Higher education institutions in the US should get excited about Accenture’s acquisition of Sierra-Cedar in the Workday services market

Accenture is strengthening its US higher education Workday services capabilities by acquiring Sierra-Cedar, the established go-to-partner for this in the ecosystem. Higher education institutions represent a unique market segment, often overlooked by the provider community. Industry executives must examine the recent acquisition by Accenture and recognize its commitment and fresh capabilities in this unique industry sector. 

Accenture has breadth and depth of services to support Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) and Financial Management (FM) solutions. The service provider is particularly strong in the HCM space, with one of the highest certified pools of consultants in the market. Although Accenture has developed a lot of proprietary technologies to facilitate Workday deployments, these have largely been industry-agnostic. However, Accenture has experienced growth from the US higher education sector, especially for the FM solutions, which underpins its decision to acquire skills to bolster its position in this market. It also gives Accenture important access to Sierra-Cedar’s Workday tenant for the higher education market.  

Sierra-Cedar is a specialist Workday service partner that focuses on the US higher education and government markets. With more than 20 years of experience in these industries, Sierra-Cedar has prioritized hiring functional and industry experts rather than purely technical consultants. This focus has gained Sierra-Cedar considerable respect as a trusted advisor to these clients, especially for Workday services. This acquisition provides Sierra-Cedar access to a global brand and additional expertise in Workday as well as other capabilities across Accenture.  

Accenture’s acquisition will help it join firms such as IBM, Deloitte, KPMG, and Mercer, which have growing footprints in the space 

While many Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) deals have been largely horizontal plays, industry sector capability has been creeping up as a service provider differentiator in the last few years. In fact, we highlighted this expected development here in 2017. Workday targeted US higher education, healthcare, and government sectors early in its development, which led to several of its services partners aligning expertise to these industries. For example, IBM established a dedicated focus on the US healthcare and education sectors. Opportunities to develop industry–relevant skills increased with the release of the Workday Finance Management (FM) solution, partly because finance managers tend to demand an industry flavor to services delivered. It is also because some industry sectors, especially the US higher education market, see the benefits of managing their HR and finance processes together on the same platform. Several service providers report good traction and growth in the US higher education market for the Workday FM product, including Accenture. 

The Bottom Line: Accenture goes from strength to strength, but the competition is fierce—higher education clients must scrutinize their partners’ capabilities 

Accenture has acquired several companies to strengthen its Workday services portfolio, most notably DayNine Consulting in 2019. Sierra-Cedar will bring critical industry sector expertise that gives Accenture differentiation in this market. That said, competitors such as Deloitte, IBM, KPMG, and Mercer are also strong in the US higher education space, and Accenture will need to work hard to maintain this strength. In a competitive and often overlooked market segment, higher education clients must carefully scrutinize the specific expertise and capabilities of the provider community to find the right partner for them. 

We look forward to analyzing the Workday services market in our Top 10 report in 2020.