InBev’s Anheuser-Busch takeover: an SAP win-win

Jack Danahy Profile: JackDanahy

Anheuser-Busch has agreed to a $52 billion takeover offer from Belgian beer company InBev. The deal will create the world’s largest beer company and generate plenty of possibilities in the SAP domain, as both companies are SAP customers. Anheuser-Busch runs SAP online procurement and supply/demand chain applications (the BudNet portal tracks distributor sales in order to give Anheuser-Busch an almost real-time picture of demand) as part of its larger use of SAP for Consumer Products; Anheuser-Busch is also a Business Objects customer. InBev runs SAP CRM and HCM.

Since InBev and Anheuser-Busch don’t significantly overlap in terms of their use of SAP, there’s a clear opportunity here for InBev to take over (and, indeed, globalize) the SAP software that Anheuser-Busch has successfully implemented in the U.S. Meanwhile, InBev could export its SAP CRM and HCM instances to Anheuser-Busch’s operations.

It’s rare for two large companies in the same space to have such different SAP footprints, but in this case there’s a lot of upside for InBev. The combined entity will have a comprehensive, non-overlapping portfolio of SAP resources that could be very valuable in improving global sales and execution processes.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

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