Accenture Announces Acquisition Of ClearEdge

Accenture has announced the acquisition of ClearEdge Partners, a professional services firm specializing in procurement spend management. The terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed.

Boston-headquartered ClearEdge Partners was founded in 2006 by Jack Garrahan after he had spent more than 20 years as an enterprise information technology sales and marketing executive. The firm, which has brought together a crack team of leadership and technology experts, specializes in proprietary methodologies, solutions, and expertise in IT spend management, as well as software asset management, public cloud, and telecommunications negotiation services. The firm also provides negotiation strategy services in a wide variety of areas.

As industries worldwide push forward with digital transformation efforts, IT spending has increased to match, with a forecast by Gartner projecting global IT spending to top $4.1 trillion by the end of 2021, growing 8.4% from 2020. Even with such significant growth figures, Accenture estimates that nearly 30% of value from IT spend is lost due to factors like licensing complexity and lack of spending controls.

“While the pandemic accelerated the speed of digital adoption, organizations are now at an inflection point where sustaining growth will be defined by those that create value faster and maximize the impact of those investments,” said Manish Sharma, Group Chief Executive of Accenture Operations. “We’re delighted to welcome ClearEdge to our team, adding significant IT category expertise to our procurement business while extending our ability to deliver value for clients.”

Accenture plans to combine ClearEdge’s capabilities with its SynOps platform to offer insights and purchasing expertise to clients in order to drive cost savings and draw greater value from existing IT infrastructure. The firm plans to integrate roughly 100 ClearEdge professionals into the Accenture Operations division, which provides intelligent operations transformation services to companies worldwide. Its Synops platform is the product of a $300 million investment over three years to develop a platform that orchestrates optimal combinations of human and machine talent to create an evolved operating model capable of delivering insights, creating value, and orchestrating work.

Businesses undergoing digital transformations are facing increasing costs and complexity, and this new acquisition positions Accenture well to strengthen its support of client intelligence operations, ultimately reducing expenses and streamlining growth.