Today, Accenture is a leader in using mergers and acquisitions as a mechanism to drive future growth in new and emerging strategic priorities—essentially organic growth through inorganic acquisitions. Our world-class corporate development team has achieved an annual investment of, on average, over $2 billion in acquisitions over the past five years. As part of our capital allocation strategy, we aim to invest around 20-25% of operating cashflow each year and through the business cycles.
Our view is that acquisitions are not a strategy in and of themselves. Rather, our corporate development team works with our business teams to help realize an independently developed business strategy, with acquisitions as just one tool used to achieve that strategy.
We took this approach with developing Accenture Song. More than a decade ago, our marketing services group had a vision for a new way to provide digital marketing services to corporations. Today, through dozens of key acquisitions such as Droga5, as well as organic growth and internal capabilities, the venture has grown into one of the largest digital agency networks in the world.
The creation and development of Accenture Song showed that strategic acquisitions could speed growth and creativity in powerful ways. It is a model for our ongoing moves into Industry X, where manufacturing and technology converge. To prepare for future needs in data-powered digital engineering and manufacturing, we are proactively integrating companies with future-focused skills and technologies, such as umlaut, which added 4,200+ industry-leading experts across 17 countries to our Industry X services.
Our M&A journey will not stop here. As companies seek to harness the five forces of growth, their needs will continue to evolve. By continuing to focus on M&A strategies that boost our capabilities in total enterprise reinvention, talent, sustainability, the metaverse continuum and the ongoing technology revolution, Accenture is prepared to evolve with them at an ambitious pace.