Accenture’s latest acquisition in Australia is Bourne, a Melbourne-based consultancy that develops custom user interfaces for corporate SAP environments.

The deal will expand Accenture’s SAP practice, which is one of the largest in the industry. The practice has more than 87,000 employees in numerous countries around the world.

Germany-headquartered SAP provides a broad collection of business applications that cover practically every task for which software is used in modern companies. There are SAP applications for performing accounting tasks, managing suppliers and paying employees, to name just a small subset of the workflows the firm’s software supports.

Because SAP’s software plays such an important role in companies’ operations, it contains a lot of valuable data. But that data isn’t always easy to access, which is where Bourne comes into the picture.

Enterprise software products like SAP’s applications are not known for being particularly user friendly. Finding information about a recent deal or new business plan can be tedious, which is why companies often build custom interfaces for their SAP environments to make employees’ work easier.

Bourne specializes in designing custom SAP interfaces for corporate clients. It can build web portals as well as mobile apps.

Interface design is far from being the most complicated subfield of software development. But it’s not simple either: a company might want a mobile app that lets its employees centrally access information from five different SAP applications hosted in different data centers.

Bringing in an outside consultancy to manage the development process is often easier and faster than doing it in-house. It also reduces the risk of technical issues, which is a key consideration when it comes to applications as important as a company’s SAP software.

“With the acquisition of Bourne Digital, we will strengthen our SAP digital design and user experience capabilities to help our clients better utilize their SAP solutions,” commented Matt Coates, Accenture’s top technology exec in Australia and New Zealand.

Bourne is being folded into the Australian unit of Accenture’s SAP practice in the wake of the deal. After joining Accenture, the firm’s 66 employees will work on SAP projects for clients in the consumer goods, financial services, healthcare and travel industries.

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