CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up series continues this week with a focus on Accenture’s latest acquisitions and its growth strategy for Procurement Services. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you are continually innovating the way that procurement and supply chain leaders and practitioners drive value, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!
Accenture Grows Procurement Services Through Acquisitions
Accenture is a recognized brand the world over. In its pursuit to become a leading global procurement services provider across advisory, technology, and operations, Accenture set its sights on several acquisitions. Over the last few months, three of those acquisitions set Procurement Services toward further strengthening the business and supporting global clients.
Procurement Services, an Accenture Growth Initiative
Ardent Partners sat down with Rob Fuhrmann, senior managing direct and global lead for Sourcing and Procurement at Accenture, to discuss Accenture Procurement Services, its acquisitions, and future goals. He says three service areas comprise his team’s offering:
1) Strategy and consulting. Cost takeout for clients is the focus, with operating model and digitization strategy and transformation also being front and center.
2) Technology. With ecosystem partners such as Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer and Ivalua, the technology team is attuned to client technology requirements and how to leverage its ecosystem partners’ solutions for the greatest gain.
3) Procurement operations. A global team supports clients with their managed services initiatives, including upstream source to contract and downstream P2P — with 38 delivery centers globally supporting various regions.
Fuhrmann says there are three key areas where the firm sees significant growth and focus for the future, supporting the business case behind its acquisitions.
“First is cost reduction, not only in the indirect space, but also opportunities in direct materials and capital projects” he said. “Second is companies’ digital core where you have artificial intelligence, better data, and generative AI. Generative AI alone has the potential to augment and automate 58% of supply chain processes. And our third piece is what we call supplier and supply chain resiliency, particularly the end-to-end supply chain, to help companies respond to disruptions and build resiliency into their planning,” Fuhrmann explained.
Acquisitions Drive Results for Clients
Over the last few months, Accenture has closed on several acquisitions, all of which support one or more of the Sourcing and Procurement practice’s critical three service areas. The following highlights three of those acquisitions and the value that the acquired companies bring to Accenture.
Insight Sourcing. Last month, Accenture announced the acquisition of Insight Sourcing, a provider of strategic sourcing and procurement services. “The Insight Sourcing acquisition allows us to continue growing in industries where we are facing fast-growing demand, such as private equity” noted Fuhrmann.
Insight Sourcing strengthens Accenture with proven expertise in cost-takeout strategy powered by category and supplier market intelligence and adds 220 sourcing consultants to Accenture’s Sourcing and Procurement practice.
Fuhrmann added, “Accenture and Insight Sourcing will combine expertise across direct, indirect, and capital expense cost reduction with complementary data and technology capabilities to drive efficiency and resilience across our clients’ supply chains.”
Impendi. In early 2024, Accenture acquired Impendi, a sourcing and procurement services provider with a focus on private equity clients. Impendi’s addition to the Sourcing and Procurement practice provides sourcing and procurement decision-making support to private equity firms, enabling greater profitability and bottom-line results for their portfolio companies.
Jack Azagury, group chief executive for Strategy & Consulting at Accenture, stated at the time, “By joining our Sourcing and Procurement practice, Impendi can help bring the full breadth of our third-party cost reduction and procurement transformation capabilities — from advisory to technology and managed services — to private equity clients and their portfolio companies.”
The Shelby Group. In late 2023, Accenture acquired The Shelby Group, a leading provider of digital procurement and optimization services, to enhance Accenture’s capabilities in sourcing and procurement technology transformation.
With deep experience in Coupa and Ivalua solutions, The Shelby Group can increase spend visibility and task automation while decreasing cost and risk. As part of Accenture, it can further leverage its position as a Coupa Global Elite partner and grow its relationship with Ivalua.
According to Fuhrmann, “In terms of growth areas, technology represents a large area in the marketplace, particularly digitization. And that’s what helped drive the acquisition of The Shelby Group and the reason behind it.”
