Publicis Sapient is a digital business transformation company. Sapient was founded on November 6, 1990 by Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore. On October 17, 2006, Greenberg and Moore appointed Alan Herrick President and CEO of Sapient. On February 6, 2015, Sapient became a fully owned division of French advertising giant Publicis, in a deal valued at $3.7bn. On November 17, 2016, Publicis.Sapient announced that SapientNitro was merged with sister agency Razorfish to form SapientRazorfish, which would be led by former SapientNitro CEO Alan Wexler. Publicis.Sapient consisted of both SapientRazorfish and Sapient Consulting, and was co-led by Alan Wexler and Sapient Consulting CEO Chip Register from this date. On February 13, 2019, SapientRazorfish and Sapient Consulting were merged into one brand, Publicis Sapient, led by Nigel Vaz, who was appointed CEO on February 6, 2019.
History
Early years
Sapient was founded on November 6, 1990. The two founders, Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore, met at Cambridge Technology Partners, an IT services company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The co-founders recognized the need for a different type of mindset in the IT consulting world. Sapient chose to use a fixed-term, fixed-price model for pricing projects, rather than charging on a time and materials basis. In addition, Greenberg and Moore relied on their own resources instead of venture capital to fund the company's operations. This allowed them to keep control of the organization and set long-term strategic goals. During this period, Sapient was also an early adopter of internet-based technology, and internet-based work grew to over 70% of total revenue by 1999. Both client satisfaction and the pioneering use of the internet led to rapid growth in the period from 1992 to 2000, with revenue growing from $950,000 in 1992 to $503 million in 2000.
International expansion
After a period of contraction after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, Sapient looked overseas to grow a substantial portion of revenue, rising over 30% in only 3 years. This growth was driven by a strategy called "Global Distributed Delivery," which sought to capitalize on the quickly growing tech market in India to grow Sapient's software development capabilities. The operations in India would supplement project teams globally. As Sapient has sought to expand its business as a leader in an emerging market, the company has made several strategic acquisitions in its history. Sapient's first high-profile acquisition was of Planning Group International in 2006, which greatly expanded Sapient's experiential marketing and UX capabilities. Another important acquisition was DCG group in 2008, which augmented its existing capital markets offerings. In 2009, Sapient announced its largest acquisition; the $50 mil acquisition of The Nitro Group, which added 300 employees. This acquisition also helped define three separate business units within Sapient.
History of acquisitions
Corporate affairs
In April 1996, Sapient went public with a price of $21 a share. In the subsequent four years, share prices in the technology sector increased substantially. Sapient was no exception and its shares soared to a split-adjusted price of $550. However, the dot-com bust in late 2000 hit Sapient shares hard and they declined to a low of $0.75/share. Over the next few years, growth picked up and the share price recovered accordingly, hitting a high of $17.95 in 2014.
Office space
All Publicis Sapient offices have open layouts, where it is difficult to decipher any hierarchy. Whiteboards dominate the office space and are used frequently for meetings and work plans. These two characteristics of Publicis Sapient office spaces are considered a way to support the core values of the company.
