Accenture acquires Clarity Insights to help clients scale AI across their businesses
Accenture has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights, a U.S.-based data consultancy with deep data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise.
The acquisition will add nearly 350 employees, along with a strong portfolio of accelerators, which can help organizations more quickly realize value from their data, to Accenture’s Applied Intelligence business. These additions will further equip clients with leading capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Chicago, with additional locations throughout the United States, Clarity Insights is a leading provider of data science and AI/ML engineering capabilities for large enterprises, and a strategic partner to clients across a range of industries, particularly healthcare, financial services and insurance.
Recognized as one of the Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces 2019, their focus on serving clients’ needs end to end – from building the right data and AI-enabled strategy, to implementing that technical strategy in meeting business goals – creates a strong foundation to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data.
“Clarity Insights’s combination of strong technical talent, combined with deep industry expertise, will fortify and broaden our ability to help our clients scale AI across their businesses,” said Athina Kanioura, chief analytics officer and global lead for Applied Intelligence at Accenture.
“Their focus on insight-driven transformation for healthcare bolsters Accenture’s capabilities and is particularly critical now, when our research shows that 87% of healthcare executives surveyed report that they know how to pilot, but struggle to scale AI across their business.”
“We were drawn to Accenture, in large part, because of the synergies in how we approach clients,” said Neil Huse, president and CEO, Clarity Insights.
“Fully understanding clients’ business goals and objectives is the first step to a successful AI deployment. From there our team can pull together the right data foundation, tools and accelerators that will smooth their path to adoption. With Accenture, we’ll be able to accelerate this shared vision for success and help more clients get there, more quickly.”
In addition to organically growing talent, Accenture’s strategic approach to acquisitions is designed to ensure the right capabilities are in place to meet existing, as well as emerging, client needs with speed and scale.
Clarity Insights’s bench of deep industry, technical, and business experts builds upon the 2018 U.S. acquisitions of Knowledgent and Kogentix, and will play a pivotal role in strengthening Accenture’s growing analytics, AI and ML/data engineering business in North America.
Global growth in AI client engagements has also served as a driver for recent Applied Intelligence acquisitions of Pragsis Bidoop in Spain and Analytics8 in Australia. In its 2019 fiscal year, Accenture invested nearly US$1.2 billion globally on 33 acquisitions to acquire critical skills and capabilities in strategic, high-growth areas of the market.
Accenture Applied Intelligence employs more than 20,000 professionals, working to help clients scale AI, including 6,000 data scientists, data engineers and AI professionals worldwide. It has received several recognitions from leading industry analyst firms in 2019, including being named a worldwide leader in AI vendor services by IDC.
Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including antitrust clearance. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.