Accenture's Sweet on Q3 Earnings: Driven By Digital (Audio)

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with pin Box and Kathleen as on Bloombird Radio. Accenture earnings out today, they're boosting their You're adjusted earnings per share of view. That's a plus. We have the CEO for North America joining us now. And of course you know Accenture probably very well, leading global professional services company, lots of services and solutions and strategy consoling digital technology and operations. I've certainly dealt with a lot of Accenture

professionals when during the banking crisis and all that. Lots of value added there. Julie Sweet adding some value today on taking Stock. She's located in the Washington d C in metropolitan area, but coming all the way to New York to join us in studio today. Absolutely excited to be here. Thanks. So, Julie. Uh, how is it looking? How about earnings per share looking good? A better luck

for the future. What's driving it? Well? We had a great quarter obviously in North America, where we're at eleven percent growth in revenue and local currency and ten percent globally, and we raised our outlook for earnings per share to ten to eleven percent. We're ten percent year today, so very excited. And it's being driven by two big things. Our investments in UM acquisitions and in our business which are really differentiating us, and then leading in the new

digital cloud security. It's now forty of our business and it's growing double digit. I was gonna say, the security part of the business and the cloud part of the business. I mean this is, as you said, forty percent. Do you see a time when it's going to be more than fifty percent of the business. Absolutely. I mean it's really based on demand. And we're seeing two big things

from our clients. The first is amidst the digital revolution, they're coming to us to understand how is technology impacting our business and then take that from insight to execution. And the second thing we're seeing is around productivity, efficiency and sustained investment capacity in a large part to be able to fuel the investment needed for the digital transformation. And it's not ending. There's no finish line in the

digital revolution, and there's no one and done. Break that down for a little bit for us, efficiency productivity, investment, capacity, all that kind of thing, real words, a concept and example, what what does that mean? Sure? So if you think about our portfolio always serve forty industries, they're all in different places. So if you're in oil and gas today, your focus very much on UM, cost cutting more, being able to do more with less because of the pressures

in that business. If you're in retail, financial services, consumer goods, you're trying to take advantage of the digital consumer experience and growing your top line. But that takes investment, right, that takes modernization, new capabilities, changing the workforce, and so in both cases you're looking at better ways to be to have UM, to deliver more with less, and to have more ability to invest, but driven by different pressures.

What are some of those pressures? So UM on the on we're growing top line, it's around the disruption that's coming from the digital revolution, which is about new entrants. So you've got Amazon and UM and Netflix, you know, pressuring sort of anything that's around content, television, cable. You have new entrants in terms of you know, logistics, it's not just about uber, it's about how that's transforming the

business to business. So you've got a lot of every industry has some kind of disruption and companies are having to step back and say, what does it mean for us? Both from an opportunity and from a risk perspective. Who's your biggest competition? So we have five different businesses, and we have competitors in each of those businesses, so it's not a single We have strategy, can sulting, digital, technology,

and operations, and the competitors are different by business. Is it also just different by geography because you are the CEO of North America? Absolutely, and so every there's some companies that are more global that we're one of the most global in terms of we're in fifty six countries where people operate in a hundred different countries at any given time. But each market also has individual players who

are competitors. And in fact, we think a lot now about leveraging, about being local and leveraging global because it's more important that now than ever, and to be really in your local markets. Again, who would be the client? What kind of company that would be saying? Ge Et Centa told me I need to be local and leverage globally? What does that mean? What's give me again a concrete

example sure. So if you're consumer goods company, um, consumers today want personalization and the nature of the consumer in the US versus China versus Brazil is really different, and so the products may be the same, but how you're marketing it, how they're the buying patterns, the way they buy are very different depending on the market. And that's the personalization that consumers now expect, and that's the innovation that companies are coming to us to look at, is

how do we real time personalize for our consumers. Now. I know that one of the biggest projects you've been working on is the Affordable Healthcare website for the US government, trying to make that better and more efficient. How's that going. It's going really well. In fact, we were just renewed in our contract there and we're extremely proud of that work because that's really improving the way the world works and lives. It's bringing healthcare to millions of America, and

we're very proud of the work we do. How do you price your services? Can you give us any sense of what I would pay if I were that company? Needing to figure out how to uh globalize my local company? Kevin, it's interesting your asset because what we're really seeing is a shift to actually paying a lot more based on

outcome and well as on service. And so we have UM we have a commercial contracts now where just as our client is having to deliver an outcome like patient improve patient care, we're also saying we will be paid based on how we're helping you achieve that. We also have commercial contects where you buy as a service, you buy as you use, and then of course traditional fees for service and so UM. What we find is it's important to think about what the client needs and adjust

our commercials. Thank you very much for coming in and spending time with it, and thanks so much for having me. Thanks Kathleen, it's great to be here. Julie Sweet the chief executive of North America for Accenture. They're based in Alexandria, Virginia. Talking about a company to does thirty four billion dollars of business a year. This is Bloomberg Radio. Taking stock is brought to you by Bentley University. What are talking about?

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