Accenture made a big move with the acquisition of Umlaut, an ER&D vendor headquartered in Germany. The transaction comes as a surprise: umlaut brings EUR 350m in revenues. It is the first sizable acquisition that Accenture made for Industry X. Up to now
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.
Accenture made another acquisition for Industry X. The new firm acquired by Accenture is named Myrtle Consulting and is headquartered in Houston, TX. We estimate its headcount to below 200. It is a consultancy firm.
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 made a rare acquisition in PLM services for its Industry X.0 unit. The company is to acquire a Torino-headquartered PTC partner, PLM Systems. PLM Systems is a small firm and has 30 consultants
Accenture made another acquisition for its Industry X.0 unit. The newly acquired firm is Callisto Integration, an industrial IT specialist that is headquartered in Oakville, Ontario.
Despite the stock market melt-down, ER&D vendors have continued to make tuck-in acquisitions in the past two weeks. The acquired firms were of small size and not likely to impact the net debt of their new owners. However, should the Covid-19-China-US trade-war-Stock Markets meltdown-oil price crisis degenerate into a recession, we expect suck tuck-in acquisitions to become scarce.
NelsonHall has published a new blog about how Accenture, through Industry X.0, is not only targeting product design and engineering opportunities but also digital manufacturing.
It has been almost three years since Accenture launched Industry X.0, and we estimate that Accenture acquired nine competitors in these 36 months. The pace is accelerating with Accenture having five competitors in 2019, YTD.
Last year, we had commented about Accenture’s ambitions in the ER&D space, through its Industry X.0 unit.
Accenture continues to deploy its M&A strategy and has made its fifth acquisition for Industry X.0. The company acquired Zielpuls, an ER&D vendor servicing the German automotive industry. Zielpuls is an embedded systems specialist.
Accenture has opened a new “Industry X.0 Innovation” center. The new center is located in Bilbao, Spain, once an industrial city that has grown significantly in the past twenty years.
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
Accenture had a busy summer, making three tuck-in acquisitions to its recently-created new Industry X.0 unit
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NelsonHall talked with Accenture recently, and discussed the ER&D ambition of Accenture Digital’s new unit, Industry