Accenture Adds Business Process Outsourcing Capabilities With Closing of Acquisition of Advantium and Meridian Informed Purchasing; Deal Furthers Strategy to Build High-Value Offerings That Deliver Business Outcomes Beyond Labor-Cost Savings.

NEW YORK -- Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has closed its previously announced acquisition of two companies that help clients prevent, detect and recover "lost profits" through analysis of procurement and payables data and processes, enhancing its finance and accounting business process outsourcing (BPO) capabilities.

Terms of the agreement with Advantium Inc., including its related entity XPAN LLC, and Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd. were not disclosed.

"This acquisition is just the latest example of our strategy to offer industry-defining business process outsourcing capabilities to a wide range of clients," said Kevin Campbell, senior managing director of Accenture's business process outsourcing organization. "We're buying and building differentiated BPO assets that allow Accenture to bundle high-value offerings that deliver business outcomes for clients, above and beyond labor-cost savings."

The Advantium and Meridan transaction is Accenture's second business process outsourcing acquisition in less than six months. The Savista Corp. acquisition in April led to the formation of a new Accenture BPO Services unit providing bundled human resources and finance and accounting services to middle-market companies.

"The finance and accounting outsourcing industry is rapidly maturing beyond service providers merely offering cost savings to their customers through labor arbitrage. Smart C-suite executives are engaging BPO providers that also have the capability to deploy technology solutions that underpin, orchestrate and analyze their accounting and procurement processes across their outsourced environment," said Phil Fersht, vice president of the Everest Research Institute.

By adopting Advantium and Meridian's proprietary technology and processes, Accenture's enhanced profit recovery and analytics offering will help clients analyze their procurement and payables data to prevent, detect and recover the lost profits, or erroneous payments, which can result from human error, systems-integration issues, contract non-compliance and fraud.

Acquiring Advantium and Meridian bolsters Accenture's existing capabilities around the procure-to-pay process by providing clients with recoveries, insights and analytics-based services that can be used to drive high performance.

Advantium, of Hudson, Ohio, and Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., of St. Albans, United Kingdom, formed an alliance in 2003 to provide their services internationally. The staffs of the two companies, along with Meridian executives Les Bailey and Ashley Golby and Advantium CEO Jim Spreng, have joined Accenture's finance and accounting BPO unit, Accenture Finance Solutions.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 133,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$15.55 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005. Its home page is www.accenture.com.