fit Score and Phase 0 would have intervened
The full evidence for the SAP Ariba pattern is available in the Ariba | SAP | SAP Ariba Consolidated Assessment Report. The Coupa Software Consolidated Assessment is available here.
Jon Hansen has covered the procurement technology market independently since 2007 through Procurement Insights. The Hansen Fit Score™ Vendor Assessment Series is a product of Hansen Models (1001279896 Ontario Inc.).
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