Accenture plc (ACN) announced the closure of the Duck Creek Technologies acquisition, announced in July. The cash consideration to be paid was not disclosed.
Founded in 2000, Missouri-based Duck Creek has evolved as a prominent P&C policy administration solutions provider in North America and the U.K. The company’s services include the processing of all commercial, personal and specialty lines of businesses.
Accenture will now combine Duck Creek’s intellectual property with its P&C software product portfolio. Both companies’ technologies are based on Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) .NET (dot net) platform, which should make integration fast and easy. Combined efforts will help Accenture offer more comprehensive software solutions and facilitate customers with hassle-free processing of P&C claims. Moreover, Accenture will have 370 Duck Creek experts under its umbrella.
The Duck Creek acquisition will help Accenture to enhance its insurance platform. This would in turn aid insurers in adapting to changing market conditions and gauging future requirements, enabling them to run high-performance businesses.
Accenture has been continuously expanding through acquisitions over the prior years. In 2010, the company made a series of acquisitions. It acquired Philadelphia-based consulting company, Knowledge Rules Inc., taking over the business process outsourcing services business of Ariba Inc., a cloud-based business commerce software provider, customer relationship management solutions provider CAS Computer Anwendungs- und Systemberatung AG, industrial consulting firm Acceria, analytics solution provider CadenceQuest Inc. and embedded software services company Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd. aka Mogenesis.
In August this year, Accenture announced the acquisition of Zenta, a provider of residential and commercial mortgage processing services. The acquisition will expand its capabilities, which will help lenders, services and real estate investment trusts to upgrade and streamline their operations, improve customer experience and boost profitability in new markets.
With all these acquisitions, Accenture has strengthened its product portfolio and accelerated market share gains.
Accenture reported encouraging third quarter results and provided encouraging revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2011. Moreover, we are optimistic about the steady flow of new businesses and believe that the trend will continue going forward.
Apart from this, we remain upbeat about Accenture’s deal wins from various industry verticals. However, increasing competition from International Business Machines Inc. (IBM) may temper growth prospects to some extent.
Currently, Accenture has a Zacks #3 Rank, which implies a short-term Hold rating.
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