Cognizant has announced that it has acquired Cadient Group in a deal worth $30 million. Cadient is a full-service digital marketing agency that serves a broad spectrum of lifescience companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer health, and medical device industries.

As part of this acquisition, more than 100 digital specialists with expertise across brand strategy and planning, content development, user-centered design, multi-channel analytics, and digital, social and mobile marketing will join Cognizant. This acquisition also brings to Cognizant digital assets and intellectual property of Cadient including Reveal, an insights and analytics platform; Immerse, an experiential marketing platform; and OneVoice, an advocacy campaign management platform.

"The lifesciences industry is undergoing structural disruption as marketing services enable new digital ways for companies to engage with patients and providers and create compelling user experiences," said Mr Shankar Narayanan, vice president and global markets leader of the lifesciences practice at Cognizant. He added, "We welcome Cadient's digital specialists to the Cognizant family and are confident that our combined capabilities and digital assets will help both lifesciences and broader healthcare companies gain a competitive advantage by managing the information that surrounds organizations, processes, products, and people what we call Code Halos."

Mr Stephen Wray, president and CEO, Cadient Group said, "Becoming a part of Cognizant uniquely positions us to deliver integrated solutions to lifescience marketing and sales teams around the world. Clients will now have enhanced access to the best creativity and craftsmanship of a design firm combined with the best-in-class management and execution capabilities of a large consulting and technology firm to produce superior customer engagements at the brand and enterprise level. Together, we are ideally positioned to deliver on this promise."

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.