Acando acquires Daytona and Transformator Design
Acando strengthens its offering by acquiring two of Sweden’s leading Service Design-agencies; Transformator Design and Daytona. The companies will together create Sweden’s largest Business Design Studio with offerings within strategy, design, tech, innovation, change management and communication. The new company, of which Acando’s innovation agency is also a part, will have 160 employees in total.
”The Acando Group continues to execute on our strategy “Technology Driven - Behavior Centric” says Carl-Magnus Månsson, CEO, Acando Group. ”With the acquisition of Daytona and Transformator Design, and a strong positive development at Acando and itch, we now take a leading position in the Northern European market.”
Combining the capabilities of Transformator Design and Daytona with Acando’s units specialized in strategy, transformation and digital development as well as Acandos’s innovation agency itch, will create a strong range of offerings within customer experiences. The new business will combine empathy and deep understanding for human needs with innovative and technical solutions.
”We started the design and -innovation agency itch almost two years ago, and we’re now taking the next step by creating a full-fledged Business Design Studio. We’ve acquired two of the best agencies in the field and by combining the competence of their teams with Acando’s and itch’s strategists, user experience designers and developers, we will be Sweden’s leading Business Design Studio from day one” says Mats Alerius, Senior Vice President, Acando.
”We’ve seen a strong demand for itch’s services, not least when combined with Acando’s strong ability to drive transformational change. The acquisitions give us both new width and depth in terms of capabilities, but we will also be able to create new and unique offerings” says Martin Deinoff, CEO, itch.
The merge is initiated immediately and will continue throughout the coming months. There are similar existing operations in Norway and Germany within Acando, and further expansion plans are being evaluated.
“Transformator Design is the one agency that has come to be most clearly associated with the Service Design-sector in Sweden. We now take a new exciting step entering a new context. Putting the human at the center is becoming continuously important for companies and organizations and they are looking for a partner with deep understanding of human needs as well as the capability to make change happen. As part of Sweden’s largest Business Design Studio with Acando as owner, we will to an even bigger extent than before, be able to contribute to a more human society using design as a tool” says Daniel Ewerman, CEO, Transformator Design.
”It’s not enough to just be able to talk about and design solutions today. You must also be able to actually realize strategies and concepts, through user-driven prototyping and with technique as a driver. That is something we have missed at Daytona during the last years – to be able to actualize ideas and to prototype to a deeper level” says Martin Ragnevad, CEO Daytona.
For further information, please contact:
Carl-Magnus Månsson, CEO Acando, +46 (0)70 556 7127, carl-magnus.mansson@acando.com
For more information, please see:
www.acando.se
www.transformatordesign.se
www.daytona.se
www.itch.design
About Acando:
Acando is the consulting company who with equal parts of technical excellence and insight into human behavior - innovates, streamlines and mobilizes organizations for sustainable change. The Group has approximately 1700 employees allocated over five countries. Acando had sales of more than 2 billion SEK in 2016 and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.
