Communications, media and technology continues to deliver the goods for Accenture with third quarter earnings of $2.13bn compared with $1.75bn for the third quarter of fiscal 2017, an increase of 22 per cent in US dollars and 18 per cent in local currency.
This sector is now Accenture’s biggest after products and, while not strictly comparable with agency groups’ performance, shows the inroads it’s making into the sector.
At the same time Publicis Groupe’s consultancy offering Sapient has hired Tilak Doddapaneni from Tesco for the newly created position of global head of engineering. At Tesco he was online engineering director. Sapient has also hired Rakesh Ravuri from Amazon as chief technology officer for programming languages and cloud and global head of engineering for retail. Both are Sapient alumni.
The Publicis.Sapient hires are more evidence, if it’s needed, that consultancy-related business is where it’s at for some at least of the agency holding companies.
Accenture’s growth rate far outstrips anything the holding companies have produced recently though. Presumably some of it is at their expense.
