The Future of the Firm

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 to discuss the type of support mid-market clients want from consulting firms and the role thought leadership can play is Tom Stewart, author of the groundbreaking 1999 book Intellectual Capital.

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 opposite direction, towards a more frequent, small-scale approach. So how can firms help clients looking to invest in a serial approach to M&A? Joining us to discuss this issue is Ravi Chanmugan, Director for Growth & Strategy and Health within Accenture Strategy. 

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 structure, whilst a new, larger advisory business would spin out into a standalone company.   This episode, Source CEO Fiona Czerniawska is joined by colleagues Paul English, Director of Marketing Advisory, and Martin White, Principal Consultant. In this roundtable discussion, they get to grips with what the EY split might mean for the resultant audit and advisory firms, as well as the wider professional services market.   Find out more about the impact of an EY split

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 discuss the growth of managed services is Paul Clark, Global Vice Chair of Managed Services at EY.

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 the seventh this year. This is leading us to wonder if professional services firms are missing a trick, and if they’re not producing the kind of material clients want, even need, to read.

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-sized firms are still going strong. Our own research suggests that our assumptions about mid-sized firms could be wrong.

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 a firm can have. But what does all this really mean? To explore the topic of innovation in the consulting industry, we’re joined by Giles Colborne, CEO of cxpartners. Cxpartners is Sopra Steria’s digital innovation consultancy.