Professional services company Accenture, which is no stranger to acquiring firms, has announced yet another addition to broaden its tech expertise.

For an undisclosed fee, Accenture has gobbled up Spanish engineering services company Arca to bolster its suite of network transformation services, including 5G implementation.

The upshot is that 640 Arca employees will join Accenture in Spain and help the management consultancy target clients based there and in Portugal.

According to the official announcement, Arca provides "multidisciplinary services for network operations." Its skillset apparently stretches across engineering, designing, deploying and managing telecom infrastructure.

Arca also brings to the party an "integrated platform" that purportedly "automates network monitoring, optimizes processes and predicts system anomalies."

Robot human interface

The idea is to combine Arca's know-how with Accenture's SynOps platform, an AI-powered tool designed to help organizations function more efficiently, in order to reinforce what Accenture sees as its "key role" in the network management consultancy space – advising and partnering with clients in the design, deployment and operation of services, such as 5G and IoT.

Accenture's addressable base for its Arca-boosted portfolio includes clients in the telecommunications, industrial, energy and infrastructure industries.

"5G, cloud and edge computing will usher in a new wave of change and innovation for businesses," said Domingo Mirón, who leads Accenture's business in Iberia.

"To realize their full potential, companies must act now to adopt the right strategy and build new business solutions enabled by network investments."

By harnessing Arca's expertise, Mirón claimed it will strengthen Accenture's ability to help clients accelerate 5G cloud network transformation.

Acquiring the advantage

Accenture is enormous – it has around 500,000 employees -- helped in part by spending oodles on firms that can broaden its expertise and keep up with the latest tech trends, particularly in the fields of analytics, mobile, cloud and cybersecurity. Each year the firm reportedly spends roughly $1bn on around two dozen acquisitions.

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But this amount is a relatively small sum given that Accenture made $43.2 billion in revenues in its last fiscal year, and about $1.1 billion in net income.

The deal-making seems to be working out, too.

Sales were up 8.5% last year in local currency units, and Accenture is this year guiding for revenue growth of between 5% and 8% in local currency units.

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— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading