Accenture plc ACN

The business

Accenture is 799,000 people who show up at large organisations and do the work those organisations have decided not to do themselves. Consulting is project work: design the system, migrate the platform, restructure the supply chain. Managed Services is the longer, duller, better half, where Accenture simply runs a function for years under contract.

The economics are headcount times utilisation times bill rate, and the whole thing turns on bookings. A booking today is revenue over the next one to five years, which is why the bookings line leads the income statement by roughly a year and why nobody who follows this company reads the revenue line first.