Who Needs Accenture in the Age of AI? (economist.com) 30
Accenture is facing mounting challenges as AI threatens to disrupt the consulting industry the company helped build. The Dublin-based firm, which made its fortune advising clients on adapting to new technologies from the internet to cloud computing, now confronts the same predicament as generative AI reshapes business operations.
The company's new generative AI contracts slowed to $100 million in the most recent quarter, down from $200 million per quarter last year. Technology partners including Microsoft and SAP are increasingly integrating AI directly into their offerings, allowing systems to work immediately without extensive consulting support. Newcomers like Palantir are embedding their own engineers with customers, enabling clients to bypass traditional consultants.
Between 2015 and 2024, Accenture generated a 370% total return by helping companies navigate technological transitions. The firm reached a $250 billion valuation in February before losing $60 billion in market value. CEO Julie Sweet insists that the company is reorganizing around "reinvention services." A recent survey found 42% of companies abandoned most AI initiatives, up from 17% a year ago.
The company's new generative AI contracts slowed to $100 million in the most recent quarter, down from $200 million per quarter last year. Technology partners including Microsoft and SAP are increasingly integrating AI directly into their offerings, allowing systems to work immediately without extensive consulting support. Newcomers like Palantir are embedding their own engineers with customers, enabling clients to bypass traditional consultants.
Between 2015 and 2024, Accenture generated a 370% total return by helping companies navigate technological transitions. The firm reached a $250 billion valuation in February before losing $60 billion in market value. CEO Julie Sweet insists that the company is reorganizing around "reinvention services." A recent survey found 42% of companies abandoned most AI initiatives, up from 17% a year ago.
Re:Perhaps Accenture, like any WITCH firm is usefu (Score:5, Insightful)
Many IT management folks need a third party consultant to ally their thinking, or even to point to when that allied thinking goes into a ditch at high speed.
Herd thinking still motivates decisions. This hits the wall of Not Invented Here decision making, requiring Nodding Heads to acknowledge the obvious and native awesome thinking (/snark) that IT management does on a day to day basis.
Circle jerking will continue, as it always has. AI is just today's trend and money burn. The name might change, the country to dodge taxes, but the game has been played for millennia.
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Wonder why... (Score:2)
Just because instead of hiring tons of new grads to crank out code, they can run an AI to write *worse* code in less time, and not complain about working, oh, 119 hours/week.
Yes, a co-worker in 1995 at Ameritech *did* do that (he was working for another company a year later).
what does AI have to do with it? (Score:2)
I admit that I'm only familiar personally with one Accenture project, but they are doing a shit job on it ongoing...
Who needs Arthur Andersen? (Score:5, Funny)
Who needs Arthur Andersen consulting in the post Enron age?
Yeah same assclowns, different name. They are amazing at solving problems, if the problem is that you have way too much money. And, well, if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a thumb and they have 30lb sledge.
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Who needs Arthur Andersen consulting in the post Enron age?
Yeah same assclowns, different name. They are amazing at solving problems, if the problem is that you have way too much money. And, well, if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a thumb and they have 30lb sledge.
Why is this modded as funny? It may, or may not, be funny; what matters is that it is the truth.
I like how we pretend they're a consulting company (Score:2, Interesting)
AI is going to hit them like a truck because AI is going to automate exactly the kind of jobs that it's their job to replace with cheap labor.
It's not really good for anyone per se. Our civilization is not prepared to have permanent 20% unemployment especially among what were traditionally high income earners.
Remember folks we need those high income white collar workers to employ all those plumbers everybody is so excited ab
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Companies don't hire because productivity goes up (Score:2)
That's why high interest rates fight inflation. They basically trigger a recession because most businesses need cheap access to loans to get them through the lean months and if interest rates are high they can't borrow so they start firing and that forces people to spend less money, reducing demand.
Now you could m
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They hire to meet demand.
Yes, companies hire to scale up (or down) supply to meet changes in demand. However, companies also hire to keep up with the competition. The (optimist) hope with AI is the latter, that one company will figure out how to use AI to uplevel what their humans are doing and scale up that advantage by hiring more upleveled humans, thus getting an advantage on their competitors and forcing competitors to do the same.
The companies could also do the private equity thing and just try to save on costs, but these ty
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They hire to meet demand. And if AI starts taking jobs, which every CEO is saying AI is exactly doing that, then there will be fewer people with money to buy things and demand will go down.
Except we all know AI isn't doing exactly that. I can see Accenture having a role in bailing out companies that already laid off their staff because AI only to discover that AI isn't enough. But they don't want to rehire because that is embarrassing and because CEOs are sure that the next AI effort will truly replace their staff for real.
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> Remember folks we need those high income white collar workers to employ all those plumbers everybody is so excited about.
That's not really it. We need those high income workers to pay taxes, that can then go support everyone. If you have a serious drop in taxes, the government would have less to spend on everything.
(Although at least in the context of the US, it seems like the current administration wants to reduce taxes anyway, as a way of reducing the deficit. Makes total sense.)
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(Although at least in the context of the US, it seems like the current administration wants to reduce taxes anyway, as a way of reducing the deficit. Makes total sense.)
I see no evidence the current admin wants to reduce the deficit. They doubled the deficit last time they were in office.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.go... [treasury.gov]
The admin wants to starve government services as another method of destroying the "deep state". Tax reductions appear to help mainly the top 0.1%.
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Slashdot just ran a story about Intel farming out their marketing function to Accenture
https://www.techradar.com/pro/... [techradar.com]
Accenture is going to use AI to trim their own workforce, apparently.
It damn well should be a loud pop (Score:2)
... with the amount of bullshit and money, and electricity!, being thrown at "AI".
Their website (Score:5, Funny)
really tries to ensnare you with AI FOMO. [accenture.com] You can almost smell the desperation.
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WIITCH was never trustworthy (Score:2, Insightful)
I was a prior fortune 50 executive working at the C level for a publicly traded company, and these leeches were the biggest Problem I faced every day managing my hundreds of engineers every day.
They do not keep to compliance and if you ask them for head count with updated headshots they will not be able to give it to you because they churn through people so quickly, or at least that was my experience.
I've also experienced them trying to trap companies into contracts that they're not allowed to get out of th
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They turned me into a newt.
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I was a prior fortune 50 executive working at the C level for a publicly traded company, and these leeches were the biggest Problem I
Wow amazing, that was also my experience when I was working as a CEO of a fortune 50 executive at a publicly traded company!
I got better.
AI is an integration consultant now? Prove it. (Score:2)
Technology partners including Microsoft and SAP are increasingly integrating AI directly into their offerings, allowing systems to work immediately without extensive consulting support.
Oh, really?
And I suppose Microsoft and SAP can provide proof on various implementation projects of exactly how AI has accomplished this? Along with the thousands of dollars/hours proven saved on the budget?
Just curious how full of it marketing might be today.
Who has needed Accenture before? (Score:2)
I mean all they do is make the C-levels feel good while they do damage. Hmm. Sounds like a modern LLM, doesn't it?
AI Recommends ... (Score:2)
Who needs Accenture? (Score:2)