What Is Accenture? Services, Revenue, and Hiring 2026

What Accenture is, in one paragraph

Accenture plc is an Irish public limited company that runs its business through subsidiaries. Its own description, in the fiscal 2025 Form 10-K, reads: "Accenture is a leading solutions and global professional services company that helps the world's leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise."

The same filing splits the work in two. "We deliver two types of work: Consulting and Managed Services." Consulting revenue covers "a finite, distinct project or set of projects with a defined outcome and typically a defined set of specific deliverables." Managed services revenue covers "ongoing, repeatable services or capabilities provided to transition, run and/or manage operations of client systems or business functions." Those two lines are close to even in size, which is the single most useful thing to know about the company.

Client relationships run long. The filing reports 305 Diamond clients, its largest relationships, and says the firm "have partnered with 195 of our top 200 clients for 10 or more years." Revenue comes mainly from the Forbes Global 2000 and from governments. The service mix is covered in more detail on our page on what Accenture does.

From Andersen Consulting to Accenture plc

The name is 25 years old. The business behind it is older. Before fiscal 2001 the firm "operated as a series of related partnerships and corporations under the control of our partners," and it traded under a different name. The fiscal 2001 Form 10-K of Accenture Ltd puts it in one line: "Prior to January 1, 2001, Accenture was known as Andersen Consulting."

The split came first. "Until August 2000, we were associated with Andersen Worldwide," the filing says, describing two stand-alone business units linked by agreements through a coordinating entity. Arbitration with Andersen Worldwide and Arthur Andersen completed in August 2000, and the firm ceased to be associated with those organizations. The name change followed on 1 January 2001, and the stock market listing came six months later.

The Irish domicile is therefore 17 years old and deliberate. The fiscal 2009 Form 10-K describes the mechanics plainly: shareholders of Accenture Ltd voted in favor on 5 August 2009, the Supreme Court of Bermuda approved, and the old Class A and Class X shares were exchanged one for one into shares of the new Irish parent. That domicile has a consequence for US federal work, covered further down this page.

The services Accenture sells, in five groups

Accenture sells capabilities, and the fiscal 2025 Form 10-K names five of them plus its technology partnerships. Strategy and Consulting. Technology. Operations. Song, the customer, marketing and commerce business. Industry X, the engineering and manufacturing business. The filing records a reorganization dated 1 September 2025: "Effective September 1, 2025, we brought all of our services, which are described below, together into a single, integrated business unit called Reinvention Services."

The public naming has since moved again. The company press fact sheet, current at the fiscal 2026 year end, groups the offer into seven families: "Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology." Both lists are official. Only Song appears in both, so any page quoting one of them has to date it.

What the accounting measures is steadier than what the marketing names. Here is fiscal 2026 by type of work, from the earnings release furnished to the SEC on 1 October 2026.

Managed services is now the larger half, and it grew faster. The same release reports $84.54 billion of new bookings for the year, of which $43.67 billion was managed services. For a reader deciding whether this is a consulting firm, that table is the answer: half of the revenue is work the firm runs on a client's behalf.

The five industry groups and 13 industries served

Accenture organizes its clients into five industry groups, and each group holds two or three named industries. Thirteen in total. The fiscal 2025 Form 10-K describes each one, from "retail and commercial banks, wealth and asset managers, payment providers" under Banking and Capital Markets to "power generators and developers, including nuclear, renewables and other conventional generators" under Utilities.

Products is the largest group and Resources the smallest. Growth in fiscal 2026 ran from 3 percent in US dollars at Health and Public Service to 11 percent at Communications, Media and Technology. The industry groups are not the reporting segments. The three reportable segments are the geographic markets, which matters when reading any segment table in the filings.

Inside the groups the fiscal 2025 filing publishes a further split as a share of each group. Banking and Capital Markets is 70 percent of Financial Services. Public Service is 68 percent of Health and Public Service. Utilities is 47 percent of Resources. Those shares are the closest thing the company publishes to a revenue figure per industry.

Revenue and headcount for fiscal 2026

Accenture's fiscal year ends on 31 August, so the annual figures land in the fall. Fiscal 2026 closed on 31 August 2026 and was reported on 1 October 2026. Revenue was $74.18 billion, an increase of $4.5 billion or 6 percent in US dollars over fiscal 2025. GAAP operating margin was 15.4 percent. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $13.56. Free cash flow was $11.6 billion, and $11.5 billion was returned to shareholders.

Headcount is the other number every profile quotes, and it has moved in both directions. The quarterly series below comes from the third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings presentation dated 18 June 2026, with the year end figure from the press fact sheet.

The February 2025 level was passed again during fiscal 2026. Divide the year's revenue by the year end headcount: $74.18 billion across about 814,000 people is roughly $91,000 of revenue per person, against roughly $89,000 a year earlier. The June 2026 deck also reports utilization at 93 percent and annualized voluntary attrition at 14 percent. For fiscal 2027 the company guides to revenue growth of 3 to 6 percent in local currency and GAAP diluted earnings per share of $14.39 to $14.81.

Listed as ACN, headquartered in Dublin

The cover page of the fiscal 2025 Form 10-K carries the identity fields, and they are the ones most often reported wrong.

A holder of record is a name on the share register. Most shares sit in street name behind a broker, so 356 is a count of registered names rather than a count of owners. Beneficial ownership sits with institutional holders who report it in their own filings.

Geography is published in one sentence of the fiscal 2025 filing: "We serve clients at any given time in more than 120 countries, with offices and operations in 52 countries and the majority of our people are in India, the Philippines and the U.S." The firm lists major offices in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Rome, Bangalore, Beijing, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, across more than 200 cities. It owns no material real property. Everything is leased.

Accenture Federal Services and the Pentagon proxy

US federal work sits outside the main company, and the Irish domicile is the reason. The fiscal 2025 Form 10-K states it directly: "Our ability to work for the U.S. government is impacted by the fact that we are an Irish company. We elected to enter into a proxy agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense that enhances the ability of our U.S. federal government contracting subsidiary to perform certain work for the U.S. government."

The subsidiary is Accenture Federal Services, described in the filing as "a U.S. company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture LLP." The proxy agreement "regulates the management and operation of, and limits the control we can exercise over, this subsidiary." A parent accepting limits on its own subsidiary is paying for market access. Anyone applying to that entity is applying to a differently governed employer.

The filing sizes the business three ways and never in dollars, so the dollar figure has to be reconstructed from fiscal 2025 revenue.

The spread across the three readings is $315 million, which is what rounding to whole percentage points does at this scale. The defensible statement is that Accenture Federal Services ran near $5.3 billion in fiscal 2025. The filing also names federal spending cuts and a General Services Administration instruction to agencies to review consulting contracts as pressure on that figure.

How Accenture hires, stage by stage

Accenture publishes its hiring process on its own careers site, and the stages are named. The journey to Accenture page lists six: acknowledgement of the application, application review, contact from a recruiter, interviews, skills assessment, offer. The page states that "the number of interviews you'll have depends on the role," and that interviews happen by phone, by video or in person.

1. Apply through the official system. Accenture posts roles on its own Workday instance and says official communication comes from an accenture.com address. The firm never asks a candidate for payment.
2. Expect an online activity for some roles. The careers page says that "for some roles, we may ask you to complete an online activity so we can learn more about your technical skills, natural strengths or decision-making process."
3. Sit the technical assessment in one go, if your track has one. "The assessment is completed online in one sitting within the timeframe specified, typically within 72 hours." Announced duration runs about 30 to 90 minutes by level, submission is automatic when time runs out, and external AI tools are banned.
4. Clear the threshold. "Candidates who achieve the validated threshold proceed to the next stage. This decision is made automatically." A failed assessment carries a hard lock: "If you do not pass an assessment, you must wait at least 90 days before retaking the same assessment." The assessment does not replace interviews.
5. Interview, including cases on the consulting tracks. A Copenhagen posting for Management Consulting Analyst and Strategy Analyst, checked 29 September 2026, sets an application deadline of 18 October 2026 and a two day recruitment bootcamp on 26 and 27 November 2026 carrying "both case interviews and personal-fit interviews."

Entry titles differ by country and track. Consulting Analyst appears on a Lisbon graduate posting, Management Consulting Analyst and Strategy Analyst on the Copenhagen one. Accenture's own case workbook puts case interviews at 45 to 60 minutes, with 30 to 45 minutes on the case itself. The full process, the entry titles and the assessment rules are in our Accenture case interview guide, and the separate strategy track is covered in the Accenture Strategy case interview guide.

What Accenture does not publish

Four questions on this topic have no answer in any Accenture publication we read. Naming them is more useful than filling them.

1. How many of its people are consultants. Total headcount is published every quarter. A headcount split by type of work is published nowhere, so no one can say how many of the 814,000 are consultants.
2. Who owns the company. The share register is public only as a count of holders of record. Beneficial ownership appears in the filings of the institutions that hold the shares.
3. What Accenture Strategy is worth. No filing breaks out revenue, headcount or margin for the strategy business alone.
4. What it pays. No filing carries a salary band. Our Accenture salary page works from certified US Labor Department filings by title and city, and our consulting salary guide sets those against other firms.

One more boundary is worth stating. Accenture competes against large multinational IT service providers, offshore providers in lower cost locations, accounting firms and consultancies, advertising agency holding companies, engineering services providers, technology startups, and the in-house technology departments of large corporations. That list is its own, from the fiscal 2025 filing. The accounting firms in that same market are covered on our page on the Big Four consulting firms, and the technology services side on our top IT consulting firms page.

Where our free drills fit

Knowing the company is the cheap half of an Accenture interview. The case is the expensive half. In a firm where half the revenue is delivery work, a recommendation gets tested against whether the client could actually run it.

The drill for that is the free structure drill. It grades whether a structure covers the decision rather than whether it looks tidy. The weights are ours, and they are published: Coverage 45, Separation 25, Depth 20, Concision 10, in our code and on the method page.

What the drill does not do is teach business content, and it does not replace Accenture's own screens. The drills and the graded scorecard run today, free and without an account. The company facts above came from four public filings on EDGAR and one press fact sheet, all readable for nothing in an afternoon. Every annual figure here is from fiscal 2026, reported 1 October 2026, and holds until the fiscal 2027 close on 31 August 2027.