Accenture has enhanced its finance and accounting business process outsourcing (BPO) capabilities by closing the previously announced acquisition of Advantium Inc., including related entity XPAN LLC, and Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, however, this is Accenture’s second BPO acquisition in less than six months.

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“This Acquisition is just the latest example of our strategy to offer industry-defining business process outsourcing capabilities to a wide range of clients,” Kevin Campbell, senior managing director of Accenture BPO organization, said in a prepared statement regarding the closing of the acquisitions. “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 acquisition of Savista Corp. in April led to the formation of a new BPO business unit, Accenture Finance Solutions, which provides 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,” explains Phil Fershet, vice president of Everest Research Institute.

Both newly acquired companies help clients prevent, detect and recover “lost profits” by analyzing procurement and payment data and processes. 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 for lost profits or erroneous payments resulting from human error, systems-integration errors, contract non-compliance and fraud. Acquiring Advantium and Meridian bolsters Accenture’s existing capabilities around the procure-to-pay process by providing clients with resources, insights and analytics-based services that can be used to drive high performance.

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