Pros
Sapient was founded in Boston in 1990 by Jerry Greenberg and Stuart Moore. It now has 10,000+ employees, at least 75% in India. It has very smart people and has very high standards for hiring, which makes it difficult to get into. One in, you are working with some of the best and brightest in the consulting and digital development business. Sapient is divided into three parts: SapientNitro (the largest) which is does digital marketing and web development for large companies all over the globe. Sapient Global Markets specializes in business consulting and systems development for capital and commodity markets (primarily portfolio management, trading, risk management and related systems). Sapient Government Systems specializes in business consulting and systems development for federal, state, and local governments.
Sapient was acquired in early 2015 by Publicis Groupe, a large advertising holding company which already owned some of Sapient's direct competitors in digital marketing (Digitas, Razorfish, Rosetta), as well as several large conventional advertising agencies (e.g. Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi).
Sapient is telling its employees that the acquisition by Publicis was really a "reverse takeover" and that Sapient is busy transforming the parent company from the inside out. That's ambitious--but Sapient might be able to pull it off. If so, I'd say the future for Publicis is bright.
In the process, Sapient is expanding its industry verticals from just Global Markets and Government by adding additional industries under the new brand, Sapient Consulting. The first vertical to be added will be Healthcare. When that is underway, Sapient Consulting launch another-- learning as it goes rather than overreaching by starting up multiple industry verticals at once.
So, Sapient is growing in the business consulting space and if you have deep industry experience, it will be appreciated here.
Cons
I can't speak for Nitro because I work in Sapient Global Markets (SGM). But in SGM, there is little collaboration across project teams. One learns on the job, real-time, by moving from project to project. There are courses available for technical and business domain knowledge, but learning is not promoted (as it is at say, at a Microsoft or IBM). And, despite having the technical platforms available (e.g. Jive), there just isn't a lot of sharing of IP or best practices at this time. Just focus on project work.
