Accenture has agreed to acquire umlaut,
an engineering consulting and services firm headquartered in Aachen,
Germany. The move will significantly scale Accenture’s deep engineering
capabilities to help companies use digital technologies like cloud,
artificial intelligence, and 5G to transform how they design, engineer
and manufacture their products as well as embed sustainability.
The acquisition of umlaut will add more than 4,200 industry-leading
engineers and consultants across 17 countries to Accenture’s Industry X
services, and expand the company’s capabilities across a range of
industries, including automotive, aerospace & defense,
telecommunications, energy and utilities. Industry X combines
Accenture’s powerful data and digital capabilities with deep engineering
expertise to offer clients the broadest suite of services for
digitizing their engineering functions, factory floors and plant
operations, improving productivity, speeding up the transformation of
hardware into software-enabled products, and allowing for faster and
more flexible product development.
“We predicted that digital would ultimately be applied at scale to the
core of a company’s business – the design, engineering and manufacturing
of their products. And, for nearly a decade Accenture has been building
the unique capabilities and ecosystem partnerships to combine the power
of digital with traditional engineering services,” said Julie Sweet,
chief executive officer, Accenture. “COVID-19 has accelerated the need
for companies to transform these core operations, and umlaut’s leading
and highly-specialized engineering services will enhance our ability to
meet the accelerating demand and also continue innovating for our
clients.”
Accenture is expanding Industry X at a time when software increasingly
determines the market success of platforms, products and services across
industries that require intelligence to be embedded. However, in a
survey of more than 1,500 industry executives, Accenture research found
that only 38% of companies have deployed at least one project to
digitize their engineering and manufacturing.(1)
“Bringing world-class digital engineering and manufacturing expertise to
our clients helps them rapidly scale, accelerate growth, improve
productivity and safety, and embed sustainability across their
operations,” said Nigel Stacey, global lead of Accenture Industry X.
“From consumers to R&D to the supply chain and factory floor, and
back again, companies that use the power of data and digital to build
value will become — and remain — relevant, resilient and responsible.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that most companies’ operations and
supply chains are far from resilient or flexible enough to respond to
crises. Digital technologies can help mitigate disruptions by, for
example, enabling a fast switch to operate factories remotely or
providing near real-time insights about changing market demands. In
addition, companies are increasingly expected to operate more
responsibly and contribute to a circular economy through the development
of more sustainable products.
Umlaut’s capabilities span traditional and digital engineering services;
testing and validation of smart connected products; strategy, process
and organizational consulting; and hardware product development as well
as software development.
“Business leaders across many industries who face the convergence of the
digital and the product world are looking for a trusted partner that
understands their language and can really help navigate each step of the
journey to bring tangible outcomes in engineering and manufacturing,”
said Marc Peter Althoff, chief technology officer, umlaut. “We are
excited to bring our unique engineering and consulting culture, deep
industry know-how and subject matter expertise to Accenture Industry X
and jointly create the capabilities and scale to help clients
successfully transform.”
Umlaut will be next in a series of 22 acquisitions Accenture has made
since 2017 to build its Industry X capabilities. More recent
acquisitions include operations technology provider Electro 80 (Australia), industrial robotics and automation services provider Pollux (Brazil), operations consultancy Myrtle (US) and technology consultancy SALT Solutions (Germany).
Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
