Google Cloud Next '24 | Scott Alfieri | Accenture

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Scott Alfieri

Global Lead - Accenture Google Business Group

Accenture

Enterprise reinvention: Accenture’s billion-dollar leap into learning and AI, and its partnership with Google Cloud

Technology is best when it combines the forces of several different companies and great minds, especially when tech giants, such as Google LLC, lend smaller businesses their technical capabilities to help them push innovation.With the Accenture Google Business Group, Accenture helps clients move through business reinvention with Google technology, with many big-name clients, such as Best Buy Co. Inc., already utilizing its services to lead its enterprise reinvention

play_circle_outline The Accenture Google Business Group and its partnership with Google Cloud

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing Business Reinvention: Exploring Cloud, Data, and AI with Best Buy, Accenture Federal Services, and Intercontinental Hotels

play_circle_outline Investments in generative AI, cybersecurity, and skills development

play_circle_outline Focus on customer engagement, operational efficiency, new product development, and people-centric solutions

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Scott Alfieri | Accenture

Scott Alfieri

Global Lead - Accenture Google Business Group Accenture

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(upbeat music)

>> Hello everyone and welcome back to "The Cube's" live coverage of Google Cloud Next here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. We're getting toward the end of the day, there's a DJ thumping. I think that there's a cocktails coming out soon.

>> Yeah we're going to be dealing with the envy of the day, but I think what's been keeping us going has really been the great guests that have been coming on and really talking about what they're doing with Google and the partnerships that Google has brought to the table this afternoon have been fantastic. And I think this one's going to be awesome as well.

>> Well, a great segue to welcome Scott Alfieri. He's the Global Lead Accenture Business, Accenture Google Business Group. Welcome to the show, Scott.

>> It's great to be here, thank you. I just want to say and reflect on an amazing point for Google Cloud. Google Cloud Next '24 is epic. I mean, what they've announced, the energy, 30,000 people here is phenomenal. So it's great to be here with you.

>> Yeah I mean, I think that part of it we were talking about at earlier on is that over a thousand enhancements that TK talked about onstage this morning, you start to look at that and a lot of that really does tie into what's going on with Accenture and going on with the partner community,

>> Absolutely. >> In general. How do you really look at it about what does, I guess, the Accenture Google Business group do, and how does that tie back to Google Cloud?

>> Beautiful question, thank you for that. Also, let's be sort of set in frame context. So the Accenture Google Business Group represents all of Accenture, so it's bringing together our industry and technical capabilities coupled with pioneering Google technology. Frankly, our charter is super simple. It is to help our clients move through business reinvention on and with Google technology. So if you sort of step back from that and just sort of think about some things that are new this year, so we're excited that we announced here at Google Next, several pretty pioneering engagements. So the first is with Best Buy. So everyone is talking about chatbots, think instead about a digital concierge that's able to support all of us, as well as their customer service agents as you move through product inquiry, move through questions and move through service. So extremely powerful. Second major investment in sort of news for us is with our Accenture Federal Services business partnered with Google Public Sector. So we've announced there is a new data and AI Center of Excellence, and that comes on the back of what we announced several months ago related to a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. That charter for the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is all about helping and ensuring our agencies are able to monitor and be prepared for cyber threats. So, pretty exciting. Those are sort of top three areas that, top two areas that we're very excited about. Finally, with Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts, 6,000 hotels globally, massive, 19 global brands. Our focus there together with Google and IHG, is to enhance the guest experience so that all of us as guests of IHG, when we travel with our families or in work, have the best data being brought forward to enhance our experience as a guest. So really, really exciting and thank you for having me here.

>> What did you call the chat bot? A digital concierge?

>> A digital concierge. >> I love it.

>> I just find like chatbot seems mechanical.

>> It just sounds very more refined and sophisticated. I'm talking to a digital concierge, I love it. So those are sort of the three high level. Can you walk us through some of the recent news that you're announced? It's a dizzying number of announcements.

>> So if we just sort of step back and we'll double click a little bit more on Best Buy. So picture, everything is about customer intimacy, right? So if you step back on that, it's about a brand and the end consumer. And if you can bring hyper-personalization together, much of that now is being done through generative AI. That fundamentally changes the intimacy you have and who wins in the end? The consumer and the brand. All of that then is what surrounds that concierge. On the US federal work, I mean, those are significant investments we're making because you can say you have a Center of Excellence, what sits behind the Center of Excellence are the people, the certification, the instrumentation, the training that bring those to life. So now we're doing that now with data and AI. We've already been doing that with cybersecurity, and if you think about Google's cybersecurity business, it's massive. Chronicle, Chronicle SOAR, Sec-PaLM, their pathway language model, and of course Mandiant and ISG. That's just exciting because with all the work that we, the three of us do, we're traveling a lot, to think about checking at that late hour and having everything there for you as a guest to enhance that experience, I don't know, that just sort of makes me feel good.

>> Yeah as people who do travel just a bit, I think it really is one of those things that we look at and say, hey, bringing that concierge experience would be very nice when I got here at 11:30 last night. So I definitely do understand that, but I think it also is that really there's a lot of other news that you have with Google as well from investments in skills for instance. And kind of take us through some of that and where that's helping out and where you're going with that.

>> Beautiful. Well, I'll first just start with Accenture. Accenture continues to make big investments in our ecosystem partners and obviously surrounding cloud, data and AI, generative AI, security, and obviously with Google and Google Cloud. So start there, that's the baseline. We recently announced a billion dollar investment in what we're calling Accenture Learn Vantage. The charter of Accenture Learn Vantage is to essentially bring forward all the methodologies, content, and training to essentially re-skill the next generation of all the employee bases of our clients. So, super exciting, extremely bold. Now that investment of a billion is on top of our $3 billion investment we made last year in data and AI holistically. So we are putting money behind the significant growth that we're seeing here. Now, other areas we've made investments, staying within generative AI and Google, we have globally Generative AI studios. Obviously those studios, in order for you to deliver generative AI on Google, they need to be instrumented, supported, prototypes built from clients, as well as with Google so we can showcase that to activate imagination with our clients. Another area with Google that we're super excited about is a joint generative AI COE. So picture Accenture people and Googlers together in the same entity working for our clients from early stage prototyping to then more detailed engineering. We have to realize is that in generative AI, right? That's what a lot of people are talking about. But what does it start with? It starts with cloud. Before cloud, it starts with migration and modernization. So from cloud, you then get to, if you will, the data state. And then above that you get to generative AI. So all of these are cured for in that. And if we think about the professionals we have, over 13,000 Google Cloud certifications, super proud of, and 36,000 Accenture people are trained and skilled in Google. So in the end, it's all about the people and our ability to bring precision and scale to the market.

>> I want to ask about that Center of Excellence,

>> Yeah. >> You were just talking about, what are some of the tenets? I mean, you talked earlier about your charter and the work you're trying to do together with Google. How do you come up with what exactly are the joint, the attributes that you're looking for in the people who are at this Center of Excellence and what you're trying to do together, and then make sure that everyone is pulling together to come up with these solutions that are so desperately needed by organizations.

>> Thank you for that question. Maybe I'll start a little bit even upstream. The charter again for Accenture is about business reinvention. That's everything from industry to technology to the new ways of working for all the people. So if we start there, everything frames around that, because we are in the advancement of a new economy, right? We're not piloting generative AI anymore. We are now enterprise reinvention at scale. Now in your questions about the people, so the first is everyone at Accenture is intellectually curious. If you're not intellectually curious, in any company at this time and not technically adept or interested in embracing it, you're probably going to have some more difficulty in the business world. Because everything about business is driven and supported by technology. So first is intellectual curiosity. The second is our investments in our people as they move through their career in the certification and training that make them relevant to the market so we can deliver bold outcomes for our clients. And what are those outcomes? Everything from the reinvention that drives new business growth, to operational efficiencies, to brand new technical landscapes that then power business reinvention. So thank you for that broad question, but allowing me to address it from both our charter, our people, what attracts us, how they're motivated, and ultimately the outcome.

>> Yeah, I think that to me is one of the keys and I love the investment. Billion dollars is nothing to sneeze about in the AI skills 'cause we've been talking about this like all day. It's like, what's going to happen and where are people going to go? How do they become app applicable in this new model? But what's really next between Accenture and Google? What's next on your plate with Google Cloud?

>> Well, obviously, if we just think a little bit right now for, again, '24, Google Next '24, the five awards, right? Again, global services partner of the year, the first one, the second one, industry partner of the year for retail. The third one around public sector, US federal civilian, super excited. Fourth one about specialization machine learning, and then the fifth around talent development in Japan. So that's our baseline now. When I think about '24, and as we then extend into '25, this year is about helping clients scale, cloud, data and AI, cybersecurity surrounded by new ways of working. So I start fundamentally there, but something that's really interesting, you've heard all day today about Gemini. So I'm just going to give you two really interesting live things we're doing, I can't say the client names, but everyone's been doing language translation for some time. But the secret sauce of it is context, right? You can do the translation of the words, but what is the context of the sentence and the purpose and intent? That's where we're spending a lot of time. Gemini being Google's multimodal large language model. So that we're working on Arabic, for example. Amazing to be involved in that and watch the difference of sort of its capabilities. The second, let's talk about an automobile manufacturer. So early stage concept design. If you're able to enable a designer to do prototyping faster, to get adjustments faster, to bring in governance to then move things through, into latter parts of design, there's a dramatic impact on how fast a new car, a new design can be brought to market, as well as how fast something could be retired, and let's make adjustments. So those are two things in Gemini. Finally, I just step back and think, there's sort of four things that our teams globally are focused on with Google and our clients. All of this framed in industry, why? 'Cause industry is where our clients live. So the first is customer engagement. When you think about customer engagement, all of the technology of Google, all the capabilities of Accenture allow us to frame positions where a brand can create more hyper personalization, in turn, more intimacy with the end consumer. Everybody wins. The second is operational efficiency. Now, this is a broad term, right? But this is everything from where you go from cloud to cyber to data to AI to help clients reinvent. The third is new product development for growth. When I step back on that, obviously, you can't just be doing operational efficiency. You need to be finding new revenue streams. So using cloud native platform engineering on Google to recreate or create the net new S-curve of growth for clients is fundamentally an amazing experience to be involved in. And finally, I'll close with, it's all about the people. All about the people. The world needs more people embracing technology, not less. The world needs more people trained in generative AI, not less. And our objective and purpose is to unlock the superpowers of organizations globally. And that's everything from the developer to the marketer, to the sales associate, to the team leader. So I just wanted to thank you for having me here. Hopefully you can tell the passion we have around Google and appreciate your questions on our business.

>> No, we thank you. I mean, I think, again, it's always good to hear where the rubber meets the road and where things are really going and where the concierge is actually adding value. So it's always good to give and inspire people at what they're looking to go and do and build. So thank you as well.

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Your optimism is palpable. So, excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you for tuning into "The Cube's" live coverage of Google Cloud Next. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. You are watching "The Cube", the leading source of enterprise news. (soft music)

Scott Alfieri | Accenture

search

(upbeat music)

>> Hello everyone and welcome back to "The Cube's" live coverage of Google Cloud Next here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. We're getting toward the end of the day, there's a DJ thumping. I think that there's a cocktails coming out soon.

>> Yeah we're going to be dealing with the envy of the day, but I think what's been keeping us going has really been the great guests that have been coming on and really talking about what they're doing with Google and the partnerships that Google has brought to the table this afternoon have been fantastic. And I think this one's going to be awesome as well.

>> Well, a great segue to welcome Scott Alfieri. He's the Global Lead Accenture Business, Accenture Google Business Group. Welcome to the show, Scott.

>> It's great to be here, thank you. I just want to say and reflect on an amazing point for Google Cloud. Google Cloud Next '24 is epic. I mean, what they've announced, the energy, 30,000 people here is phenomenal. So it's great to be here with you.

>> Yeah I mean, I think that part of it we were talking about at earlier on is that over a thousand enhancements that TK talked about onstage this morning, you start to look at that and a lot of that really does tie into what's going on with Accenture and going on with the partner community,

>> Absolutely. >> In general. How do you really look at it about what does, I guess, the Accenture Google Business group do, and how does that tie back to Google Cloud?

>> Beautiful question, thank you for that. Also, let's be sort of set in frame context. So the Accenture Google Business Group represents all of Accenture, so it's bringing together our industry and technical capabilities coupled with pioneering Google technology. Frankly, our charter is super simple. It is to help our clients move through business reinvention on and with Google technology. So if you sort of step back from that and just sort of think about some things that are new this year, so we're excited that we announced here at Google Next, several pretty pioneering engagements. So the first is with Best Buy. So everyone is talking about chatbots, think instead about a digital concierge that's able to support all of us, as well as their customer service agents as you move through product inquiry, move through questions and move through service. So extremely powerful. Second major investment in sort of news for us is with our Accenture Federal Services business partnered with Google Public Sector. So we've announced there is a new data and AI Center of Excellence, and that comes on the back of what we announced several months ago related to a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. That charter for the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is all about helping and ensuring our agencies are able to monitor and be prepared for cyber threats. So, pretty exciting. Those are sort of top three areas that, top two areas that we're very excited about. Finally, with Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts, 6,000 hotels globally, massive, 19 global brands. Our focus there together with Google and IHG, is to enhance the guest experience so that all of us as guests of IHG, when we travel with our families or in work, have the best data being brought forward to enhance our experience as a guest. So really, really exciting and thank you for having me here.

>> What did you call the chat bot? A digital concierge?

>> A digital concierge. >> I love it.

>> I just find like chatbot seems mechanical.

>> It just sounds very more refined and sophisticated. I'm talking to a digital concierge, I love it. So those are sort of the three high level. Can you walk us through some of the recent news that you're announced? It's a dizzying number of announcements.

>> So if we just sort of step back and we'll double click a little bit more on Best Buy. So picture, everything is about customer intimacy, right? So if you step back on that, it's about a brand and the end consumer. And if you can bring hyper-personalization together, much of that now is being done through generative AI. That fundamentally changes the intimacy you have and who wins in the end? The consumer and the brand. All of that then is what surrounds that concierge. On the US federal work, I mean, those are significant investments we're making because you can say you have a Center of Excellence, what sits behind the Center of Excellence are the people, the certification, the instrumentation, the training that bring those to life. So now we're doing that now with data and AI. We've already been doing that with cybersecurity, and if you think about Google's cybersecurity business, it's massive. Chronicle, Chronicle SOAR, Sec-PaLM, their pathway language model, and of course Mandiant and ISG. That's just exciting because with all the work that we, the three of us do, we're traveling a lot, to think about checking at that late hour and having everything there for you as a guest to enhance that experience, I don't know, that just sort of makes me feel good.

>> Yeah as people who do travel just a bit, I think it really is one of those things that we look at and say, hey, bringing that concierge experience would be very nice when I got here at 11:30 last night. So I definitely do understand that, but I think it also is that really there's a lot of other news that you have with Google as well from investments in skills for instance. And kind of take us through some of that and where that's helping out and where you're going with that.

>> Beautiful. Well, I'll first just start with Accenture. Accenture continues to make big investments in our ecosystem partners and obviously surrounding cloud, data and AI, generative AI, security, and obviously with Google and Google Cloud. So start there, that's the baseline. We recently announced a billion dollar investment in what we're calling Accenture Learn Vantage. The charter of Accenture Learn Vantage is to essentially bring forward all the methodologies, content, and training to essentially re-skill the next generation of all the employee bases of our clients. So, super exciting, extremely bold. Now that investment of a billion is on top of our $3 billion investment we made last year in data and AI holistically. So we are putting money behind the significant growth that we're seeing here. Now, other areas we've made investments, staying within generative AI and Google, we have globally Generative AI studios. Obviously those studios, in order for you to deliver generative AI on Google, they need to be instrumented, supported, prototypes built from clients, as well as with Google so we can showcase that to activate imagination with our clients. Another area with Google that we're super excited about is a joint generative AI COE. So picture Accenture people and Googlers together in the same entity working for our clients from early stage prototyping to then more detailed engineering. We have to realize is that in generative AI, right? That's what a lot of people are talking about. But what does it start with? It starts with cloud. Before cloud, it starts with migration and modernization. So from cloud, you then get to, if you will, the data state. And then above that you get to generative AI. So all of these are cured for in that. And if we think about the professionals we have, over 13,000 Google Cloud certifications, super proud of, and 36,000 Accenture people are trained and skilled in Google. So in the end, it's all about the people and our ability to bring precision and scale to the market.

>> I want to ask about that Center of Excellence,

>> Yeah. >> You were just talking about, what are some of the tenets? I mean, you talked earlier about your charter and the work you're trying to do together with Google. How do you come up with what exactly are the joint, the attributes that you're looking for in the people who are at this Center of Excellence and what you're trying to do together, and then make sure that everyone is pulling together to come up with these solutions that are so desperately needed by organizations.

>> Thank you for that question. Maybe I'll start a little bit even upstream. The charter again for Accenture is about business reinvention. That's everything from industry to technology to the new ways of working for all the people. So if we start there, everything frames around that, because we are in the advancement of a new economy, right? We're not piloting generative AI anymore. We are now enterprise reinvention at scale. Now in your questions about the people, so the first is everyone at Accenture is intellectually curious. If you're not intellectually curious, in any company at this time and not technically adept or interested in embracing it, you're probably going to have some more difficulty in the business world. Because everything about business is driven and supported by technology. So first is intellectual curiosity. The second is our investments in our people as they move through their career in the certification and training that make them relevant to the market so we can deliver bold outcomes for our clients. And what are those outcomes? Everything from the reinvention that drives new business growth, to operational efficiencies, to brand new technical landscapes that then power business reinvention. So thank you for that broad question, but allowing me to address it from both our charter, our people, what attracts us, how they're motivated, and ultimately the outcome.

>> Yeah, I think that to me is one of the keys and I love the investment. Billion dollars is nothing to sneeze about in the AI skills 'cause we've been talking about this like all day. It's like, what's going to happen and where are people going to go? How do they become app applicable in this new model? But what's really next between Accenture and Google? What's next on your plate with Google Cloud?

>> Well, obviously, if we just think a little bit right now for, again, '24, Google Next '24, the five awards, right? Again, global services partner of the year, the first one, the second one, industry partner of the year for retail. The third one around public sector, US federal civilian, super excited. Fourth one about specialization machine learning, and then the fifth around talent development in Japan. So that's our baseline now. When I think about '24, and as we then extend into '25, this year is about helping clients scale, cloud, data and AI, cybersecurity surrounded by new ways of working. So I start fundamentally there, but something that's really interesting, you've heard all day today about Gemini. So I'm just going to give you two really interesting live things we're doing, I can't say the client names, but everyone's been doing language translation for some time. But the secret sauce of it is context, right? You can do the translation of the words, but what is the context of the sentence and the purpose and intent? That's where we're spending a lot of time. Gemini being Google's multimodal large language model. So that we're working on Arabic, for example. Amazing to be involved in that and watch the difference of sort of its capabilities. The second, let's talk about an automobile manufacturer. So early stage concept design. If you're able to enable a designer to do prototyping faster, to get adjustments faster, to bring in governance to then move things through, into latter parts of design, there's a dramatic impact on how fast a new car, a new design can be brought to market, as well as how fast something could be retired, and let's make adjustments. So those are two things in Gemini. Finally, I just step back and think, there's sort of four things that our teams globally are focused on with Google and our clients. All of this framed in industry, why? 'Cause industry is where our clients live. So the first is customer engagement. When you think about customer engagement, all of the technology of Google, all the capabilities of Accenture allow us to frame positions where a brand can create more hyper personalization, in turn, more intimacy with the end consumer. Everybody wins. The second is operational efficiency. Now, this is a broad term, right? But this is everything from where you go from cloud to cyber to data to AI to help clients reinvent. The third is new product development for growth. When I step back on that, obviously, you can't just be doing operational efficiency. You need to be finding new revenue streams. So using cloud native platform engineering on Google to recreate or create the net new S-curve of growth for clients is fundamentally an amazing experience to be involved in. And finally, I'll close with, it's all about the people. All about the people. The world needs more people embracing technology, not less. The world needs more people trained in generative AI, not less. And our objective and purpose is to unlock the superpowers of organizations globally. And that's everything from the developer to the marketer, to the sales associate, to the team leader. So I just wanted to thank you for having me here. Hopefully you can tell the passion we have around Google and appreciate your questions on our business.

>> No, we thank you. I mean, I think, again, it's always good to hear where the rubber meets the road and where things are really going and where the concierge is actually adding value. So it's always good to give and inspire people at what they're looking to go and do and build. So thank you as well.

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Your optimism is palpable. So, excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you for tuning into "The Cube's" live coverage of Google Cloud Next. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. You are watching "The Cube", the leading source of enterprise news. (soft music)