Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

James Faucette: Great. Thank you very much. Wanted to follow-up on a couple of those items. First, can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing around the actual conversion and decision cycles? Obviously, the bookings themselves speak well to being able to do conversions, but are we seeing any changes in the sales cycle times or the types of projects that customers may want to engage in?

Julie Sweet: Well, let me just start with the type of projects. I mean what we’ve been seeing over the last several quarters is just a laser focus on cost, right? So most programs, clients want to see a shorter return on investments, right, more focused on cost. They love cost and growth, but it has to be, in most cases, a shorter return on the investment. At the same time, it’s important that not all industries are in the same place, right? So if you’ve got industries like, say, in the high-tech area, and some spots on retail, for example, cost optimization is very dominant, right? If you have €“ you’ve got some of the other less affected industries, say, insurance, energy, it’s €“ everyone wants to be more resilient and lower cost.

But they are really trying to deal with their technical debt, they are thinking about growth, how do you reimagine the customer experience. And so I would say a common theme is that in this kind of an environment, everyone does want to be optimizing costs, but where they are focusing is different by industry is what I would say first. And then just to your first part of your question about are you seeing changes in decision making and I’d let KC talk to you about the yields in our pipeline because you all saw, in general, seeing a trend toward these larger deals. So there is €“ and we talked about this in the last couple of quarters, we’re seeing less of the smaller deals in SMC and to some extent, SI, particularly in North America, where we’re seeing more caution.

North America had record sales this quarter. But in areas tending towards the bigger transformational deals, not the smaller SNC and to some extent, SI deals. And those €“ that transformational pipeline, which is our strategy, right, like if you think about it, what have we been trying to drive for the last few years? We want to be at the center of our clients’ business, we want to be able to be relevant, really help them transform and then be well positioned to continue to be that partner. And I would just say, Enel in my script, is a great example of that. I mean they are hugely innovative utility. They were very early in cloud. We help them get to the cloud. And now they are modernizing and once again being super innovative. That’s exactly the way we want to work with our clients, be it their core and then be there for their next big transformation.

Maybe, KC, if you want to just comment on the yields real quick.

KC McClure: Yes, sure. No problem. So when we €“ let me focus really on consulting bookings because it is important to understand the impact of F&C and our consulting bookings and also how to what we’re doing in our larger transformation deals because they do convert to revenue at a slower pace. So as I mentioned in my script, I was very pleased with our SNC bookings and our overall consulting bookings, which were very close to the record that we had last year. And SNC participates, and is a critical part of winning the larger deals, which we have 35 clients over $100 million. And so what you’ll see is in SNC, you may see a conversion that’s a little bit slower than we typically have because we still do have some pressure in our smaller deals, particularly in North America.