PW buys into data warehousing

Price Waterhouse has bought the 80-strong France-based data warehousing firm Business & Decision.

With Business & Decision on-board, Price Waterhouse will be growing its data warehousing, data-mining and electronic commerce business both in France and the rest of Europe.

According to Pierre Pilorge, partner in charge of IT business development in France at Price Waterhouse, customer demand for knowledge management has seen momentous growth. He predicts that consultancy in this sector will spiral because firms have changed their focus from cost reduction consultancy to real market growth consultancy. Besides this change, firms increasingly need more than just management consultancy and information technology, they want help with customer management.

“In our business and as part of our business development strategy we need to recruit more and more people,” said Pilorge. “We already had 20 people, but the explosion in demand from our clients made it difficult to grow at the rate we wanted to grow at.”

Pilorge pointed out that opportunities to buy firms with whole teams of highly skilled data warehousing consultants with intranet and electronic commerce skills, only come along once in a blue moon. The acquisition, he said, is totally in-line with the PW business development strategy.

He acknowledged that the firm would continue to look for similar opportunities, but declined to comment on whether it was engaged in any other acquisitions at present.

By the end of 1998 it aims to have doubled the size of the firm and grown the firms’ combined revenues by 100 per cent. At the end of 1996 Business & Decision increased its revenues and staff numbers by 100 per cent.