Overview:
On December 13, 2019 Accenture announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights, a United States-based data consultancy with deep data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise.
Clarity Insights will be a part of Accenture’s Applied Intelligence business. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
About Accenture:
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.
It has 492,000 employees serving clients in more than 120 countries across more than 40 industries. Accenture Applied Intelligence has more than 20,000 employees including 6,000 data scientists.
About Clarity Insights:
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Chicago, IL, with additional offices in New York, NY, San Mateo, CA and Denver, CO, Clarity Insights is a leading provider of data science and AI / ML engineering services.
The consultancy has c. 350 employees and acts as strategic partner to large enterprises across a range of industries, particularly healthcare, financial services and insurance.
Transaction Rationale:
With this acquisition, Accenture expands its technical capabilities and industry expertise strengthening its ability to help its clients scale AI across their businesses.
According to a research by Accenture, 87% of healthcare executives surveyed reported that they know how to pilot, but struggle to scale AI across their business. Clarity Insights’ focus on insight-driven transformation for healthcare bolsters Accenture’s capabilities in this vertical.
This acquisition builds upon Accenture’s 2018 acquisitions of United States based companies, Knowledgent and Kogentix, and will play a pivotal role in strengthening Accenture’s growing analytics, AI and ML / data engineering business in North America. Global growth in AI client engagements has also served as a driver for Applied Intelligence acquisitions of Pragsis Bidoop in Spain and Analytics8 in Australia this year.
In June 2019, Accenture was named a leader in AI vendor services in IDC’s Worldwide AI Services Vendor Assessment, 2019.
In FY 2019, Accenture invested c. $1.2 billion globally on 33 acquisitions to acquire critical skills and capabilities in strategic, high-growth areas of the market.
The Chesapeake Group was not the advisor in this transaction.