Earlier this week, Accenture announced that it has acquired PureApps, a UK-based specialist in Oracle-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). PureApps enables clients to analyze financial data to gain insights into corporate performance, to measure and improve organizational effectiveness, and alignment to strategy. PureApps enhances Accenture’s capabilities for services to the CFO, and enhances its consultancy services in the UK and Europe and global shared services offering. This is good timing by Accenture when many large organizations are looking to get increased visibility into their financial performance.
PureApps is to be integrated into Accenture’s Finance and Enterprise Performance practice, part of Accenture Strategy. The acquisition fits into Accenture’s focus on increasing its analytics capabilities through acquisitions.
Another recent example of this strategy is the acquisition of i4C, announced on 30 April 2014. Italy-based i4C is a provider of advanced analytics applications (AAAs), turn-key industry- and function-specific solutions. The i4C ACE platform allows analytics to be built and integrated into workflow without the need to do any coding. It uses industry specific logic and maps business processes into the application with configuration tools. Its portfolio includes some applications for energy, finance, retail, manufacturing, and telco sectors and a set of other applications, such as predictive asset maintenance tools.
Everest Group estimates that the market for analytics BPS, alone, is set for 30% CAGR to 2015. Accenture has made steady investment in its analytic capabilities over the years but the most recent acquisitions, those of PureApps and i4C, in quick succession show that the service provider is positioning for the predicted growth in demand for analytics. It is also filling the gaps in its portfolio by adding different flavors of analytics (e.g., EPM and predictive analytics) to its existing capabilities such as customer analytics.
