Accenture has agreed to acquire umlaut, an engineering consulting and services firm headquartered in Aachen, Germany.
The acquisition, one of the main acquisitions under CEO Julie Sweet, will significantly scale Accenture’s engineering capabilities to help companies use digital technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence, and 5G.
Accenture in a statement said the acquisition of umlaut will add more than 4,200 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.
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.
In a survey of more than 1,500 industry executives, Accenture research found that only 38 percent of companies have deployed at least one project to digitize their engineering and manufacturing.
“Bringing 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.
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.
Accenture has made 22 acquisitions 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).
