The general strategy for acquisitions is you get 2 years to mostly grow and run on your own. The ones that do fine on their own, continue to be on their own while slowing integrating with the rest of the business.

The ones that don't do well, get taken over more aggressively.

The "problem" is that no one is told this is the plan. I don't even know if it's a plan, but an organic thing that occurs.

The leadership of the acquired companies need to realize, they are in the same situation, and need to aggressively continue to work towards improvement. What I've found is, several companies go, "Okay, we're bought.. let's keep our current customers happy"

Current customers, while valuable, are not what SAP is buying. They are buying the potential for expanding to their whole base. Aggressively attacking these problems at the beginning would have turned the "unsuccessful" or less successful acquisitions into successful ones.

But it isn't just made clear to you that you have 2-3 years to do this on your own, effectively, or SAP will take it over and do it for you.

--- These are just my opinions/experience, ymmv.

It probably helps that my direct manager is shielding us from a lot of the bureaucracy and allowing us lots of individual freedom wrt technical decisions (our team sometimes feels more like a small startup embedded within the company). But people from other teams seem (mostly) happy with their positions as well.

The culture is very good here, part of it due to it being formerly a big Ariba office, but the benefits are good, work from home is fantastic. Honestly I don't love my work but the benefits keep me here.