Management and consulting firm BearingPoint (operating under its current name since 2002 when KPMG Consulting acquired Arthur Andersen’s business consulting practices) acquires data governance and strategy start-up Inpuls.
Inpuls is a boutique consultancy information management and data insight company, offering advisory, consulting, coaching, training and other services in areas such as big data, data privacy, personal data protection (GDPR), information strategy, analytics and information governance, to name a few.
The company helps organizations in selecting the proper technologies and tools they need to guide them on their journeys of digitalization where data governance, information management, analytics and compliance obviously are key. A look at the acquisition, which was announced on November 14, 2018.
BearingPoint is active in several areas of digital transformation where data is at the core – just as it is key in a digital economy. As Eric Falque, leader of the FBA (France, Benelux, Africa) region at BearingPoint puts it in the announcement of the acquisition: “We share the conviction with our clients that data paves the way for the development streams of digitalization, from robotization, AI and Blockchain to IoT and predictive analytics”.
These activities in DX technologies are essential in BearingPoint’s approach. As a matter of fact, we stumbled upon the news of the acquisition after reading about a recent report from the company on distributed ledger technology in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry that was mentioned by the news team of Industry 4.0 fair Hannover Messe. In 2015 BearingPoint also started a collaboration with another start-up that recently was acquired in the field of IoT: Industrial IoT platform and services player relayr, acquired by Re Munich. Yet, back to the acquisition of Inpuls.
Inpuls: the roots, activities and increasing importance of data governance
Inpuls CEO Jan Henderyckx, who joins BearingPoint as a Partner, has a long career as an information architect and information strategist for various large organizations. Henderyckx is also a past board member of DAMA International and President of the DAMA BeLux chapter. He founded Inpuls in 2014.
Founded in 2014, Inpuls is a Belgian consultancy specialized in data strategy, data governance, privacy, Big Data and analytics.
With the evolutions regarding data-driven “anything”, the growing role of data (with the fast growth of – mainly – unstructured data volumes) and the advent of GDPR, data governance is a very hot topic. Everyone wants to be data-driven, yet there is a big difference between wanting to be a data-driven company and effectively being – a decent – one. That’s where Inpuls comes in with its data governance approach and frameworks.
With its expertise and frameworks, Inpuls has a proven and structured method for governing and cataloging data, setting up master data management, taking care of the inevitable compliance – in other words, everything needed in a good data governance program. As the press release states: “Inpuls expands BearingPoint’s expertise in data governance and data sciences, which is rooted in the firm’s DNA. The Inpuls team brings its expertise and capabilities – from data warehouse to data lake and passing by data foundry”.
The acquisition of Inpuls by BearingPoint
With the acquisition BearingPoint strengthens its data capabilities and expands its presence in Belgium.
Inpuls mainly serves large customers in industries such as banking pharmaceutics, telecom and retail. The company also works with mid-caps with growth potential. Bearingpoint will more or less double its activities in Belgium by acquiring Inpuls. Inpuls employs almost 20 people and had a gross margin of roundabout €500,000 per year.
In the announcement Inpuls CEO Jan Henderyckx states: “With BearingPoint we share common values and the vision of bringing innovative solutions to our clients. BearingPoint’s global reach and quality staff will allow us to take our proven and differentiating approach in making organizations data centric to a broader set of clients, both in Belgium and internationally”.
BearingPoint Managing Partner Kiumars Hamidian adds: “The acquisition of Inpuls pays into two core elements of our corporate strategy: we enrich our portfolio focused on digitalization, regulation and analytics; we concentrate on European clients, enabling them to become global leaders. Against this background this acquisition doubles our size in Belgium, and just as important, our clients now have Inpuls’s data expertise. We believe data is at the heart of digital transformation and creates value propositions and competitive advantages for our clients”.
You can read more about the details of the acquisition and the structure of the Belgian practice in that same press release.
BearingPoint today
BearingPoint has a long history and has become one of the biggest players again as mentioned. The company didn’t have an easy history though.
Those of you who’ve been long enough in the industry might remember the ‘Big Five’ and what happened with them around the turn of the Millennium and the years after that (remember, among others the Enron scandal and how the splitting of accounting activities and consulting services of the ‘Big Five’ led to a complete change of the landscape).
Arthur Andersen back then was a big player and was very active in the field of what back then was still called e-business, especially before the dot com bubble burst.
BearingPoint says that today it employs 10,000 consultants across 75 countries. In Belgium, BearingPoint works with major clients from different sectors in various subjects : Digital Strategy definition, Robotics, Business Model optimization, Finance and Operations transformation.
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