M&As: Many Tuck-In Acquisitions and Cognizant ESG

/ April 14, 2021

ER&D vendors continue to be very active in M&As, with many tuck-in acquisitions. AFRY is now in full acquisition mode with six transactions in 2021 YTD. Competitor Sweco has also accelerated with four transactions. Accenture has made an unusual transaction by taking over a manufacturer of industrial automation and robots in Brazil for Accenture Industry X. Finally, Cognizant acquired a significant German automotive ER&D vendor, ESG.

An Integrated AFRY: Repositioned around Digital and Sustainability

/ March 15, 2021

AFRY recently unveiled its strategy: the company plans to become more integrated and positioned around digital technologies and sustainability. AFRY has suffered in the past few years of a lack of organic growth. In 2019, right before the pandemic, the company grew organically by 1.9%, underperforming most competitors. Then came 2020, and AFRY handled the crisis well, with an organic decline of only 6.4%

Accenture X Acquires A SCM SAP Specialist

/ September 16, 2020

Accenture made another acquisition for its Industry X unit. Salt Solutions is based in Würzburg, 80 miles away from Frankfurt, in Germany. It, also, has offices in Stuttgart, Dresden, and Munich. Salt is SAP-centric with a specialization in SCM and also capabilities around production systems, all around SAP.

Accenture acquires in the MES space with ESP

/ March 9, 2019

With the launch of Industry X.0 last year, Accenture had voiced its intention to enter the ER&D services, starting by IoT and digital technologies. During the summer of 2018, the company had acquired two embedded software specialists and one product design firm. The scale of the acquisition was relatively modest with a combined ~450 consultants added