Bain invests in automation expert Ashling Partners
Bain & Company has formed a strategic alliance with Ashling Partners, a Chicago-based provider of automation consulting and implementation services. The alliance includes a direct investment in Ashling, which is backed by private equity firm THL.
Ashling will join the 700-firm partner ecosystem at Vector – Bain’s digital delivery platform for new business innovation, product and experience innovation, digital marketing, enterprise technology, automation, software engineering, and advanced analytics.
Vector comprises more than 1,000 Bain employees and has completed more than 6,700 digital projects for clients across industries and geographies.
Through the partnership, Bain and Ashling will help clients develop and scale automation programs – combining Bain’s strategic and operational expertise in automation with Ashling’s technical expertise and managed services.
Founded in 2017, Ashling focuses on robotic process automation (RPA) projects for manufacturing, health, and energy clients. RPA uses software-based “robots” to more quickly and accurately complete repetitive business processes otherwise performed by humans.
Ashling has more 170 employees, according to LinkedIn, and 11 offices in the US, Romania, and India. The firm is a UiPath diamond partner.
"Recent developments in generative AI have accelerated companies' drive to automate business processes. Our extensive research shows that many automation programs unfortunately fall short of potential with companies under-utilizing capabilities and under-estimating challenges,” said Michael Heric, leader of Bain's global automation capability area within Vector. “By combining our capabilities at Bain with Ashling's, we will help our clients avoid these missed opportunities and achieve the most effective automation programs and most powerful results."
Bain earlier this year announced a services alliance with OpenAI, the company behind leading generative AI systems ChatGPT and DALL-E.
"We are very excited at what this partnership with Bain means for our clients, partners, and our people,” Marshall Sied, co-founder and co-CEO of Ashling Partners, said. “Bain's approach and reputation as the leading global strategy firm will help us connect value streams in an even more meaningful way leveraging automation and AI as our vehicle."
