Accenture acquires Search Technologies to expand its content analytics and enterprise search capabilities

Accenture Acquires Search Technologies to Expand Its Content Analytics and Enterprise Search Capabilities

• Expanded capabilities will help clients power machine learning solutions, unlock new intelligence from unstructured data.
• Nearly 200 big data engineers and search experts to join Accenture Analytics

NEW YORK; Aug. 3, 2017 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has acquired Search Technologies, a Herndon, Virginia-based technology services firm specializing in the design, implementation and management of big data and search analytics. Search Technologies delivers enhanced content analytics capabilities that help clients better understand their business, customers and markets through the combination of transactional and contextual data. By applying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like machine learning to this type of client data, Accenture can help generate new, more precise insights that drive improved business outcomes. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Search Technologies joins the existing community of data scientists and engineers within Accenture Analytics and will focus on developing and industrializing solutions that make unstructured content – from social media to video to voice and audio – easily searchable to support data discovery, analytics and large-scale reporting. Search Technologies employs nearly 200 big data engineers and search experts from locations across the United States, Costa Rica, Europe and the Philippines.


Search Technologies is now part of Accenture Analytics, coming together to build more intelligent businesses

“With the addition of Search Technologies’ capabilities, we are in an even stronger position to help organizations take advantage of their data, regardless of format, to generate more precise and actionable insights,” said Narendra Mulani, chief analytics officer, Accenture Analytics. “By better understanding the context and sentiment behind transactions, organizations can deliver better customer experiences and business outcomes. Combining Search Technologies’ data engineering expertise with Accenture’s data science, analytics and AI capabilities enhances our ability to help clients become data-native, intelligent enterprises, transforming the way they innovate, compete and grow.”

Search Technologies’ proprietary Content Processing Framework and collection of API-level data connectors – which enable access to unstructured enterprise data across disparate and legacy systems – will be integrated into the Accenture Insights Platform (AIP). This will help clients embed analytics and AI into their business to generate new intelligence at speed and scale.

Kamran Khan, president and CEO of Search Technologies, will lead a new Content Analytics team within Accenture Analytics. Khan commented: “Both search and big data analytics require a deep understanding of the nature of structured and unstructured content, and the know-how to extract knowledge and business value from the data. We have done this successfully for over 800 customers in industries including e-commerce, publishing, media, financial services, professional staffing and manufacturing. Search Technologies’ vision is very closely aligned with Accenture’s, and this acquisition will help us play a major role in building the future of big data, enterprise search and AI as we integrate our capabilities onto AIP and leverage the scale of Accenture to globalize our offerings.”

As part of the acquisition, a new delivery center will be established in Costa Rica for the 70+ Search Technologies big data engineers based there. Specializing in customer and content analytics, the team will work closely with the Accenture Interactive digital content production and marketing services team to offer clients complementary services and holistic content offerings, as they seek to deal with the explosion of content across multiple channels. The new location will become part of the Accenture Global Delivery Network.