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West Monroe Partners, a Chicago-based management and technology consultancy, has acquired Pace Harmon, a Washington, DC-based IT and business services transformation and outsourcing consultancy.

Founded in 2003, Harmon Pace is an employee owned company helping large corporations optimize the performance, cost, and responsiveness of IT and back office business functions. The company has 75 employees in offices in McLean, VA, San Francisco and Chicago.

With the acquisition of Harmon Pace by West Monroe, the company has a new office in McLean and has new functions for IT strategy and business process outsourcing, procurement and supplier management.

The acquisition is the largest in the company’s 18-year history and a direct response to the fact that IT and back office functions are increasingly being affected by the cloud and digital transformation. The Harmon Pace team will expand West Monroe’s technology architecture, cloud consulting, business process redesign and change management capabilities with expertise in redesigning, optimizing and outsourcing IT functions.

Two directors, Steve Martin and David Rutchik, who have led the company for the past 17 years, will be leaving Pace Harmon as part of a transition plan initiated more than a year ago. However, the transaction will add 10 new directors to West Monroe.

“In the nearly two decades that Pace Harmon has been in business, we have built a solid reputation with major global corporations as a trusted business transformation consultant with a client-first philosophy,” said Martin. “We saw an immense opportunity to continue Pace Harmon’s successful track record of combining skills with West Monroe – we couldn’t be happier with the result.”

This is West Monroe’s third acquisition in the past 18 months. The company acquired GoKart Labs, a Minneapolis-based digital product studio, in October 2019 and Waterstone Management Group, a Chicago-based M&A strategy firm, in April 2019.

West Monroe sold its Managed Services business to private equity firm M / C Partners earlier this year.

“West Monroe will close 2020 with 13 consecutive years of revenue growth and EBITDA growth. While 2020 has certainly brought more than some of the challenges, we are addressing these challenges through various offensive measures – including seizing such opportunities in order to thrive in the post-Covid economy, “said Tom Bolger, Chief Strategy Officer from West Monroe.

BDO USA acted as financial and tax advisor to West Monroe on the deal.