Google Cloud Partner AI Series | Shivani Vora, Accenture & Jim Anderson, Google Cloud

Shivani Vora, Accenture & Jim Anderson, Google Cloud

Exploring Google Cloud and Accenture's Strategic Partnership in AI and Retail Innovation

This discussion from the Cube Studios at the New York Stock Exchange explores the collaboration between Google Cloud and Accenture through their AI Partners Series. We are joined by Shivani Vora, Senior Managing Director and Americas Google Lead at Accenture, and Jim Anderson, Vice President of the North America Partner Ecosystem & Channels at Google Cloud. Together, they explore innovative strategies shaping the retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry landscapes, driven by advanced cloud solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) integrations.

Vora and Anderson bring extensive expertise in cloud technology and AI-driven transformations. With Accenture's recognition as a top partner for Google Cloud and over 44,000 dedicated practitioners, they examine the depth of this collaboration. Hosted by John Furrier, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media, Inc., the discussion highlights key areas such as data-driven insights, customer engagement, and process reimagining, offering perspectives from theCUBE Research team and video hosts.

The conversation focuses on how Accenture and Google Cloud lead the transformation in retail and CPG sectors. Key takeaways include insights on managing technology debt, enhancing customer experiences, and driving product innovation, all while leveraging Google's AI capabilities. According to Vora and Anderson, tools such as Google Cloud's Customer Engagement Suite and the strategic utilization of AI revolutionize how businesses engage clients, reduce costs, and drive new revenue streams through powerful data analytics.

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More from Google Cloud Partner AI Series

Jim Anderson

VP, NA Partner Ecosystem & Channels

Google

Shivani Vora

Senior MD

Accenture

play_circle_outline Introduction of Google Cloud and Accenture leaders on TheCUBE at NYSE.

play_circle_outline Accenture's longstanding partnership with Google Cloud and recent awards received.

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing Call Centers: Google Cloud's CES and Accenture Collaborate to Elevate Customer Experience in Retail Technology

play_circle_outline Accenture's focus on joint generative AI centers of excellence for client collaboration.

play_circle_outline Emphasis on mutual investments and joint successes in technology and people.

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Shivani Vora, Accenture & Jim Anderson, Google Cloud

Jim Anderson

VP, NA Partner Ecosystem & Channels Google

Shivani Vora

Senior MD Accenture

In this episode from the Google Cloud Partner AI Series, theCUBE’s John Furrier sits down with Shivani Vora, Senior Managing Director and Americas Google Lead at Accenture, and Jim Anderson, VP of North America Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud, to unpack how two industry giants are accelerating enterprise AI transformation. The conversation highlights how Accenture and Google Cloud are collaborating on real-world deployments of agentic AI systems, delivering measurable ROI across industries like retail and CPG.

Vora shares how Accenture’s 44,000 Googl... Read more

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What was discussed during the introduction of the session at TheCUBE? add

What awards has the organization received related to Google Cloud? add

What are some examples of product-led transformations being introduced, particularly in the context of customer engagement and AI technologies? add

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Shivani Vora, Accenture & Jim Anderson, Google Cloud

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>> Welcome back everyone to TheCUBE here at our NYSE Cube Studios here in Wall Street. Of course we've got Palo Alto connecting Wall Street and Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier, host of great cloud series with Google and their top AI partners. Got Jim Anderson, Vice President North America Partner Ecosystem and Channels, leads all the partnerships and teams for Google Cloud and Shivani Vora, Senior Managing Director for America's Google Lead for Accenture. Accenture always bringing the best and has been part of the cloud revolution and now as we go next level with gen AI, we're going to unpack that. Thanks for coming on TheCUBE. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. First time on TheCUBE. Appreciate it.

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us.

>> We love doing the Accenture interviews because you guys have such first-party data and primary data on what's going on on the big transformations, so I'm looking forward to chatting. But first talk about the Google relationship with Google Cloud because Google Cloud and Accenture have been working together. You guys have a lot of a body of work together. Talk about the relationship.

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah, so first and foremost, really, really exciting and proud. For 13 times, we've been the Global Partner Services Partner of the Year.

Jim Anderson

>> Yes.

Shivani Vora

>> This year, for the first time, the North America, the US Partner of the Year with Google Cloud. So very excited about that.

Jim Anderson

>> Congratulations again.

Shivani Vora

>> Thank you. Along with that, several others, Public Sector Partner of the Year, we've got several other awards. So our partnership in our strengths is not just America's, it is global. We have 44,000 Google Cloud practitioners globally, 17,000 Google Cloud certifications, and over 1,500 active Google Cloud projects. Just shows the depth and breadth of our partnership with Google. Thank you.

>> The numbers are impressive. Congratulations. So what's the secret sauce? You got the numbers, is it just getting the training? Is it doing the engagements? What's the secret sauce for being number one in the Google Cloud ecosystem?

Shivani Vora

>> So yes to all of those. I think it is a local focus with a global support. So from a global standpoint, we have the best relationship not only at our senior executive levels with Julie Sweet and Thomas Kurian, but then, we make sure at a market level in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia Pacific, in Brazil, we are joined at the hip not only with our partner organizations, but then also with our account teams down where the action actually happens.

>> Shivani, one of the things that last year that jumped out at Austin, TheCUBE and Cube Research, the SiliconANGLE team, is at NRF earlier this year, we saw the sea change actually playing out where AI and retail and CPG were talking outside of tech conference. I felt I was at Google Next. Because normally it would be all kinds of retail technology, yeah some edge, maybe scratching the surface, but this year, full blown retail, tech, commerce, not just like FinTech or some side thing, retail has gone full AI because you got the consumer and the B2B converging. What's your take on that? What's your view on that market? Because it is an edge, intelligent edge. It's real time, tons of data, transactions are happening, scale's important. What's your view on the retail market right now and how cloud and you guys are tackling that and helping people transform?

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah, it's very interesting. The three main forces that are going on in our retail CPG space, the first one is given tariffs, given technology debt, given legacy systems that are all out there, clients are saying, "Help me reduce my cost." That's the number one. Help me bring down costs, because we know the margins in retail and CPG are so razor thin. That's the first thing that they're asking. It's a huge trend that we are seeing. The second is they're saying, "Help me retain my customers. Churn, retention, help me improve customer experience." And that's the second huge trend that we are seeing. And then the third one is, "I need new revenue streams. I need new business models. I need new product innovation." Especially in CPG, new product innovation. And all three of those are areas where Google leads, Google Cloud leads in the market. Those are the trends that we are seeing and it's by no surprise that Google Cloud leads in those three areas.

>> Jim, that's the great... She laid out the opportunities, the challenges. Obviously the numbers are significant.

Jim Anderson

>> Yes.

>> I mean that is a workforce out there on Accenture for Google Cloud. What's going on on your side of the partnership? Because we were talking about earlier in a few of the other interviews, technology integration and the joint solutions. One plus one is 10. That's what people want, not one plus one is three, they want 10x.

Jim Anderson

>> Well, I think the Google Essential partnership is a great example of one plus one equals 10. First, we do have a technology partnership. A lot of our emerging technologies, things like Agent Space, Essential is very much involved with us making sure it's useful for customers in what direction we go. Second, there are key solution implementation partners for us. They make research real with our customers, so we just don't come up with ideas. We actually have a partner like Essential that can take that innovation and ideas and actually make it a reality for our customers. And as you kind of alluded to, they bring the industry and change management expertise so that customers can take advantage of our technology and the maximum return on investment.

>> Yeah, I love the new product, new revenue lines because yeah, everyone's been trying to take costs out of the business with IT transformation. I love the, keep the customers, that's been on everyone's... It's not new, but now you have new AI capabilities that changes the leverage of how that happens.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

>> And that comes from product.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

>> So you're starting to see that product introduction. Can you share some examples where you guys want to introduce kind of product-led transformations.

Shivani Vora

>> Yep.

>> Both at Accenture and also for the customer?

Shivani Vora

>> So actually I'd like to bring up what Google Cloud calls CES, Customer Engagement Suite. It used to be called CCAI. Basically the product itself is call center. It's not a revolutionary product, but the way in which Google has defined it and how they're taking it to market is revolutionary in that they're using AI in order to completely change the way in which you actually deploy the entire contact center, how human and virtual agents work together. It is a huge area for cost reduction for our clients. But I'll give an example of a customer, a huge retailer, a technology retailer company. Accenture and Google have partnered together with that company and we have built a AI-powered virtual assistant. And basically everything from understanding the customer buying behaviors, the patterns, feeding that, having the LLMs at the backend, constantly teaching the AI agents such that not only can they help answer the questions faster, but they can also help with increasing the revenue through upsell and cross-sell.

Jim Anderson

>> That's the key. Increasing revenue, right? Upsell and cross-sell with that data. I know we always talk about data. Data's the key to it. We're helping customers in the sense of a call center. It levers that data to actually generate better and new revenue streams.

>> It's interesting how you got retail and CPG as a technical play. So for the first time, I've never seen that before. This level of would have been IT, of course. Is there any playbook that you guys seen or challenged, customer template you've seen, that you can share? Because a lot of people want to inject AI and they don't just want another recommendation engine. They want actual real intelligence, super intelligence as everyone's talking about. What are some of the things you're seeing for readiness and then deployments of either pilots or in production, some of the progressions, sequence of events? Is there a playbook?

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah, so one of the things I know, Google Cloud and Accenture stopped doing a while back, is I call them building POC factories. We stopped building POC factories. So we are not going to do a POC just for the sake of doing a POC. We are doing it in order to solve a business problem. So we start with, what business challenge or business problem are we trying to solve? In some cases it could be as broad as, we want to do an end-to-end finance transformation or an HR transformation because we want to remove cost. In some cases it could be, I want to improve my customer experience, here are my CSAT numbers, here's the cost I want to remove. Then in order to prove the value for that, the proof to value, is that's when we do the POCs. That's when we kind of look at specific areas that we can actually turn around, show the value around that, and then build it further from that.

>> It's just you mentioned the POC factories, or we're seeing a lot of sprawl and congestion because the old playbook was do the POC to get evaluation. And to your point, I think there's so many use cases where you can actually have the POC be, did we achieve the objective? Because there's use cases that are, we use low-hanging fruit as an expression, that you can actually evaluate. Versus the old way was, okay, let's test it and we'll do a payback. How do we evaluate the success? Here, the proof is in the success of the outcome.

Shivani Vora

>> It's the proof of value. That's why we don't call it proof of concepts. We call them proof of value. You got to show the value first. And that automatically then becomes... Because there is no doubt in our clients when Google Cloud and Accenture go together, they're like, "Absolutely, this is the best technology in the world. And yes, you've got the best implementers in the world." So that isn't the question, the question is, can I truly get value out of this? How quickly can you deliver the value? And what is my ROI?

>> I love this conversation because again, you were teasing out what we've been calling business transformation.

Jim Anderson

>> Exactly.

>> Because the business models, what you laid out earlier, Shivani, is that the three things, that's a C level conversation.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly,

>> And it's a technical conversation.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

>> Because when the board says, "Take the hill, inject AI in everything," who's going to do that? But then it comes down to the practitioners, okay, how do we do this? And it's not just loading an app, it's a system. So it's a technical and business transformation. Okay, so I'm sure you don't disagree with that. But then now the agent conversation enters into the picture. Now that's where you start to see some of the business logic get embedded in. So yeah, there's data value, we can go there, but now I got horizontal data and now business logic in these use cases. This is the agentic system. So can you guys share how you guys view the agent wave coming? Because this is the hottest kind of C level because they want to see agents do stuff that drives either top line or bottom line or introduce new products.

Jim Anderson

>> When you look at agents, we obviously have agents that simply can do virtual assist, but what's most exciting about our partnership with Accenture is we actually can use agents to actually reimagine business processes.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

Jim Anderson

>> Right. So we're helping companies reimagine their business.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly. Spot on.

Jim Anderson

>> Do things in ways that can one, give them new revenue streams, but two, drive customer experiences like they've never had before. And that's the type of excitement we like. We have one company that actually is using us for their customer service. When you go and order food, it's the whole experience. Leveraging our technology and those types of things so they can drive that customer experience and then connect the data on it. So I think agents have gone more from just thinking about doing work and working with Accenture to actually .

>> So on retail Shivani, this is where you have a customer experience opportunity and operations. How do you have that, I guess the question is, what's the agentic viewpoint from Accenture? Because now you can get both of those. Can you break down the customer value with the data and then how the ops can be integrated in?

Shivani Vora

>> Yep, absolutely. So it's not just about the technology piece of it. It's not just about what we are changing, it's how the work is changing as well. So that's why the process reinvention piece of it is as important as the technology reinvention and the business reinvention piece of it. So that's the first part of it. I'll give you an example of a joint client of ours. It's a beauty retailer. When we started the discussions with them, their data was all over the map, so many different systems. So the first thing we did is we created a single unified customer data platform. Once that was done, then on top of that, we landed up training LLMs and building AI such that in the first example that I gave you for that retailer, it was 100% AI-powered agent. In the second one, it's an example of human plus AI. Where it is a AI-powered agent along with a human at a call center. So when a customer calls that agent, it's AI-Powered Beauty Advisor is the name of that, is pulling that specific customer data preferences. How do they like to shop? What are the colors? What is it that they have bought before? Based on all of that, using gen AI, it's a recommendation engine that's saying, "Hey, this Sally bought this lipstick last time. She gave these reviews," and it's a combination of first-party and third-party data that we've stitched together. "Based on that, I would recommend that you provide X, Y, and Z or give the new color of the eyeliner that matches that particular lipstick." Using that joint approach that we took, client rolled it out to 30 million of their customers. Not only did they find less returns, improved customer experience, but most importantly they found a 40% increase in the size of the basket. So every customer that was calling, they found the size of the order increase by 40%.

>> I mean that makes sense because now their mind is focused more on what they want or need versus clicking and navigating or making their brain think about what they might want. So you have that serendipity meets, "Oh yeah, I might want that." So the data gets smarter basically.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

Jim Anderson

>> The hyperpersonalization, that , that's a key trend out there.

>> All right, so how about Accenture, I want to get to this in because I know that you guys have... Everyone has customer centers of excellence around AI. Sometimes they're led from a transformational change perspective. Hey, we're going to share best practice. Some are technical. What's Accenture's view on these centers? You guys have things like fast lanes, I've heard. So talk about how you guys are one, using these center points. Because I've heard someone say, "My job is to run this center and then be out of a job because if AI does this job, I won't have that do this." And some people say, "No, I want to have a full organization all the time." It kind of depends. I guess what's your thoughts on this whole AI center of excellence or head of AI in your area?

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah, absolutely. So with Google, we have a joint generative AI center of excellence. And basically, not only is it a place in which we bring our clients jointly together in order to show them the art of the possible, what is coming down the future, what is the road map? But more importantly, that is a place many a times, especially with AI, I'm finding clients are saying, "I don't have the authority yet in order to deploy this in my system. Can you actually replicate my entire environment and build an actual proof of value in your centers of excellence?" So that is-

>> You guys are essentially workshopping what used to be the old POCs into targeted business focused workflows to apply like agents do.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly. Exactly. So an example of that could be, finance transformation, order to cash, want to reduce cost by 30%. How do we do that using Google Agentic, Google AI. And oh by the way, I can't disrupt my current finance system right now. Can you actually, Accenture, do that in your center of excellence in four weeks and show me what value do you see from that?

>> Jim, this is phenomenal. I want to get back to the agents because I've had some really weird conversations on TheCUBE recently around the future of business models. One entrepreneur is providing freemium model where they would do a business value and do it for free.

Jim Anderson

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> No, don't pay us. In other words like, wait, I just got value. So the new freemium is to do these kinds of exercises. This is, again, we love freemium models because try before you buy is not the demo version, it's actually production workloads. I find that fascinating, I've never seen that either. So how is that happening with Google? Is it agent space? What are some of the things going on? I'm not saying that you guys do freemium, I'm just saying... But the behavior is, show me the value.

Jim Anderson

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> I don't need to see a demo POC and then I got to do more work. I want to know it works out of the gate end to end and at scale.

Jim Anderson

>> Well, at a high level, what we've done, we're partners, like Accenture has moved to business outcome selling. That's what you, right. We're focused in on, "Hey, what is the business outcome you are seeking against that particular priority? Are we sure it's going to make an impact on your bottom line? And if so, let's pursue that and obviously share the reward and share the risk of making that happen." So we're moving more to models like that with our customers, leveraging our partner's capabilities and those types of things.

>> Shivani, talk about why Google's good from a speed standpoint. Because if you do those things, the one assumption is it happens fast. What's some of the secret handshakes or deals you have to do with Google to kind of go fast?

Jim Anderson

>> Secret handshake?

>> Well, I mean it sounds almost like...

Jim Anderson

>> We have a lot of handshakes.

>> A special side door. In all seriousness, the technology is an enabler, right?

Shivani Vora

>> Absolutely.

>> So speed, you got to do these things, you don't want to do these slow.

Shivani Vora

>> Yep.

>> You want to do them right.

Shivani Vora

>> I think a lot of it comes down to the certifications. It is not just about the people who are sitting in the center of excellence who are trained. It is the 17,000 plus certifications that we have globally. It is the 44,000 Google Cloud practitioners who are actually doing the work at client site and then actually infiltrating that across the entire organization and clients.

>> And they can go right into the domain specific expertise.

Shivani Vora

>> Absolutely.

>> Because you have to be domain knowledgeable. It's not like someone can just roll in.

Shivani Vora

>> Training, enablement, technical depth is super important, especially with Google Cloud. And I think that's the secret sauce.

>> Is there a domain in retail that you see that's kind of repeats itself in terms of the orientation of the retail practitioner? Is it, you mentioned those three things, but what are some of their hot buttons?

Shivani Vora

>> So the first, biggest one is data. Right now, if you look at it, the amount of data that all the retailers and CPG firms that they have, it's data exhaust. Now how do you get, I love your saying, right, the signal from the noise. That's exactly the same thing from a data perspective, how do you actually pick the valuable elements of the data without actually getting drowned in the data exhaust?

>> Or spending a lot of money and not getting anything.

Shivani Vora

>> Exactly.

>> That's the other alternative. Or just give up and it's too hard. It's time to values. It's so far out there. People would abandon.

Shivani Vora

>> But now you can do that with AI. So even if you think about a retailer, the volume of phone calls that they get, imagine throwing all of that into an LLM, a large language model, and having the AI actually do the analysis to say, what are the top reasons that customers are calling? And what is the response to that? In the past, the technology didn't exist. Now, in a matter of weeks, when you're talking about the time to do that right, we have shortened our proof of value time from months to in many cases, days.

>> And the other thing you mentioned LLMs, but also computer vision is hot in retail products. People have their own scanning mechanism, they got a phone on their end.

Jim Anderson

>> Security.

>> Security's.

Shivani Vora

>> It's multi-modal.

>> Security's huge. Multi-modal's huge.

Shivani Vora

>> Multi-modal. Yeah.

>> All right, so what's next in the relationship? You've got the number one position. What's next in the number one? What don't you have that you want to have and what's going on with you guys in Accenture? Explain, so what's next for you?

Shivani Vora

>> Next for us, the first and foremost is to continue to deepen and strengthen that relationship. Not just in the Americas but globally. To continue and deepen that. As I mentioned earlier, we have it at the executive level. What good would look like for me is every Accenture CAL and every Accenture CAD is joined at the hip, especially on our most strategic accounts, being able to jointly deliver that business value.

>> And what's the quick pitch, elevator pitch, to the customer and why Accenture and Google? What would you say if I'm a big retailer or a CPG, what's the better together story?

Shivani Vora

>> It's the answers and the proof points. We've got so many press releases out there with some of the key retailers and CPG clients that we have done. So first is the proof is in the pudding. The second is jointly, the two companies have so much of joint investments that we are making not only in the technology, but also in our people. And the third is we are each other's customer zero. So for example, Accenture with Google Security, Accenture with Google Cloud Data, and vice versa. So we are each other's customer zero. So we truly drink each other's champagne.

>> I like the customer center of excellence, we're going to do the workshopping. Jim, what's your final word on the... And what's next?

Jim Anderson

>> Well, I think what's next is sort of building on the success we have. We have special programs around data that we want to continue to bring to market and build on that. We really want to help people reimagine their business. I think when you talked about it a little bit, showing people the art of what's possible. There's no better combination right now. We believe to show people the art of what's possible, then show them how they can get there and then bringing in the appropriate people to make that happen.

>> I love the proof is in the pudding, because we're in a world where it's a show me proof, social proof, show me the results.

Jim Anderson

>> Yeah.

>> And whether it's freemium or some sort of way to show it's like, okay, there it is.

Jim Anderson

>>

>> Exactly, you like it? Yes. Give me more. Lot of demand.

Shivani Vora

>> And we believe in it so much that we have actually implemented Google Cloud technology within Accenture in some of the areas that Google really leads the marketing.

>> When you're transforming yourself, you have to be your own, got to build that muscle.

Shivani Vora

>> Yeah.

>> And you guys have done that. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on and thanks for having you on theCUBE.

Shivani Vora

>> Thank you.

>> Appreciate it. I'm John Furrier. We are here at the New York Stock Exchange for the AI Partner Series with Google Cloud. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.