Deloitte has taken on the team from local software developer, Well Placed Cactus, in a move that effectively sees it acquire the company, which specialises in the development of interactive games and apps.
Founded in 2012, Well Placed Cactus has offices in Brisbane and Melbourne, boasting a team of interactive engineers and developers that focus on making use of emerging technologies to create immersive experiences, fit-for-purpose games and “digital reality” solutions.
Deloitte made the move to take on Well Placed Cactus’s (WPC) team to form a new Digital Emerging Technology team within Deloitte Digital, part of Deloitte’s consulting practice, which will be led by Deloitte Digital lead partner, Steve Hallam.
“Bringing WPC team’s engineering expertise in-house is a natural evolution of our end-to-end digital offerings to use fringe and emerging technologies for our clients,” Hallam said.
“WPC’s deep technical understanding allows us to move from the realm of generating great creative ideas into also building and delivering them, which is really exciting.”
The deal sees Well Placed Cactus’s CEO, Jack Gillespie, join Deloitte as a director. At the same time, the software development firm’s COO, Paul Stapelberg, co-founder and creative director, Nic Gomez, and technical director, Leigh Mannes, will come on board as managers.
Indeed, the agreement sees Well Placed Cactus’s 11-strong team join Deloitte’s Brisbane and Melbourne offices, where they will work alongside Deloitte’s new Creative Brand & Media team to deliver creative experiences and expand Deloitte Digital’s offering to over 470 people across Australia.
“Our team has worked with Deloitte on some cutting edge projects over the past couple of years and we’re thrilled to integrate our technical expertise into Deloitte Digital's existing creative capability,” Gillespie said. “For an organisation of Deloitte’s scale to bring an established emerging technology team in-house is a huge step forward for the industry.”
For Deloitte Australia CEO, Cindy Hook, the acquisition of the Well Placed Cactus team will further drive the consulting powerhouse’s business expertise and design capabilities to “enhance integrated and creative solutions to help our clients solve their most complex problems”.
“The WPC team takes us from leveraging proven technologies to being pioneers in new technology domains. We can think holistically around the total transformation for a particular business and industry sector,” Deloitte consulting managing partner, Robert Hillard, said.
“The transaction with WPC also provides a logical extension to our previous transactions. We’re expanding on the capabilities introduced by Kid Neon in terms of building architectural visualisations and we’re building on our ability to deliver real brand experiences through our Creative Brand & Media team,” he said.
Deloitte’s latest local acquisition comes less than a month after the company took on two former directors from US-headquartered consulting firm, CBIG Consulting, Cameron Price and Gerard Skybey, and their team of nearly 40 big data and analytics experts, many of which were set to be based in Deloitte's Australian offices.
According to Deloitte, the consulting giant hired the two former CBIG Consulting partners in response to the rapid growth in demand for data analytics across the Asia Pacific region.
In October, Deloitte acquired Australian IT consultancy, JKVine, in a deal aimed at building out a new platform test and optimisation unit in Deloitte Consulting.
In May, it acquired boutique managed services provider, Strut Digital, in a bid to bolster its cloud practice in Australia while October, it was Sydney-based Concur partner, Nesoi, that was acquired.
Last year, Deloitte snapped up Melbourne-based systems integrator, Plenary Networks, Melbourne-based systems integrator, Sixtree, and marketing technology implementation specialist, Cinder Agency, among others.
