Transforming Professional Services: From Hierarchy to Networked Collaboration

Greg Sarafin, Global Vice Chair, EY Partner Ecosystem, caught up with Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source, on the latest episode of our The Future of the Firm podcast. 

Greg and Fiona shared their insight on the following matters and more:  

• Clients want firms to help them drive their business outcomes, and increasingly take joint responsibility for those outcomes. That includes bringing along the collective partners that are needed. 

• Partnering is the route to an outcome-based commercial model vs. the traditional product and services-based one.  

• The role of consulting firms is shifting from being the advisor to the orchestrator. We discuss how EY is approaching this globally.  

• Stakeholder value is created when clients move to a major platform as a service (PaaS) which is then strengthened by adding an orbiting ecosystem of smaller software businesses. 

• A journey lies ahead that will take AI from being a copilot to having agency. We discuss the opportunities and timeline.  

• Clients want to pay firms based on the value their ecosystems create. We explore what this means for fee models. 

• We finish by discussing how firmss may take their partner ecosystems to the next level. 

If you enjoyed this conversation, don’t miss our sister podcast, Business Leader’s Voice. In a recent episode, we talked to Jason Maude of Starling Bank about what a tech-first business wants from consulting firms.