Julie Sweet
Chair and Chief Executive Officer at Accenture
Thank you, KC. I will start with the overall demand environment, which is more of the same. We believe that the ongoing volatility and uncertainty in the macro environment is making it even clearer to clients that they need to change more, not less. And that two of the five key forces of change that we have identified for the next decade, the need for total enterprise reinvention and the ability to access, create and unlock the potential of talent are critical to succeed in the near, medium and long-term. We see two common themes. First, all strategies continue to lead to technology, particularly cloud, data, AI and security. This is reflected in the latest market estimates, which are down slightly but are still hovering around 5%.
And second, companies remain focused on executing compressed transformations to achieve lower cost, stronger growth, more agility and greater resilience faster. We remain laser focused on pivoting to our clients' changing needs and being relevant across the enterprise from the front-line to core operations to corporate functions. Our ability to advise, shape and deliver value-led transformations, leveraging the breadth of our services from strategy and consulting to our strategic managed services across all industries and geographic markets is what differentiates Accenture.
Now I will give you more color on the quarter and in particular, how total enterprise reinvention and talent are critical to our clients. For example, we are helping Shionogi & Co., Ltd., a Japanese pharmaceutical company with a compressed transformation to improve its business process efficiency and create a more agile organization. We will enter into a joint venture with the company that will provide a managed services capability to oversee back office functions such as human resources, finance and accounting, public relations, facility management, procurement and marketing.
The joint venture will also be charged with the management of the pharmacovigilance function from safety management operations to post marketing operations to regulatory compliance. As part of this transformation, we will upscale over 400 employees, enabling them to play a greater role in the growth and development of the wider business, hence demonstrating the value of all our services from strategy and consulting, our deep industry knowledge to technology and operations coming together to enable the clients' transformation. I would like to take a moment to recognize Egawa-san, our Head of the Japan market unit and our extraordinary people in Japan for how they are consistently creating value for our clients with double-digit revenue growth for each of the past five years.
As clients focus on building their digital core with a modern cloud-based infrastructure, our cloud business continues to grow very strong double-digits. For example, we are working with the state of Missouri to replace its legacy applications and infrastructure with a modern ERP in the cloud, introducing new capabilities in finance, supply chain management, human capital management, payroll and budgeting. As the current ERP system no longer fully meets the business needs of the state, they are looking for a modern system that is efficient, scalable and flexible, all delivered by a best-in-class implementation partner. This compressed transformation, one of the earliest and most complex ERP implementations for any state will help reduce operating expenses, provide opportunities for upskilling and improve customer experience and services.
We are partnering with minority and women-owned businesses on this transformation, and we will bring in apprentices, the program's life cycle part of our shared commitment with the state of Missouri to foster diversity and inclusion. With our cloud-first strategy, our approach has been to help clients migrate to the cloud and then partner with them on their journey to grow and innovate in the cloud. Our cloud growth is driven by both migration and clients who are moving forward on this journey, such as Enel, one of our largest utilities clients who's taken their mass migration to cloud a few years ago to the next level, changing their operating model, tools and talent and largely automating IT operations.
We are now helping them accelerate the modernization of their application landscape, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%, support a significant acquisition and divestment agenda and pivot to platform-based business model for integrated retail delivery beyond meter services, grid and renewable energy. Using cloud as their operating systems is helping this market leader manage increasing levels of complexity by bringing together data, AI and applications to optimize their operations and accelerate growth. A strong and secure digital core also is essential to total enterprise reinvention. We're seeing continued very strong demand for our security services, which experienced another quarter of very strong double-digit growth.
We're working with Empresas CMPC SA, a Chilean pulp and paper company, and a cybersecurity transformation of their plant operations. We will implement a security program across its 48 industrial sites focused on threat detection, management and response as well as governance and workforce training. Through our global and local Industry X capabilities, we will help strengthen the company's cybersecurity expenses through continuous monitoring of its physical locations and equipment. We continue to lead in managed services, which experienced strong growth again this quarter at 16%. Managed services are strategic for our clients because they enable clients to move faster, leveraging our digital platform expertise and talent as well as delivering cost efficiencies.
And our clients are turning to Accenture because of the depth and breadth of our industry, functional and technology expertise that we bring together into the transformation journey. Our approach to managed services is to both run and transform and run and modernize. We deliver cost savings as table stakes. For example, we are partnering with the U.K.'s Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for welfare pensions and child maintenance policy to modernize its legacy systems, eliminating backlogs and delivering a better experience for citizens and employees. We developed a cloud-based intelligent optimization platform that combines robotic process automation, AI, analytics and machine learning to provide Bots-as-a-Service to create the equivalent of a virtual workforce available 24/7. With routine tests now automated, the organization has already saved 2.4 million human hours, which can be reallocated to more complex higher-value tasks.
Let me pause to thank our global H&PS colleagues for their amazing contributions as evidenced by 14 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. As our clients continue to prioritize cost optimization as well as growth in Vigilance, Song is more relevant than ever. In Song, which grew strong double-digits this quarter, clients are focused on more capital efficient growth that creates efficiency, drive short-term growth and optimizes existing assets with clear outcomes and shorter time horizons to keep up with the pace of change with customers and technology. We have moved quickly to help clients seize new opportunities in contact centers, not only for enhanced customer service, but also customer acquisition and growth. We are working with a global biopharmaceutical leader in North America to reinvent digital marketing at scale.
Driven by data and using technologies integrated with SynOps, the company will be able to create, produce and deliver consistent world-class content that informs and educates healthcare providers and patient communities around the world, helping to deliver innovative health services. We are working with the Prada Group, the Italian luxury fashion player, to offer its customers an entirely new customization experience through an online 3D configurator. Accenture Song created a digital twin of Prada's iconic show called America's Cup, which allows shoppers to fully customize it from material to color to trim across the overlay, lining, sole and other parts.
With more than 50 [Phonetic] million possible configurations, more than any web platform could handle, this innovative approach allows customers to see high resolution 3D models of their custom builds with the same quality and fidelity as a physical shoe. Song solution to online product customization is fully scalable to the cloud. It gives Prada the flexibility to apply the same strategy to other products, ensuring the outstanding experience that their shoppers expect. As I continue to move across the enterprise, industries and markets, I want to also highlight Industry X, which grew very strong double-digits again this quarter and which we believe is the next digital frontier, where our digital engineering capabilities are advancing sustainability services.
For example, we are working with Recharge Industries, a battery research and production company in Australia, to help design and engineer one of the world's largest lithium-ion battery facilities. Once built, the facility will generate up to 30-gigawatt hours of storage capacity per year. Finally, moving to the metaverse and the ongoing tech revolution, we've talked about the importance of artificial intelligence in building the digital core for our clients. While Generative AI has recently burst into the popular imagination, at Accenture, we've been working with the technology from its earliest stages and are already applying it at clients.
For example, we're working with a multinational bank to transform how it manages high volumes of post-trade processing e-mails every day. We are leveraging a Generative AI solution as it is built to understand the context of e-mails with high accuracy. It automatically routes large numbers of e-mails daily to relevant teams and draft responses with recommended actions and related information. Our work will help reduce manual effort and risk, boost worker efficiency and improve interactions with customers. And finally, on that note, we will release our Tech Vision 2023 on March 30, the fourth and fifth key forces of change we have identified for the next decade at a metaverse and ongoing tech revolution.
And this year's tech vision is particularly relevant and actionable as our clients face a rapidly changing landscape in which Generative AI, metaverse cloud, science, tech and other technologies are driving more opportunities for change and reinvention. This year's vision will explore how these technologies and more are blending the physical world and the virtual world into a shared reality, creating a huge opportunity for our clients and for Accenture.
