Lisa Ellis: I wanted to ask, Julie, a bit about the progress on compressed transformations. I think you started using that phrase about two years ago sort of in the earlier days of the pandemic. And now as you’re working with clients looking out into 2023, can you just give some color on sort of like how far they are along in the compressed transformation? Is this — do we — are we still only in the third or fourth inning? Or a lot of your clients sort of in full rollout mode and we’ve got a couple of years left? Just trying to get a sense for sort of that big push we’ve seen, how far through the process are we? How much of this sort of sustained growth can we expect going forward?
Julie Sweet: Thanks, Lisa. It’s a great question. And there’s a couple of ways that you look at it. So what we saw particularly in the early days was that leaders before the pandemic kind of we’re doubling down and becoming more ambitious. And from that time, you’ve got more and more companies then looking to see their competitors and sort of being pushed to themselves being more ambitious. And so, I think I shared last quarter that we got some recent research that said something like 68% of CFOs we surveyed are working in companies that have three or more transformation programs in progress in parallel. That being said, it’s still very much the early days because we’re so early in building the digital core that’s enabling these transformations.
So while we’ve had a big acceleration on the migration to the cloud, it’s still kind of early innings, 35% or so. And most of the companies report, that although the — when they get to the cloud they haven’t actually been able to access the services and get the value yet, and that’s why you’re continuing just to see this drive in our cloud business, particularly Cloud First, because we continue to do all the migration work. And then those we’ve migrated are now coming to us and say, “Hey, look, we sign these big consumption contracts. We’re trying to figure out how to transform our business and we don’t know how to.” So you basically got people who have moved fast, have lots more to do, and that’s this concept of total enterprise reinvention.
And then you have many companies that are just starting to really take on these more ambitious programs. So, we see this as a decade of transformation.
Lisa Ellis: Okay. Good. Then a quick one on M&A. I think you highlighted, KC, about close to $700 million in this past quarter in M&A. Can you guys just give a little more color on what you’re seeing in the environment? Have you seen some of the private valuations come in? And are you seeing sort of an uptick in activity in that space?
Julie Sweet: Yes. I mean great companies never come at cheap prices, is what I would say. So — and we really try to focus on buying highly valued companies. So we really aren’t seeing that. The broader environment, yes, but where we’re focusing, we’re not really seeing any big differences. And we think that’s the right answer, right, we want to buy great companies.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Dave Koning from Baird. Please go ahead.
David Koning: And I guess my question, I’ve noticed your — the strategic priorities continue to grow significantly. And they grew at the same pace, at least the qualitative like numbers you wrote were at the same pace as last quarter. Is that — I mean, is that like very close to, I guess, the same growth? Like did it decelerate at all? Or is that actually very similar? And what percent of revenues are those? Just I’m kind of thinking through the rest of the business must have decelerated a little more of that.
KC McClure: Yes. So, overall — let me say first, Happy Holidays. It’s good to talk to you. In terms of overall, our strategic priorities, as you mentioned, and you’re right, you would expect in a quarter where we grew 15%, we did have higher growth overall in terms of what we have in our strategic priorities. They would — in total, they did grow at a faster pace than the rest of Accenture at 15%, which is the intent overall of our strategic priority. And so — which does account for the majority of our revenue.
Julie Sweet: Yes. Look, as you go forward, we talked a little bit about earlier, you’ve got parts of our business like some of the customer focus ad spending and marketing that’s — where clients are more challenged to be able to prioritize those areas, you also see some changing in industry. So, we’re all reading about comms, media and tech, right? So, we are going to see — we expect kind of a slowdown in spending from those clients as they reposition and think about sort of their — what the changes they need to make, and we’re helping them do that. So again, the diversity of our business really helps us balance. You do have, at any given time in an environment like this, areas that — where the clients are having to make different choices and we’re trying to pivot to help them and be really relevant to their current needs.
And that’s why it was so important to see the — we’ve been talking about this for a couple of quarters, the importance of cost and to see that really coming through in our sales and pipeline, just demonstrates how our breadth of services allows us to pivot to the needs of our clients.
David Koning: Yes. Got you. And just one quick follow-up. You mentioned in Consulting, I think Tien-Tsin asked, you mentioned in Consulting, I think, bookings being down. Was that sequentially or year-over-year? And is that on a constant currency basis?
