In talent and organization performance, Accenture is helping clients attract, develop and retain talent as well as manage their large diverse workforces over multiple geographies.

- In the systems integration and technology part of consulting, the firm is seeing strong demand in technology consulting with the primary focus on security, data center consolidation, and workplace collaboration technologies.
- In systems integration it has invested in building a global capability of industry-leading SAP and Oracle skills and are well positioned to satisfy the continuing demand for ERP implementations.
- And through the Accenture technology labs the firm is developing a steady stream of innovative technology offerings, many using next generation communication and collaboration software tools.

The firm added centers in Argentina, Mexico, and Morocco bringing the total number of centers to 52, with a year-over-year headcount increase of 21% ending the quarter with nearly 77,000 people in the global delivery network.

- The firm also acquired a California based provider of services to global freight management and [interlining] cargo companies which strengthens the freight and logistics offerings.
- It also announced the acquisition of a Brazilian company which will enhance the IT and automation solutions it provides to resource clients.
- New bookings were $6.8 billion including consulting bookings of nearly $4 billion and solid outsourcing bookings of $2.8 billion.

Business Outlook:

- The firm expects net revenues for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $5.9 billion to $6.1 billion.
- It now expect net revenue growth for the full fiscal year to be towards the upper end of the previously guided range of 9% to 12% in local currency.
- The firm has targeted new bookings for the fiscal year in the range of $24 billion to $26 billion.
- Operating margin for the full year to be in the range of 12.8% to 13.1%.
- The firm is raising the outlook for earnings per share for the full fiscal year to a range of $2.63 to $2.65.

Key questions and answers from the third quarter earnings call conducted by Accenture. (ACN: chart) on June 26, 2008.

Rod Bourgeois (Bernstein): Can you give us some specificity on how your growth is playing out in your consulting business versus your outsourcing business?

Steve Rohleder: We are seeing strong consulting growth still in the ERP area. Very steady growth in management consulting and in the outsourcing business especially in this quarter, we saw very strong application outsourcing growth which is really driving some of the outsourcing bookings that we saw there.

Rod Bourgeois (Bernstein): Can you give any more elaboration on what’s behind the revenue outlook?

William Green: We are half way through the planning process, even as we do our state of the business discussions which we do every other week, we take a multi quarter view of that and just to the nature of the size and the scope and the nature of the deals that run the five pieces of business around here are very optimistic and very bullish.

The planning process for 2009 is coming together nicely and when we stand back, we feel better looking at 2009 then we felt this time last year when we were looking at 2008. We also just believe deeply that we need to drive this business regardless of what’s happening in the economic situation and we need to make that kind of growth happen in order to have creditability and in order to keep the machine going so we feel pretty comfortable with that outlook.

Adam Frisch (UBS): Could you give us some color on what percentage of your portfolio is experiencing real challenges right now with IT spending cutbacks?

William Green: It goes back to the fact that the leading companies need to compete on the global stage and they need to compete not against yesterday’s competitors, but tomorrow’s competitors. And the next generation of multi nationals that come from emerging markets.

And even if you look at the United States, those of us who live here read the paper every day. Things look a little gloomy but our growth in the Americas, our growth in the US business was great this quarter and we signed terrific new relationships with clients we had never been at before.

The fact that our financial services guys can grow 8% year-over-year in this climate says a lot about making sure you have the right offerings and the right people and that you are creating your own demand in a market like this and that is how we drive the business.

Steve Rohleder: We are out there generating demand with our current clients. In fact, again this quarter we had a substantive amount of our bookings attributed to our existing client base and I think that’s very telling in terms of the relationships that we have and the offerings that we have to bring to those clients to drive high performance.

If you look geographically at some of the trends that we are seeing, in EMEA four of our five operating groups all are experiencing strong consulting growth which is driven by systems integration and management consulting both.

Moshe Katri (Cowen and Company): Can we get an update on pricing and the pipeline?

Steve Rohleder:It is still very healthy and we are satisfied that it will help us achieve the guidance. We have been able to achieve some of our pricing power in specific areas of our business, namely in management consulting and technology consulting