Accenture Spearheads Retail Transformation With Javelin Group Acquisition

Hot on the heels of Infosys’ acquisition of retail digital experience solution provider Skava, Accenture just announced that it has acquired Javelin Group, a provider of retail strategy and digital transformation consulting services. London-based Javelin group, founded in 1997 with 160 FTEs, provides digital market assessment and evaluation, digital performance improvement, omni-channel retail planning, retail analytics, supply chain fulfillment, operations and expansion strategy consulting.

HfS Research has shown that global retailers in the last 3 years have struggled with adapting to a host of digital-driven challenges and opportunities. These include the need to:
 

• Modernize infrastructure and supporting services across retail operations,
• Develop flexible fulfillment engines and integrate ecommerce and brick-and-mortar businesses, and
• Create new sources of influencing and measuring customer experience across the growing omni-channel marketplace.

Paramount to these initiatives, each retailer has to make the most relevant investments in emerging technologies (e.g., analytics and mobility) that complements its business model. While customers in some retail segments have higher expectations for real-time mobile promotions, some segments need more technology enablement in-store. Some retailers are developing critical differentiation through flexible supply chain and fulfillment including same-day deliveries and efficient returns management. Others still require a combination of these functionalities to win customer loyalty. Thus, retailers are arguably seeing the biggest budgets for digital transformation among industry verticals.

At the outset, these services buyers need consulting for digital enablement opportunities – affecting a spike in demand for digital retail consulting in the last few years. The next phase is large-scale IT projects in upgrading infrastructure – hardware and legacy applications to make way for As-a-Service capabilities. Digital operations is subsequently the biggest servicing opportunity for retailers that need to create and disseminate marketing messages, maintain catalogs, and interact with customers, suppliers and partners across channels and devices. Retailers are approaching this transformation in myriad ways, with their chosen partners for each phase.

Accenture’s acquisition of the Javelin group complements its vision of positioning itself as an end-to-end digital partner for this next wave of growth for global retailers.

Javelin bolsters Accenture Strategy’s digital retail consulting capabilities. Meanwhile, its investments in Accenture Digital – both organic and inorganic – are helping retailers execute their digital strategies with advanced analytics, mobility and digital marketing capabilities. Service providers that can enable digital transformation with a vertical/location focus have underpinned Accenture’s recent acquisitions. Similar acquisitions in the last year include: Agilex (digital solutions for U.S. federal market), Gapso (advanced analytics for logistics) and Reactive Media (digital marketing in ANZ). Accenture will need to continue to invest in retail specifically to compete head to head in this segment as HfS sees similar initiatives underway with competitors such as Infosys and Cognizant. The match is on as all are aggressively growing their strong retail consulting capabilities along with digital retail operations through acquisitions and internal development.