Accenture’s February starts with three acquisitions and a strategic investment

Accenture on Tuesday announced that it has acquired Oakland, California-based change management consulting firm Future State and Tokyo-based cloud e-commerce solutions provider Businet System.

Accenture also said that it will make a strategic investment in AI and mixed reality solutions provider Touchcast through Accenture Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Irish technology major.

On 1 February, Accenture had announced that it would acquire cloud engineering solutions provider Imaginea to accelerate its cloud-native product and platform engineering services.

The financial details of the acquisitions and investment were not disclosed.

Future State, founded in 1982, provides change management consulting services for companies in the life sciences, consumer packaged goods and technology industries. The 75 employees from Future State are expected to join the talent & organisation / human potential wing of Accenture.

The acquisition would complement Accenture’s most recent talent & acquisition buy, organisation design consultancy Kates Kesler, which it acquired in May last year.

Meanwhile, Businet System provides Salesforce Commerce Cloud-based solutions for e-commerce sites in Japan, with a proprietary order management system for the apparel and retail industries. The startup’s 40 employees will join Accenture Interactive in Japan, the design and marketing wing of Accenture.

Businet was founded in 1999 and operates e-commerce sites for more than 60 companies in the apparel and retail segments. It provides a proprietary order management system that works with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Accenture’s venture capital wing also invested in Touchcast, a New York-based virtual experiences solutions provider.

“Touchcast has emerged as a key player in the $77 billion virtual events market, and we look forward to collaborating with them to bring its experience to our clients,” said Jason Warnke, senior managing director and global digital experiences lead at Accenture.

Touchcast will also join Accenture Ventures’ engagement and investment programme called Project Spotlight, which aims to connect startups with top global organisations to solve issues. Through the programme, Touchcast will co-innovate with Accenture at its innovation hubs, labs and liquid studios to increase time to market.