SAP Tuesday announced that it has bought Khimetrics Inc., a vendor of price-optimization, revenue-management and demand-forecasting software for retailers. This deal follows SAP's September acquisition of Triversity Inc., a Toronto-based maker of point-of-sale applications, and it comes eight months after SAP lost out to Oracle in its bid to buy retail software maker Retek Inc.

Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Khimetrics is privately held. Terms of the deal, which is scheduled to close in January, were not disclosed. Among the company's marquee customers are PetSmart Inc., which is also an SAP account, 7-Eleven Inc. and Lowe's Companies Inc.

The Khimetrics buyout will allow SAP to offer an end-to-end application to handle retail supply chain and demand chain operations without having to rely on partners, said Rick Chavie, SAP senior vice president of industry solution management, trading. The Khimetrics software enables merchandisers to more accurately handle promotions, predict customer demand, craft discounts and avoid running out of stock.

Because the software is Java-based, it should snap into the SAP for Retail offering using SAP's own NetWeaver integration and middleware stack, he said. The applications will also be geared toward the financial services and consumer products industries, SAP said.

Buying a company that offers software with comprehensive pricing and promotion capabilities and a powerful demand intelligence engine is "mandatory" if SAP wants to compete for enterprise retail deals, according to a note by Boston based consultancy AMR Research Inc. And if SAP wants to keep Khimetrics users happy, it will need to quickly and clearly outline its product development and integration road map.