Accenture acquires French EPM tech consultancy Nell'Armonia

Accenture has strengthened its enterprise performance management (EPM) services in France and other markets through the acquisition of Nell’Armonia – a specialist digital consultancy based in Levallois-Perret.

Nell’Armonia was founded in 2007, and has since grown into a team of over 130 consultants across offices in France, Israel, Morocco and Poland. With a focus on finance and supply chain functions, the firm’s expertise spans a range of optimisation tools such as Oracle EPM, Anaplan, CCH Tagetik and OneStream – topped off with other project management and delivery services.

This team will now join Accenture – in a deal of undisclosed value that enables the global professional services giant “to deliver the latest, most comprehensive solutions to help organizations succeed in their EPM transformations,” according to Accenture France and Benelux lead Olivier Girard. 

And there are many EPM transformations underway: as businesses adapt in line with pandemic-induced changes to society and economy, a degree of streamlining will be critical. “Robust EPM capabilities that bring together data, technology and talent are critical for creating a more dynamic, agile and actionable performance management process,” said Girard.

Nell’Armonia’s specialist EPM capabilities will complement Accenture’s scale and digital resources to help clients with this process. The combined offering also expands Nell’Armonia’s scope beyond supply chain and finance – opening up a host of innovative capabilities using advanced tech such as AI, predictive analytics, robotics, and others.

“The opportunity to join Accenture would open up tremendous opportunities for our company and our people,” said Nell’Armonia CEO and founder Eric Leroy. “Together, we would be able to support a larger number of companies in successful management transformation projects, integrating all the key functions of the company.” 

Accenture’s managing director and technology lead in France Stephanie Jandard explained how the new proposition will have plenty of takers in France – not only for pandemic-response measures such as agility and resilience but also for the sustainability agenda, which is tearing through the business environment in France and worldwide. 

She notes how a focus on EPM reflects the need for “a holistic, real-time view of a company’s critical functions, such as finance, HR and supply chain management, reliable insight on its environmental, social and governance performance and the potential value that integrating sustainability into business decision making can bring.”

Following pending regulatory approval, this will mark Accenture’s second French acquisition in a matter of weeks, and the fifth in Europe since March. The firm acquired Paris-headquartered cloud specialist Linkbynet in early May, and added German sales and pricing consultancy Homburg & Partners to its roster two weeks later. This followed on from the March acquisitions of German talent specialist fable + and Swedish software development firm Cygni.