Prasad is Accenture's new CTO, Sharma is chief services officer
Bengaluru:
Rajendra Prasad
, who currently serves as chief information and asset engineering officer at Accenture, was elevated to the position of group chief executive – technology and CTO, effective Sept 1.
He succeeds Karthik Narain, who is leaving the firm to pursue other opportunities. A two-decade veteran at Accenture, Prasad joined the firm from TCS as manager and lead for process and delivery excellence in 2005. An alumnus of NIT Warangal, he was elevated to the position of global automation lead for tech before becoming the firm's chief information and asset engineering officer last year.
In yet another significant development, Accenture will consolidate its services—strategy, consulting, technology, and operations—into a single, integrated business unit called Reinvention Services under the leadership of Manish Sharma, Accenture's current CEO of the Americas.
Sharma will become Accenture's first chief services officer. As an integrated business unit, Reinvention Services will be able to create more leading solutions faster and embed data and AI more easily into its solutions and delivery.
John Walsh, Accenture's current global chief operating officer, will become CEO of the Americas, succeeding Sharma. Kate Hogan, the current COO of the Americas, will succeed Walsh.
Sharma and Walsh will continue to serve on Accenture's Global Management Committee (GMC). In her new role, Hogan will rejoin the committee. Kate Clifford, who currently serves as CHRO of the Americas, has been appointed as Accenture's CHRO and will join the GMC.
Accenture has announced significant leadership changes, effective Sept 1, aimed at enhancing its ability to deliver innovative solutions to its stakeholders and reinvent in the age of AI.
The company will continue to manage its business through three geographic markets—the Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), and Asia-Pacific—and go to market by industry. "Today, our clients need more value faster, and Accenture is their reinvention partner of choice," said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture. "These changes to our growth model will allow us to deliver that value and continue to scale our business by being an even stronger engine of reinvention that more rapidly delivers the power of GenAI.
We are writing the playbook for how to be the most AI-enabled, client-focused professional services company in the world and a great place to work for our people—our reinventors."
On the leadership changes Sweet said, "Once we fully implement our new model, we will be able to bring more leading solutions faster and embed data and AI more easily into our solutions and delivery. We will also be able to help our people learn and apply AI more easily.
As this technology continues to evolve quickly, we will continue to manage our business through our geographic markets, the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, and go-to market by industry.
I'm excited about these changes and how they will fuel our growth."
Accenture revised its 2025 full-year guidance, projecting revenue growth of 6% to 7%, up from the earlier estimate of 5% to 7%. The company's revenue rose 7% in the third quarter, with the operating margin expanding by 40 basis points to 16.8%.
Its new bookings decreased by 6% to $19.7 billion during the same period. Its GenAI bookings remained steady at $1.5 billion, compared to $1.4 billion in the previous quarter, with 30 clients booking over $100 million quarterly.
Sweet said clients' system modernisation efforts are driving growth, with GenAI playing a crucial role. "GenAI has been a catalyst for reinvention because the power of GenAI has created the opportunity to meet challenges in new ways, achieving even better results than any single technology in the internet era, and yet GenAI alone is just a tool.
GenAI demand continues to be very, very strong. And now it's getting big enough that it's going to fluctuate a little bit.
Right. But you'll see it, even as we went through a lot of examples today, GenAI is just being more and more embedded into everything we do."
Accenture's workforce was reduced by 10,407 from the second quarter, taking the total base to 790,692 employees.
"We invested in our people with 38 million training hours year to date, up 18% over the same period last year. We increased our data and AI workforce to approximately 75,000, continuing progress against our goal of 80,000 by the end of FY26," Sweet said. "I'm also thrilled to congratulate our 97,000 people who were promoted this fiscal year, including more than 800 who were promoted to managing director."
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