Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[00:12]
Hi, Julie. It’s great to get time with you again. We had a great meeting quite recently last year, and it’s great to have you back on with HFS. So what’s new with Accenture, coming off a pandemic, all the chaotic dynamics in our industry? It’s been an absolutely crazy year, right? It feels like everybody wants to drive out costs. They want to innovate in a hurry. Accenture’s trying to fly the flag for transformational deals moving forward. So how would you sum up the whole state of play in our industry, Julie?
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[00:44]
It’s a great question. I’d start with the clients, because that’s really what drives our industry, and I would say that on the one hand, clients are embracing more change — and I think things like GenAI have helped that — but what we’re seeing is clients have an even deeper appreciation, and at the same time, in most industries, not all industries, there are a lot of constraints on the clients in terms of their spending, in terms of how much they can take on, because they’ve been in a state of change for some time. And so for that, I think it really means that as an industry, and certainly what Accenture is really trying to drive, is being the best partner for what we call total enterprise reinvention. That really is what clients have said — that they know they have to reinvent by tech, data and AI. And thinking about ways, how do you do it faster? How do you make the best decisions on where to invest and when to invest? And that is, I think, a really important part of what, as an industry, we need to make sure we’re focused on, because we’re still in the early stages of what really, over the next several years, will be a significant amount of spend that clients need to do. And they’re not gonna be able to avoid it, so we have to help them do that in the smartest, best way possible.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[02:18]
OK. So, you know, let’s not avoid the elephant in the room. You guys have been driving a lot of narrative around the very real impact of generative AI. How does this factor into your thinking? How do you see this changing your business model?
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[02:34]
Well, first of all, we have embraced every technology shift over the last three decades or more that we’ve been in business, and what we have found is that when you embrace the shift, you win. And you win because by embracing the shift, you’re able to help your clients create value from it, and you’re able to then create value for Accenture. And so we have always succeeded when there’s big technology change, because we embrace it. And so that’s just how we flat out think about it. And, you know, I don’t know if you know this, but our motto is embracing change — like we talk about, let there be change. That is our tagline in the market. So that’s where we start. What we are aiming to do is to be the leader in both helping clients embrace GenAI, which we think will — literally, it’s going to drive the next decade of transformation, and I’ll come back to that. And then for our own business, we want to be the leader in how you responsibly use GenAI to deliver our services. And so that is our very, very clear ambition. And then, as you choose to sort of take a step back, in 2021 we were the first to say, here’s the five key forces that every company needs to embrace, and one of them was total enterprise reinvention, which we defined as using tech, data and AI to transform every part of the enterprise. GenAI has accelerated the clients’ understanding, hasn’t changed all the conditions that need to be there — the digital core, data — and it’s made us even more relevant. So we’re really excited about what’s happening with GenAI, because we think it plays into our strengths.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[04:41]
OK. And you announced a very large, I think, $3 billion investment into the space. You were very deliberate with that message, I recall. So how do you envisage this going — in terms of investment, in terms of client adoption, in terms of, you know, obviously we’ll see some fallout from this in the next few months — but how do you envisage this going in the medium term?
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[05:06]
So our $3 billion investment is an important part of how we’re going to help create value for our clients. And so it includes what we’re doing with talent — we’re training thousands of people to be able to be relevant to GenAI. We’re creating assets and solutions to help our clients be able to do so faster, and we’re investing in things like responsible AI, because that’s an area where we can invest on behalf of our clients and help them accelerate and make sure that when they’re trying to move fast, they’re doing it responsibly. So it’s a very important part of what we are doing to create value, and we always think about our investment as to where can we invest so our clients can benefit. And so those are the big areas that we think about for the investment. And then, as you think about why is this then important in terms of the pace, it’s super early, and we’re investing now so that as the technology matures, we’re the first to be able to create value for our clients using it.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[06:12]
Yeah. OK. I mean, it really builds into the ecosystem conversations we were having last year and before, so this is fascinating. So do you think that white-collar jobs are under any sort of threat with GenAI? I mean, I’ve seen my 19-year-old nephew doing his entire chemistry undergrad on ChatGPT at the moment. Do you think our education system is going to be rocked with so many kids using this? And what do you think the whole economic and educative fallout is going to be in the medium to longer term from this?
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[06:46]
Well, as my teenagers told me, “Mom, no one can get by using ChatGPT,” because they figured that out quickly. So I have to say that no one — I don’t think we’re, at least at this point, in danger of our kids being able to skate through, because the technology is able to be used to figure out who’s using ChatGPT. So I’m not too worried about that. But let’s think about what GenAI is gonna be able to do. So knowledge workers are the ones that will most be displaced in some cases, but in all cases at least augmented. So there’s gonna be displacement, but there won’t be a knowledge worker, I’d say five years from now, that isn’t using some form of GenAI to do their job better. So that’s a big shift, in that lots of technology changes haven’t so directly affected all of our knowledge workers. It’s also super exciting — I’m using some of these technologies now myself, and you can start to see where it’s going and how it can be really augmented. But that goes back to where I started earlier about this decade of transformation and total enterprise reinvention, because if all knowledge workers will be at least augmented, that means that every part of the enterprise is going to have to work differently. And that’s just fundamental. And that’s before you get to what people aren’t really even talking about, which is how GenAI combined with things like quantum are going to change material sciences, they’re going to change biotech. So lots and lots of the core parts of business are going to change as well. So you just kind of keep coming back to that: GenAI is a catalyst for a new level of reinvention over the next decade.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[08:46]
Oh, that’s fantastic. So if the Julie Sweet in two years’ time were going to sum up what the enterprise tech services world is gonna look like, what do you think she’d say to you now, and how fast are things moving based on these experiences?
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[09:07]
What I’d say is, I don’t know if it’s two years or five years, but I think our industry will be reinvented, and I hope to lead that reinvention for our industry.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[09:07]
That’s a very good answer, and well summed up. And I really look forward to sharing this with our audience and our GenAI series. Julie, it’s been an absolute pleasure getting some time with you today.
Julie Sweet — Chair and CEO, Accenture[09:32]
Well, it’s great to talk to you as always. I really appreciate it, and looking forward to seeing what happens over the next 12 months.
Phil Fersht — CEO, HFS Research[09:32]
Absolutely fantastic.
