Back in October of last year, we blogged about Qualtrics’ planned acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta and what that would mean for clients of Qualtrics, Press Ganey (PG) Forsta, and InMoment, both inside and outside of the healthcare industry. Now that the deal is done, $6.75 billion later, there’s even more to discuss, so let’s talk about it.
At the time of the initial announcement, we anticipated that the acquisition would fill gaps in Qualtrics’ offering, extend its employee experience (EX) offering further into the healthcare sector, set a new standard in healthcare experience management, and force the firm to make tough decisions about what to integrate or sunset. Most of this still holds, and now there’s more to consider:
Qualtrics now boasts “the world’s largest AI dataset for human experiential context.” Previously, it touted having billions of customer profiles. Merging PG’s healthcare data into those profiles — where legally allowable — does increase its capabilities to generate more meaningful insights and strengthens its synthetic data and panel capabilities by improving segmentation and validation of AI-generated responses. The merger process will take some time, however, so the impact may not be immediate. The purchase is also unlikely to scuttle Qualtrics’ strategy for Edge, which facilitates clients’ access to partner-provided industry-specific datasets. Consider PG’s data as a “yes, and … ” that should validate and enrich Qualtrics’ data, particularly for customers’ experiences with payers and providers.
Healthcare providers should expect more pressure to adopt/transition to Qualtrics. If its recent X4 event in Seattle is any indication, Qualtrics isn’t hurting for healthcare clients. CEO Jason Maynard’s blog about the completed deal highlighted PG’s 41,000 facility clients, so it’s safe to assume that any providers that currently use PG with a customer feedback management solution that’s not Qualtrics will soon have to justify why they haven’t converted. Providers that opt out risk falling behind as Qualtrics consolidates the experience layer and raises expectations for what modern experience management platforms should deliver.
InMoment is unlikely to survive. Maynard’s blog post didn’t mention InMoment, instead going heavy on the value of the data Qualtrics is gaining from the PG purchase. That suggests that Qualtrics’ long-term strategy is either to ignore InMoment or to sunset it. InMoment clients should anticipate that the platform will see few, if any, major changes in the future and will more likely be sunset within the next two years. We recommend InMoment clients start developing their requirements list for an RFP/RFI process sooner rather than later. How (or if) Qualtrics plans to integrate the PG Forsta platform remains to be seen.
EX leaders should press for innovation. Both Qualtrics and Forsta are Leaders in The Forrester Wave™: Employee Experience Management Platforms, Q2 2025. Both have mature EX measurement and listening capabilities, and both have large customer bases for their EX offerings. We expect Forsta customers to feel pressure to migrate to Qualtrics, but they should not simply accept like-for-like. AI is unlocking new opportunities for EX vendors to deliver innovative new capabilities, such as deep listening and virtual focus groups, so now is an excellent time to explore taking your employee listening capabilities to the next level. Customers should press Qualtrics to help them modernize their approach with these capabilities as they evolve, as a condition of migrating sooner.
What should you do next? We recommend starting with a guidance session. You can use this time to do things like ask about how this acquisition affects your roadmap and investment plans, game-plan your strategy for your data and VoC infrastructure, or start your RFP criteria list. Not yet a Forrester client? We can solve that problem, too! Contact our sales team to learn about Forrester Decisions and how we can support your organization’s CX evolution.
