COVID-19 Hit 'Giant Fast-Forward Button' to Future of Cloud: Accenture

The pandemic forced many companies “to simultaneously transform multiple parts of their enterprise and reskill their people in what previously would have been sequential programs,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on a fiscal Q2 call Thursday.

The quarter ended Feb. 28 marked Accenture’s return “to pre-COVID-level financial results a quarter earlier than we expected and with a tough compare” with the year-earlier quarter, she said. Revenue now increased 8% in U.S. dollars to $12.1 billion. Revenue growth in North America was 7%.

Accenture clients are racing “to re-platform their businesses in the cloud, address cost pressures, build resilience and security, adjust their operations and customer experiences and find new sources of growth,” said Sweet. COVID-19 “has hit a giant fast-forward button to the future,” she said. “Demand to innovate at unprecedented speed and scale with rapid adoption of cloud, AI and other disruptive technologies,is accelerating.”

“Digital leaders” no longer are simply just “competing for market share,” said Sweet. They're building “their vision of the future faster than the competition,” she said. “For digital laggards, they are determined to not simply catch up, but to leapfrog” their rivals, she said.

Though COVID-19 is speeding the demand forward, “the reality is that the extent of transformation ahead is enormous,” said Sweet. “The move from approximately 20% to 80% in the cloud alone is a huge undertaking and it is just the start as companies will then continue to invest to grow and innovate on their new cloud foundations.”

Sweet said in Q&A it’s “still unclear” what will happen to business travel, post-pandemic. “I’m having lots of conversations with companies who are just trying to figure this out,” she said. “Will it actually explode once people feel safe because they need to reconnect? Will it structurally shift?” The future is “too early” to predict, and “it’s really kind of all over the map,” she said. She hopes to have “a lot better sense” of the trends to come “as we get through the next six months,” she said.