BrazilAccenture acquires Spanish operations specialist Alfa Consulting
In its first European deal of the year, Accenture has acquired Alfa Consulting, a Spanish consulting firm with around 50 consultants and staff.
The bolt-on sees Accenture acquire one of Spain’s leading mid-sized supply chain and operations consultancies to its Strategy & Consulting division. In Spain, Alfa Consulting has offices in Barcelona and Madrid, the firm also has a hub in Polanco, Mexico.
“This acquisition reinforces our capabilities for helping clients transform their supply chains to be more resilient, responsive and sustainable,” said Domingo Mirón, regional leader of Accenture in Iberia.
Alfa Consulting was established in 1996 by Ramón Fontanals and Ignacio Guerra. Fontanals still sits on the firm’s leadership team, alongside fellow managing partners José Buch Passols, Enrique Durán Puig and José Oriol Humet. The consulting firm is led by CEO Jordi Zaragoza and Chairman Joaquín Escoda Montal.
Over the years, Alfa Consulting has specialised in capital intensive industries, building a track record at companies in the utilities, high tech, energy and industrial goods sectors.
“Alfa Consulting brings differentiated expertise in sectors with extensive industrial footprints and distributed assets,” said Mirón. Some of the propositions it offers include supply chain advisory, customer and partner segmentation, sourcing and procurement transformation, operational agility, workforce planning, maintenance digitalisation, resilience stress testing and sustainable supply chain.
“Supply chains, especially in capital intensive industries, need to be flexible and responsive, while also maintaining the transparency that makes them trustworthy,” said Kris Timmermans, head of Accenture's Supply Chain & Operations function. “Alfa Beyond Consulting's deep experience and proprietary tools complement our vision in the supply chain landscape.”
The deal builds on a series of supply chain consulting focused acquisitions Accenture has completed since the start of the pandemic. In 2021, the firm bought Blue Horseshoe in the US, REPL in the UK, and Icon Integration and GRA in Australia.
Meanwhile, in Spain, the deal is Accenture’s first since it acquired Arca, an engineering services company with a focus on network infrastructure capabilities, in November last year. Late 2019, the global giant added Pragsis Bidoop (200 professionals) to its Applied Intelligence business.
For Alfa Consulting, the joining of forces sees the firm become part of one of the globe’s largest consulting firms. Escoda: “We are excited with all the possibilities that joining Accenture will offer to our clients and employees. It offers us the capability to offer a complete range of services and products, complementing our competencies with best-in-class solutions and technological platforms, while providing our staff a great variety of opportunities.”
