Latest news with #Sweet
South Wales Argus
2 days ago
- General
- South Wales Argus
Pisgah Church, Talywain flats plan rejection appeal ruling
The church that has been vacant for six years would have been converted into six flats in a development a council acknowledged would have provided 'much needed housing'. But the plans for the former Pisgah Baptist Church, in Talywain, Pontypool were refused in October last year as applicant Beth Jones disputed Torfaen Borough Council's position she should carry out further surveys to check if the tiny mammals were roosting in the church that dates back to the 1820s. A preliminary roost survey in April, last year, found no evidence of bats internally or externally but did identify a number of potential roosting features. The report recommended a further two dusk emergence surveys be carried out during May and September, described as 'optimum bat season'. Ms Jones' agent suggested the council grant permission and require the further surveys be attached as a condition however Torfaen Borough Council said that wasn't acceptable as it wouldn't be able to establish whether there would be adverse impact on bats which are a protected species. That position has now been upheld by an independent planning inspector after Ms Jones appealed the decision to Planning and Environment Decisions Wales known as PEDW. READ MORE: Torfaen council broke bat protection rules in school refurb Inspector C Sweet said they considered it a 'reasonable likelihood' bats are present in the building based on its condition and their observations. Sweet said the Welsh Government's technical advice notice 'makes clear that it is essential' the presence of protected species, and the potential impact of developments, is established before planning permission is granted and also states permission shouldn't be granted with conditions attached. They also said while they acknowledged Ms Jones' 'intention to avoid harm to biodiversity' she hadn't followed the approach to maintaining and enhancing biodiversity, as set out in Welsh planning policy, and there wasn't sufficient information for any impact on bats to be assessed. Sweet did say: 'The proposal would make some contribution to the supply of housing locally and may also result in a degree of benefit to the local economy. However, such benefits would be modest and would not outweigh the harm to biodiversity interests that I have identified.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Accenture fuses 5 business units to prioritize ‘reinvention services'
This story was originally published on CIO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CIO Dive newsletter. Accenture will fold five business units into one to focus more keenly on large-scale digital transformation projects, according to a Friday announcement. The IT consulting firm is fusing Strategy, Consulting, Song, Technology and Operations into a single business unit called "reinvention services" over the next two months. Accenture CEO of the Americas Manish Sharma will lead the new unit as chief services officer, effective Sept. 1. COO John Walsh will succeed Sharma as CEO of the Americas and the company's chief information and asset engineering officer Rajendra Prasad will ascend to group chief executive of technology and CTO, replacing Karthik Narain, who is leaving the company. 'These changes to our growth model will allow us to deliver that value and continue to scale our business by being an even stronger engine of reinvention that more rapidly delivers the power of Gen AI,' Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet said in the announcement. As enterprises reshape IT strategy to expedite generative AI adoption, executives are prioritizing comprehensive modernization efforts over individual system upgrades. Accenture's realignment reflects a corresponding shift in spending patterns. The company came into its current fiscal year anticipating enterprise cutbacks to discretionary budget items, Sweet said Friday, during the company's Q3 2025 earnings call. 'In every boardroom and every industry, our clients are not facing a single challenge,' said Sweet. 'They are facing everything at once: economic volatility, geopolitical complexity [and] major shifts in customer behavior.' While the triple threat to business-as-usual hasn't dampened AI enthusiasm, uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade policy has curbed IT spend. In February, Forrester forecasted global tech spend would grow 5.6% this year to $4.9 trillion in 2025, driven by cloud, cyber and generative AI investments. Gartner estimates that generative AI-related projects alone will consume $644 billion this year — a 76% year-over-year bump — as vendors race to deploy the technology across enterprise software services. IT teams felt the sting of President Donald Trump's plans to implement steep and sweeping tariffs, announced in April. Cost management topped the list of tech leader concerns, according to a Boston Consulting Group survey published in May. Many organizations were already pausing discretionary IT investments, the firm found. Project postponements hit Accenture's bottom line. Despite quarterly revenue increasing 8% year over year to $17.7 billion, the firm's new bookings fell 6% to $19.7 billion, according to a financial report published Friday. Sweet credited a prescient pivot to large enterprise clients with maintaining steady revenue growth. Since prioritizing transformation services in its 2022 fiscal year, the company has racked up hundreds of bookings worth $100 million or more quarterly, which is Accenture's 'proxy for reinvention,' she said. The company booked 30 such clients in the three months ending May 31, according to Sweet. Generative AI projects — a cornerstone of Accenture's strategy — accounted for $1.5 billion in Q3 bookings and $700 million in revenues. 'Gen AI alone is just a tool — the work needed to use Gen AI to create value at scale is substantial,' Sweet said. 'We are working with our clients using all of our reinvention expertise, our deep understanding of how to build a cognitive brain for the enterprise and our deep understanding of data, every function in the enterprise, industries and change as well as our own experience reinventing Accenture.' Recommended Reading Caution tempers enterprise enthusiasm for generative AI Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Accenture sees highest-ever quarterly drop in headcount, as numbers fall by ...; America's contributed largest to total revenue
Accenture, a global IT services and consulting giant with a significant workforce in India, reported an 8% year-on-year revenue increase to $7.7 billion for its March-May 2025 quarter, driven by strong demand for AI-related services. The Ireland-based company, which operates on a September-August fiscal calendar, noted a positive 0.5% foreign exchange impact on its quarterly revenues. The company raised the lower end of its full-year revenue growth forecast to 6-7% in local currency, up from 5-7%, reflecting confidence in its performance. However, challenges persisted, with gross margin dipping to 32.9% from 33.4% a year earlier and a record quarterly headcount reduction of 10,337, bringing its global workforce to approximately 790,000. Despite a $2.15 billion year-on-year increase in generative AI (GenAI) bookings for the first nine months of FY25, overall bookings fell by $1.75 billion compared to the same period in FY24. What Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said on earnings Accenture continues to invest heavily in AI, growing its data and AI workforce to 75,000 and targeting 80,000 by the end of FY26. 'We are a leader in GenAI, achieving another milestone quarter with $1.5 billion in bookings and over $700 million in revenues,' said Chair and CEO Julie Sweet during the earnings call. She highlighted total GenAI bookings of $4.1 billion and revenues of $1.8 billion for the year to date. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trade Bitcoin & Ethereum – No Wallet Needed! IC Markets Start Now Undo Americas contributed the largest share of the total revenue The Americas led regional performance, contributing $8.97 billion to total revenue, followed by Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) with $6.23 billion, and Asia-Pacific with $2.53 billion. New bookings for the quarter totaled $19.7 billion, down 6% in U.S. dollars, with $9.08 billion from consulting services and $10.62 billion from managed services. Accenture's cash balance stood at $9.6 billion at the end of third quarter. Looking ahead, the company projects Q4 FY25 revenues between $17 billion and $17.6 billion, signaling optimism for continued growth. 'We remain focused on being our clients' reinvention partner of choice, as evidenced by $19.7 billion in bookings, including 30 clients with quarterly bookings exceeding $100 million,' Sweet added, emphasizing Accenture's leadership in large-scale transformations.
Indianapolis Star
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
Indiana state park naturalist enjoys inspiring, teaching next generation of Hoosiers
This is the first edition of our Scrub Hub with a new format. A good marketer might say 'Same Name. New Flavor.' We are reaching out across Indiana to speak one-on-one with Hoosiers who have something to say about our natural environment and presenting those interviews in this new Q&A style. So, if you know anyone who should be features, please let us know. Turtles swimming in tanks greet guests at the Fort Harrison State Park Visitors' Center tucked away on the former military base. Aerial photographs of the property from the 1930s hang on one of the walls of the center where Emilie Sweet, the park's interpretive naturalist, prepares for her daily work. Each day is a little different for Sweet, who could spend them leading kids through the trails or teaching courses for the Indiana Master Naturalist class or clearing out invasive plants in the woods. Sweet has been the park's interpretive naturalist for the last three years and is the first person for our new Q&A series in the Scrub Hub. We met with Sweet in June as the summer heat started to set on Central Indiana. Her answers are edited for brevity and clarity. SUGGEST A SUBJECT: Know someone doing good things for Indiana's environment and want to see them featured here? Email Karl and Sophie at: and to let us know. There's a couple of different things. If I know I'm going to show a big group of kids my rat snake, I really enjoy that. The looks on their faces when I pick up the snake and show them is just priceless. They're either like 'Ewwww' or they're like 'Oh my gosh, look at that' and it's really fun to just see the differences and kind of breakthrough to some of them. Some of them might be scared to do a two-finger touch on the snake, but at the end of it they finally do it and they realize it's not that scary. I love doing reptile programs, and if I know something like that's coming up then I get really excited. And, if I know I have a free day and I can do resource management on the park and just go out and work on invasive management in our park, I really get excited about that because it's getting out in the field and being able to step away from the office and be outside. The more I learn, the more I want to spread that knowledge to others. Doing programs helps me learn as well because that's always been my thing — I really enjoy learning. I like looking things up and I like going out in the field and I like learning how to identify a new plant and things like that. And I want to share that with other people. I want to be able to open doors for people that might not know much about this area. Some people don't know the history of places as well, and that's a big part of my job, too, is just telling people about the history of our parks. Something that I noticed about myself and learned about in school is plant blindness. (It's where) you look and just see a sea of green. So, learning how to stop and look at an individual tree or an individual plant, anything really, is helpful. Just noticing things that you don't notice before. I really make it a priority, especially in the spring when I know things are starting to pop up, I make it a priority to every day to stop and look around and see what looks different based on yesterday. I'll walk a trail and see what's different as far as our spring ephemerals like: which ones popping up, or maybe I see a blood root that is coming up and leaves are curled around it's stem and there's a bud and I know the flower is going to bloom soon. So, I try to go out every day and see if I can catch that one specific flower blooming. You slow down and look at things and notice them, and then you catalog it and then the next year just go back and do the same thing and then you're going to find patterns and you're going to find things that maybe shift and maybe don't and it's interesting to notice stuff like that and be able to tell other people: 'Oh well, if you wait a week, the red buds are going to be blooming on this day, so just wait.' One of my favorite things about bats is that between Indiana bats, if you're comparing them to a little brown bat: one way that researchers can distinguish between the two of them is that Indiana bats have short toe hairs and little brown bats have long toe hairs. I just think that's the funniest thing. IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Business Insider
20-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Accenture is giving consulting a new name as it doubles down on AI: 'reinvention services'
After more than 35 years in the business, Accenture is giving consulting a new name: "reinvention services." The global consulting firm reported its earnings on Friday, highlighting a generally positive performance for the third fiscal quarter of 2025. The firm reported revenue of $17.7 billion, an 8% increase from this time last year. While new bookings were down 6% compared to the third quarter in 2024, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told CNBC on Friday that the firm was "really pleased" with its bookings and that demand for its services could be seen in its revenue. Sweet said on the earnings call that AI is the firm's strongest bet for creating new demand and that to maximize AI's potential, the firm is consolidating its strategy, consulting, song, technology, and operations services into a single unit known as "reinvention services," starting September 1. "What we're going to do now is make it even easier to bring those solutions, embed data and AI, so we can really scale across our client base and into new markets using our reinvention services," Sweet told CNBC. What consultants do sometimes needs to be explained, and "reinvention services" is no exception. In both her CNBC interview and the earnings call on Friday, Sweet shared several examples of the company's AI-powered reinvention work, which — following its reorganization — the firm will be able to execute more efficiently, she said. In one example, she said Accenture is working with Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri to launch the first AI-powered ship in 2025. Sweet told CNBC that the ship will be able to "predict its maintenance, manage its energy use on its own, and talk to the dock" before it arrives at its destination. She said Accenture's work to modernize the manufacturing process for Bel, maker of Laughing Cow cheese, would also fall under this new department, as would its collaboration with Brazilian mining company Vale to expedite environmental licensing and permits. She also said the firm is creating AI-generated 3D avatars of physical products for coffee brands like Nescafé, Dolce Gusto, and Nespresso to reduce the time and cost of developing marketing campaigns, which would also fall under the new reinvention services department. Sweet told CNBC that AI can be a "tool" to help companies navigate the future, but to reap the benefits, it will also need to be "disruptive."
