The acquisition will strengthen Accenture’s commerce transformation capabilities in Japan.

Accenture has agreed to acquire Tambourine, an e commerce customer experience agency with award-winning capabilities in cloud-based technologies in Japan, the professional services company announced on 19 November.

Though the terms of the transaction were not disclosed, Accenture said Tambourine will enhance its suite of sales and commerce transformation services, from product and platform engineering, to omnichannel delivery of commerce experiences. 

Digital commerce in Japan is expected to grow by 10.5% in 2021 to reach US$217.5 billion in sales in 2021. This acceleration offers growth prospects and is pushing brands to rethink effective customer connection, Accenture said in a statement.

Atsushi Egawa, Accenture’s market unit lead for Japan, said: “Digital customer experience and brand reputation is so closely intertwined that it can impact a company’s growth. In considering ways to deliver the best of commerce experiences, brands are turning to data and the cloud for leverage. By weaving in Tambourine’s unique offerings into Accenture’s, we will continue to help accelerate our clients’ growth.”

Founded in 2015, Tambourine provides integrated commerce services on the Salesforce platform. It delivers customer experience design and engineering, develops web services and applications, and offers consultancy services to optimise customer touchpoints. 

Tambourine was recognized as Salesforce’s Innovation Partner of the Year in 2020 and is one of the few companies in Japan with an industry-recognized Level 1 Specialist certification in Salesforce’s B2C Commerce domain. Its team of approximately 70 customer experience specialists, designers and cloud engineers will join Accenture Interactive in Japan.

Flaviano Faleiro, Accenture Interactive’s president for Growth Markets, said: “Brands understand that when they respond to new consumer behaviors with a seamless commerce experience, it makes them more relevant and valuable. The combination of Tambourine and Accenture Interactive will further enhance our ability to leverage creativity, technology and deep human insights to accelerate growth of our clients.” 

“Tambourine is founded on the premise of achieving excellent outcomes as a team,” said Tatsuya Nakao, CEO of Tambourine. “Now, as part of Accenture, we look forward to extending our digital commerce expertise across the entire customer experience and work closely together to create deep impact for our clients.”