The Future of the Firm

  A firm's b rand is one of its most important assets , but is yours still delivering ? Shi ft ing services, new tech competitors, and a more c omplex ecosystem of buyers may mean it needs attention.    In this podcast, we talk to Ed and Alison about how to make your professional services brand work harder.   They share their experiences of the following issues and more:   The big challenge of dif...

It may seem like a long time since the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and the sudden pivot to working from home, but our research on the buying habits of consulting clients confirms a lasting legacy of the pandemic on the significance of thought leadership. In December 2022, our global study of more than 3,500 executives in major markets found that over 90% of the C-suite across all regions and industrie...

In a crisis-dominated world, clients are increasingly looking to transform their tax function. With more ambitious goals than pre-pandemic, they are now trying to adapt to a far more challenging and unpredictable world. On this episode of The Future of the Firm, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Marna Ricker, Global Vice Chair of Tax, EY to discuss the way clients are changing their thinking and what...

According to our research, 'sector knowledge and expertise' is now the second most important attribute to clients when choosing a firm to work with, having skyrocketed from 12th place just a couple of years ago.  In this episode of The Future of the Firm, Ed Scott and Fiona Czerniawska are joined by Allan Platt, CEO of boutique consulting firm Clareo, to discuss the importance of sector-specific e...

The last few years have presented organisations with a seemingly endless series of new challenges to navigate. The big story in this regard was of course COVID-19, but with the situation in Ukraine, global market and geopolitical uncertainty, energy prices, and inflation to contend with, the plates of many businesses around the world are looking increasingly full.  Chuck in the destabilising effec...

Transformation. It's something that almost every client we speak to at the moment is talking about.  In our most recent data, 52% of clients say that they're either already making a significant investment in digital transformation or planning to do so in the next 18 months, and 41% say they'll be investing in target operating model transformation. But is something missing from this conversation? I...

Artificial intelligence is the topic on everyone's mind at the moment, b ut what does it actually mean for consulting firms?  To find out,  we 've been delving into our own quant and qual research, in which we regularly ask clients about the impact of emerging technology on their use of consulting firms.    

Question: What do a father's mental health, a mother's chances of returning to full-time employment, and their newborn child's lifetime earnings have in common? Answer: They would all be improved by an effective Equal Paid Parental Leave policy, according to PwC's 2023 Women in Work report.  In this episode of The Future of the Firm, Jennifer Richards, Chief Strategy Officer at PwC, joins Ed Scott...

Ed Scott is joined by Martin White and Fiona Czerniawska. The partnership model has its advantages, but the cancellation of EY's Project Everest has shone a light on some of its pitfalls.  When big decisions depend on a complex and lengthy voting process in which partners may put their self-interest ahead of the firm's, a firm's ability to reconfigure its business and meet clients' evolving needs...

In the last few months, we've seen artificial intelligence skyrocket from the pages of speculative fiction to increasingly becoming an everyday reality. Technologies like ChatGPT have been the subject of much discussion, but thus far, at least from the outside, AI is yet to break through that invisible boundary between 'interesting gimmick' and 'revolutionary new tool'.   So, what's going on? Is A...

When was the last time you experienced a crisis? How did you react? If you're anything like the rest of us, the answer might be—not that well. But what if that crisis wasn't something personal, but global? How would you deal with that if you were in a position of leadership, and others were looking to you for guidance? In this episode, Fiona Czerniawska speaks with Adrian Bettridge, who brings ove...

Against an increasingly tumultuous economic and geopolitical landscape, what really matters for professional services firms in 2023? Join Fiona Czerniawska and Margaret Cameron-Waller for a look at the year ahead.

The professional services sector has always been a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, we've got high-end advice at the most strategic level in client organisations; at the other, we've services that are so familiar and standardised that they've become a commodity. Professional service firms don't have many people who are explicitly looking at the opportunities for productisation across their b...

Thought leadership is a critical means by which a professional services firm can communicate the range of depth of its knowledge in a way that conventional, brand-led marketing can't. But a major lesson learned during the pandemic is that mid-market organisations are looking for practical, real-world experience.   How, then, can professional service firms best engage with this market? Joining us t...

Global economic and political trends have been making it difficult for clients and firms to make sweeping, large-scale decisions, and seemingly no area of business — or life in general, for that matter — has been left untouched.   Mergers and acquisitions have historically a line of business characterised by immense financial and logistical movements, but recently the market's been moving in the o...

How do a team of five people manage the entire tax function of New Zealand's largest company? With ease—thanks to the power of a managed service.   In this episode, we spoke to Grant Duncan, Group General Manager for Tax, Customs, and Insurance at Fonterra, to find out more about how Fonterra's partnership with EY has helped this multi-million dollar business streamline its global tax function.

It's been known for some time now that EY, one of the 'Big 4' professional services firms, has been considering splitting its auditing and consulting arms into separate organisations.   Well, it was recently revealed that the split has been approved by EY's senior leadership, and will now be subject to a partner vote. If approved, EY's audit business would remain in the existing partnership struct...

Digital transformation and ESG are the two highest priorities for firms when it comes to investment — but what if these weren't siloed service lines, but two sides of the same coin? This week Susanna Hasenoehrl, Head of Sustainability at SAP in Asia Pacific and Japan, joins us to discuss the role big tech firms can play in helping organisations reach net zero.

Compared to conventional consulting, the outcomes associated with a managed service are more specific and more tangible. Throughout the pandemic, we've seen evidence of growing interest in managed services, fuelled by the shift to remote working that made clients much more aware of the way in which technology can complement consulting rather than simply replace it.   Joining us this week to discus...

Increasingly, success in business requires the coming together of different skillsets and technologies. But, in an ever more complex world, it's getting harder and harder for large-scale transformation programmes to be delivered by just one firm - hence, the growth of alliances.   Joining us this week to discuss the future of alliances in consulting is Adam Lai, Partner at PwC.

All our research during the pandemic suggested that the thought leadership produced by professional services firms was becoming more important to clients. If we look at our most recent client perceptions data and ask clients about the relative importance of thought leadership when considering which firm to hire, thought leadership has dropped from being the third most influential factor in 2021 to...

Accepted thinking around the consulting and wider professional services industry suggests that being a mid-sized firm isn't a comfortable place to be, lacking both the brand weight and scale of the very large firms, and the personalised service and specialist know-how of smaller ones. Yet, here we are, two years on from the single greatest upheaval ever in the consulting industry and most mid-size...

Innovation has become a hot topic in consulting over the past few years: No longer content to be mere advisors, firms want to play a more proactive and hands-on role helping clients build and launch innovative new products and solutions. And clients seem keen to work in this way, too: Our client data consistently reveals that "having an innovative approach" is one of the most important attributes...

It's almost impossible to glance at the business press these days without some kind of coverage on global talent shortages—and the consulting industry is feeling the pressure of these shortages particularly keenly. Is there anything consulting firms can do to increase retention, and halt the "great resignation" that's impacting them? To discuss the role of learning & development in consulting firm...

Pricing is one of the most complex issues in the consulting industry, and clients are often unclear on what exactly they are paying for; in fact, our latest research has shown that only 23% believe that consulting firms are transparent when it comes to their fee rates. What can be done to reduce this friction, and how can consulting firms take a more intelligence approach when it comes to their pr...