The consulting firm Accenture has acquired Staufen AG, a German management consulting firm, saying the move will expand Accenture’s capabilities to drive operational excellence and competitiveness in manufacturing and supply chains.
Specifically, adding Staufen will help Accenture serve clients in discrete manufacturing industries including automotive, aerospace and defense, industrial goods, and medical equipment.
According to Accenture it made the deal because manufacturers are under pressure to mitigate supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and fluctuating tariffs while staying abreast of rapid technological advances. To meet those needs, Staufen brings expertise in helping clients optimize their entire value chains, drive value with digital manufacturing initiatives, and improve overall businesses performance.
Staufen’s service portfolio includes solutions for Industry 4.0, supply chain management, and organizational change as well as data-driven tools, continuous improvement techniques, and lean management principles. Its approach enhances clients’ product design, shopfloor processes, time to market, and sustainability efforts, reducing costs, eliminating inefficiencies, and optimizing production capacity, the company said.
“Manufacturers must continuously improve their entire value chains to stay competitive,” Matthias Hégelé, Accenture’s supply chain and operations lead for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, said in a release.
“The acquisition of Staufen aligns with our strategy to reinvent supply chains and manufacturing for clients. We will combine Staufen’s proven expertise in operational excellence and value chain transformation with our capabilities in digital technologies, such as AI, generative AI, digital twins and supply chain and manufacturing software platforms, to help clients transform their core value chains, improving efficiency and productivity, supporting sustainable practices, and building resilient, autonomous systems,” Hégelé said.
The practice consists of 5,000 professionals from Accenture and from Avanade—the consulting firm’s joint venture with Microsoft. They will be supported by Microsoft product specialists who will work closely with the Accenture Center for Advanced AI. Together, that group will collaborate on AI and Copilot agent templates, extensions, plugins, and connectors to help organizations leverage their data and gen AI to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and drive growth, they said on Thursday.
Accenture and Avanade say they have already developed some AI tools for these applications. For example, a supplier discovery and risk agent can deliver real-time market insights, agile supply chain responses, and better vendor selection, which could result in up to 15% cost savings. And a procure-to-pay agent could improve efficiency by up to 40% and enhance vendor relations and satisfaction by addressing urgent payment requirements and avoiding disruptions of key services
Likewise, they have also built solutions for clients using Microsoft 365 Copilot technology. For example, they have created Copilots for a variety of industries and functions including finance, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, and consumer goods and healthcare.
Another part of the new practice will be educating clients how to use the technology, using an “Azure Generative AI Engineer Nanodegree program” to teach users how to design, build, and operationalize AI-driven applications on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. The online classes will teach learners how to use AI models to solve real-world problems through automation, data insights, and generative AI solutions, the firms said.
“We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Accenture to help our mutual customers develop AI-first business processes responsibly and securely, while helping them drive market differentiation,” Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, said in a release. “By bringing together Copilots and human ambition, paired with the autonomous capabilities of an agent, we can accelerate AI transformation for organizations across industries and help them realize successful business outcomes through pragmatic innovation.”
Consulting firm Accenture has taken another step to bulk up its supply chain advisory capabilities, announcing Monday that it has acquired Allitix, a California-based consulting and technology company specializing in Anaplan solutions with capabilities across financial planning and analysis, sales performance management, and supply chain.
Anaplan is a Florida provider of corporate performance management (CPM) systems, which it defines as enterprise cloud software that empowers organizations to see, plan, and lead better business outcomes by aligning their strategic objectives and resources.
Allitix provides tailored Anaplan-based solutions across finance, sales, supply chain, and human resources functions, with specific competencies in the manufacturing, consumer, technology, media and telecom, and financial services industries.
“Demand for connected enterprise planning is on the rise, given its ability to unlock business value and spur total enterprise reinvention,” David Leckstein, senior managing director and lead, Americas Technology at Accenture, said in a release. “Allitix’s highly skilled talent, deep domain expertise, and agile approach to implementation complements our broader digital capabilities and further expands our ability to deliver integrated enterprise planning transformations for our clients that drive better, faster insights and bottom-line value.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Accenture said that the acquisition adds 73 employees, including over 60 Anaplan functional and technical professionals to Accenture Technology in North America, with expertise across solution architecture, model building, integration, and data management.
The top three corporate development priorities in consulting firm PwC’s current strategy are climate, artificial intelligence (AI), and business model reinvention (BMR), the company said in remarks today at an Orlando user conference for IFS software.
That approach meshes well with IFS, the Swedish firm which has added dozens of AI applications to its cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools in recent months, that firm said at its "IFS Unleashed" event in Orlando. And underlying the industry’s rush to AI is the growing availability of massive amounts of data, PwC analyst Matthew Duffy said in a session at the show.
According to Duffy, data drives all the major technology changes that PwC advises businesses to examine: subscription or as-a-service models, connected devices and sensors, and conversions between business to business (B2B0 and business to consumer (B2C) approaches.
“Data availability now is greater than it’s ever been, and that’s where AI comes into play,” Duffy said. “It’s not just about driving cost efficiencies in an existing business model, but understanding your customer and your customer’s customer, so you can create a whole new value proposition.”
In fact, he said that PwC is not just giving that advice to its clients but applying it to the firm’s own strategy as well. That can be seen in the firm’s move in recent years to build its “Connected Solutions” business unit.
Boslan helps its clients engineer and oversee the construction of infrastructure for the net-zero transition, such as on- and offshore wind farms, solar power plants, smart grids, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and hydrogen plants. It also supports the construction of data centers and critical infrastructure.
By applying artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies to asset lifecycle management, Accenture and Boslan will help clients optimize their project investments and become carbon-neutral faster, the companies said August 2.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But adding Boslan brings more than 1,000 engineering and project management professionals to Accenture, most of whom are based in Spain and Brazil. The company also has a presence in Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States and Mexico. The team joins Accenture’s infrastructure and capital projects practice within its digital engineering and manufacturing service, known as Industry X.
“European companies in the energy and utilities sector are leading the charge in transitioning to renewable energy and ensuring low-carbon emission power is competitive,” Götz Erhardt, who leads Industry X in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Accenture, said in a release. “Boslan has helped pioneer many projects in this space. Their engineering and industry expertise will bolster our capabilities to help clients in Europe and globally realize their net zero ambitions. It will also grow our footprint as a global provider of infrastructure and capital projects services, including digital and AI solutions for asset lifecycle management, which are essential to the reinvention of infrastructure projects.”
Accenture has been growing its Industry X arm through a series of acquisitions, including the Infor systems integrator Advoco in 2021, as well as TrueNorth Solutions, Comtech, Anser Advisory, Eclipse Automation, and Pollux.
It is with sadness that we report on the passing last month of our friend and colleague Steve Geary. Steve was a contributing editor to DC Velocity since its inception in 2003, as well as a columnist for Supply Chain Quarterly, the predecessor to Supply Chain Xchange. He regularly reported on supply chain trends and developments, with particular expertise covering military and government logistics. A graduate of Cornell University, he additionally was president of Supply Chain Visions, a leading consultancy in supply chain management and logistics. Steve also served as an adjunct faculty member and researcher at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. Steve and his many contributions to the industry will certainly be missed.