MEOTEC acquires Ayming’s procurement business in France

French consulting firm MEOTEC has acquired Ayming’s procurement business in France, shortly after the firm’s British procurement practice also joined a rival player.

The two practices transferring to MEOTEC, a consulting group with offices in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy, are Cristal Décisions and Masaï.

Masaï specialises in procurement consulting, focused on helping clients with the strategic and operational transformation of their direct procurement function. Cristal Décisions meanwhile focuses on indirect procurement, and helps clients with optimising the sourcing and spend for goods serving internal stakeholders (rather than those used for the ‘product’).

Both Cristal Décisions and Masaï have been around for a while and enjoy a solid reputation in France’s procurement consulting market. Masaï was part of Lowendalmasaï, which merged with Alma Consulting Group in 2015 to later on rebrand as Ayming, while Cristal Décisions was launched in 2005 by former Kearney senior manager Matthieu Pettex-Sabarot (he still leads the practice).

“When I started working in procurement, Cristal Décisions and Masaï were already well-known brands,” said Richard Caron, who founded MEOTEC in 2005. “We met them regularly during pitches and at our customers. They are competitors that we admired and respected. I am particularly proud to have them on our side today. I am convinced that we will learn a lot from each other.”

The bolt-on deepens MEOTEC expertise and track record in procurement, and lifts its headcount to over 500 consultants and staff. Alongside procurement, MEOTEC also has practices dedicated to finance, supply chain, process improvement, digital transformation and project management.

For Ayming, the carve-out comes two months after its UK procurement consulting business joined Argon & Co, a supply chain consultancy that was formed from the merger between France’s Argon & Co and UK’s Crimson & Co.

In related consulting deals in the procurement space, Kearney yesterday acquired Prokura, a 60-strong Nordic consultancy.