SAP buys Praxis to offer e-commerce to small companies

With its acquisition of Praxis Software Solutions, enterprise software provider SAP AG plans to offer e-commerce and web-delivered CRM capabilities to the small-business users of its Business One software suite. Terms were not disclosed.

SAP has offered Business One since 2002 as an enterprise suite for small and mid-sized companies, but Minneapolis-based Praxis will enable it to meet the demand for a growing number of retailers and manufacturers who want integrated e-commerce functionality, a spokesman says. Among the users of Praxis technology is Brooklyn, NY-based Yak Pak, which designs and manufactures backpacks, bags and accessories, and sells them through YakPak.com.

Business One is designed to let companies integrate data from their e-commerce operations with back-end applications that manage analytics, inventory, accounting and other operations, a spokesman said. Its license fee is $3,750 per user, and it currently operates on a Windows-based platform. But SAP is in the process of migrating it to the web-based NetWeaver platform, the spokesman says.

“E-commerce and web-based CRM are among the largest growth areas in business software for small and mid-sized enterprises worldwide,” SAP said in announcing the Praxis acquisition.