Paris-based digital-focused management consultancy Cognitive Companions has joined forces with global counterpart EFESO Consulting.
The move sees EFESO Consulting – which is headquartered in France – welcome a team of around 20 consultants to its French practice (according to LinkedIn datta), and boosts its capabilities in the area of digital operations and digital transformation program delivery.
“Cognitive Companions deepens our capabilities for digital transformation, in particular in product development and value engineering, smart product development and industry 4.0. We are impressed by their team and are excited to welcome them to our family,” said Luca Lecchi, Co-CEO of EFESO Consulting.
The merger builds on a long-standing collaboration between the two consultancies. “We have already partnered with them in many projects over the last five years and are convinced the merger will be a strong add-on for our clients,” said Lecchi.
Bruno Machiels, co-CEO of EFESO Consulting added: “We are both driven by the same entrepreneurial and knowledge-sharing spirit. Cognitive Companions will contribute to scaling up our digital expertise and fulfil our ambition to co-create the industrial future and to contribute to a better, more sustainable world.”
Cognitive Companions also brings an established approach to embedding people change, digital-driven process improvement, enterprise security strategy, and innovation lifecycle management, among others.
Paris-led EFESO Consulting is a global consulting group specialised in operations strategy and performance improvement. The firm operates with 35 offices around the world.
As part of the integration, the full team of Cognitive Companions including the four co-founders Laurent Coulon, Alain Carcasses, Jean-Pierre Dandrieux and Michel Paillet will join EFESO Consulting. The co-founders bring roughly a century of experience to the firm – all previously served Theano Advisors (a 2012 spin-off of Oliver Wyman) as a partner ahead of launching Cognitive Companions in 2017.
“Cognitive Companions was founded to help business leaders define and implement efficient transformation plans and anticipate digital disruptions This merger will both strengthen our expertise and increase the value we’ll co-create with organisations,” stated Coulon.
“EFESO’s commitment to serving clients with deep attention to the human dimension echoes our own values.”
The merger is EFESO Consulting’s second this year. In July, the firm’s US arm merged with Chicago-based Argo Consulting.
