In a marriage of consulting firms, Accenture is buying Clarity Insights to strengthen its artificial intelligence and data analytics capabilities.
Chicago-based Clarity, which has about 350 employees, specializes in AI and big data, working primarily with healthcare and financial services clients. Accenture cited Clarity’s “bench of deep industry, technical, and business experts” in announcing the acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed.
“Clarity Insights’ combination of strong technical talent, combined with deep industry expertise, will fortify and broaden our ability to help our clients scale AI across their businesses,” Athina Kanioura, chief analytics officer and global lead for applied intelligence at Accenture, said in a news release.
“Their focus on insight-driven transformation for healthcare bolsters Accenture’s capabilities and is particularly critical now, when our research shows that 87% of healthcare executives surveyed report that they know how to pilot, but struggle to scale AI across their business,” she added.
Accenture has also targeted AI and data analytics recently through the acquisitions of Knowledgent, a data intelligence company, and Kogentix, a data engineering provider.
The applied intelligence unit now employs more than 20,000 professionals, including data scientists and engineers.
Artificial intelligence “is one of the fastest-growing pieces of business at Accenture,” John Matchette, an Accenture managing director who oversees the company’s applied intelligence practice in North America, told Crain’s Chicago Business. “This is the way clients will compete in the future.”
Clarity was founded in 2008 and, in its latest funding round, raised $28.5 million in 2014. CEO Neil Huse said the first step for a successful AI deployment is to fully understand clients’ business goals and objectives and, from there, Clarity’s team “can pull together the right data foundation, tools and accelerators that will smooth their path to adoption.”
“With Accenture, we’ll be able to accelerate this shared vision for success and help more clients get there, more quickly,” he said.