Accenture buys French IT consulting firm Sentelis

Within six months of acquiring Gekko and Silveo, Accenture has closed another deal in France. The purchase of Sentelis adds a 60-strong team to its French ranks. 

Established in 2011, Paris-based Sentelis specialises in IT consulting services, including automation, robotisation, cloud and data management and artificial intelligence. The company’s team consist of data scientists, technology architects, artificial intelligence experts and software engineers.

“The addition of the technical talent of Sentelis, combined with our deep technology and industry expertise, will strengthen and broaden our ability to help clients,” said Olivier Girard, Accenture’s boss for the France and Benelux division.

Sentelis will in particular bolster Accenture’s artificial intelligence and machine learning offering, which is one of the firm’s fastest growing service areas amid a booming market for related services. Girard: “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.” 

The integration will see Sentelis – once works councils approvals are obtained and closing conditions are met – become part of the Accenture Applied Intelligence unit. Isabelle Regnier and Jean-Baptiste Ceccaldi, respectively executive director and president at Sentelis, have joined Accenture as seniors in the practice. 

Athina Kanioura, global lead of Accenture Applied Intelligence said: “Sentelis’ data strategy, architecture and engineering skills align seamlessly with Accenture's focus on industrialised, end-to-end solutions. With the bolt-on, we would see even greater opportunity to accelerate how our clients gain value from data and AI across their business.” 

In related acquisitions in the data science space by Accenture, the firm recently acquired Byte Prophecy in India, Gekko in France, Analytics8 in Australia, Pragsis Bidoop in Spain, Clarity Insights in North America, and Mudano in the UK. 

For an overview of all of Accenture’s acquisitions globally, see the page Accenture M&A on Consultancy.org.