13 minute read 10 Sep 2020

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Creating long-term value for clients

13 minute read 10 Sep 2020

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EY Global Review 2020 (pdf)

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In response to a year when things changed so much, EY adapted, to help EY clients be effective today and create long-term value for tomorrow.

EY clients operate in a complex and fast-moving business environment, where they are not only addressing the changing demands of their customers, employees and other stakeholders, but also facing disruption brought on by geopolitics, trade disputes, new technologies and business models, and, this year, a global pandemic.

In response to a year when things changed so much for clients, EY adapted, providing targeted solutions such as the new COVID-19 Enterprise Resilience Framework – a diagnostic tool designed to provide a methodical approach to crisis management, recovery and reinvention.

We believe that as governments cautiously relax lockdown measures, leaders must look to what comes next, and be prepared to transform their organizations to the world beyond the pandemic.

The COVID-19 Enterprise Resilience Framework identifies nine areas – from employee health and well-being to insurance and legal disputes – that not only support business continuity now, but help reframe an organization’s future.

The Framework’s broad approach reflects EY’s commitment to bringing the whole of the EY organization to meet clients’ changing needs – providing assurance services; helping them grow and transform; and operating components of their businesses on their behalf efficiently and effectively – wherever they may be located.

To do that effectively EY is developing a broader, more holistic range of services than ever before; investing in technology and data; expanding our ecosystem; industrializing how we capture and scale the innovations taking place every day across our locations; and using EY sector knowledge to deliver tailored solutions.

At EY, serving clients is our passion – NextWave is helping us to do that better than ever and deliver long-term value to clients in a rapidly changing world.

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Chapter 1: Building new capabilities at scale

Supporting EY clients’ transformations

We know that beyond COVID-19, every company will need to transform and reposition for growth and resiliency.

We want to be the world’s leading transformation consultants. The EY Strategy consulting teams, EY-Parthenon, are already the fifth-largest providers in the world with combined revenues of more than US$2b, and we will continue to grow them to help clients not just develop their strategic visions but to see them through to strategy execution.

In many cases EY services can also help operate critical functions through EY Managed Services – all part of the EY commitment to provide end-to-end services and solutions for clients.

This combination of strategy, execution and operation in one organization is a unique and compelling proposition that provides clients with continuity and confidence through their transformations.

This year we also launched EY Private – a new approach to providing even better service to private businesses leaders, entrepreneurs and their sources of private capital.

It brings together the full depth and breadth of experience of the EY organization via globally connected advisor who understands the unique challenges of a privately-owned business, and builds on EY’s legacy of advising the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, and addressing the needs of private equity, family enterprises and IPO-bound companies.

COVID-19 enterprise resilience

The EY Enterprise Resilience Framework helps clients prioritize what matters most for their business. A framework identifies nine areas businesses can address to build a structured and comprehensive approach to crisis management and business resilience.

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Chapter 2: Creating world-class technology services

Bringing together the best in technology

We want to be the world’s leading transformation consultants. And because these days every transformation has important technology elements to it, we have launched world-class Technology Consulting services.

This will support EY clients’ transformation plans, through globally connected and coordinated services that bring together the best in technology from across our ecosystem of alliances and EY’s own in-house capabilities.

We are already delivering ground-breaking blockchain projects, and are proud that EY was ranked first among the Big Four for blockchain services by HFS, a technology analyst firm, in its annual Top 10 Enterprise Blockchain Services report (pdf). We are also recognized by analysts in areas including risk, cyber, digital, innovation and more.

We are also using AI to analyze data – EY is one of the largest collectors of business data in the world; EY Helix has analyzed more than 580 billion lines of client journal entry data in the past year on more than 58,000 engagements across 150 countries.

In the past EY often used technology to do things better or faster. Today we are reaping the rewards of a two-year US$1b investment program in client-facing technology and using technology to do entirely new things for EY clients, in a rapidly changing world.

Analyst relations

We are proud of the many independent evaluations from analysts - for example, this year IDC MarketScape named EY as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Professional Services (pdf) 2020 Vendor Assessment (doc #US45439120, April 2020).

Find out more about how EY is recognized by analysts, and read the list of independent evaluations.

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Chapter 3: Transformation through Managed Services

Reimaging core functions

One of the challenges that EY clients face as they transform their businesses is running their non-core but board-critical functions more efficiently and effectively.

We are scaling EY Managed Services significantly to meet demand.

EY Managed Services combines core domain expertise in areas such as tax, finance, risk and compliance with innovative technology to run clients’ non-core but board-critical functions, efficiently and effectively. Using EY people, technology and processes gives companies the freedom and confidence to focus their time and energy on growing their businesses and competing in the market.

Chapter 4: Working as part of an ecosystem

Bringing different skills together to create value

Today’s business world is so complex and the pace of change so fast that no single organization can provide the best solution to every client problem. That’s why we work as part of ecosystems – where different organizations bring their specific skills and knowledge together to create more value as a group than any of them could separately.

Being part of ecosystems helps us bring better solutions to clients. There are more than 30 ecosystem relationships that include technology alliances, intellectual property relationships and service-delivery relationships, in order to bring diverse teams of different subject-matter professionals to help create client value.

Chapter 5: Innovating at scale and speed

From big bets to impactful ideas

To better meet clients’ changing needs, EY must be able to innovate at greater scale and speed than ever.

To ensure a coordinated and consolidated approach, we are creating a Transformation Zone that will bring together teams from across EY to drive a cohesive, strategic focus on innovation for all of EY.

The portfolio of projects under this single remit range from large, forward-looking bets to smaller, impactful ideas that are quick to implement and require relatively low investment.

Making big bets on future services as well as increasing the ability to capture and replicate the innovation that occurs daily in EY’s engagement teams is fundamental to clients’, and EY’s, success.

Chapter 6: Ongoing investment in EY’s sector knowledge

Ensuring a “whole” EY approach

Clients rightly demand deep sector knowledge and solutions delivered by teams drawn from across service lines and alliance partners.

To meet clients’ needs – particularly in the new Strategy, and Technology, practices where deep sector knowledge is a prerequisite – we are investing in sector-specific solutions, enhancing leaders’ roles to ensure we always take a “whole of EY” (including alliance relationships) approach, and enabling EY leaders to make investment decisions that deliver long-term value and growth for clients.

Sharing industry know-how

Whether analyzing the future of cities’ central business districts or the role of renewable energy in a post COVID-19 world, EY identifies the sector, market and geopolitical-specific implications, today and tomorrow, for clients’ businesses.

And as the COVID-19 crisis develops, looking beyond the horizon and traditional competitors is crucial for clients’ long-term success.

EY Megatrends does just that. The 2020 report examines how root causes of disruption – technology, globalization, demographics and environment – interact to create new megatrends, and how these megatrends in turn are reshaping the political and economic landscape.

Proactively staying connected, providing support and sharing related insights, experiences and solutions will help EY clients prepare for what lies ahead and challenge assumptions about sector structures, where competition will come from, and where growth will be found.

Chapter 7: EY service lines

EY capabilities

We bring the whole of the EY organization to clients, helping to assure, grow, transform and operate.

Assurance

EY Assurance services – comprising Audit, Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) and Forensic & Integrity Services (Forensics) – address risk and complexity while identifying opportunities to enhance trust and confidence in business and the capital markets.

EY Audit furthers the public interest by proactively addressing stakeholders’ needs for trust and confidence in the capital markets. This is accomplished through a data-first approach enabled by analytics and digitally-empowered teams who are committed to independence, integrity, objectivity and professional skepticism.

FAAS and Forensics’ teams help protect and restore enterprise and financial reputations, support the finance function in enhancing decision-making and efficiency, and address the risks and opportunities arising from climate change and sustainability issues.

Together, EY Assurance services protect and promote sustainable, long-term value for stakeholders.

Clients require greater insight from the services provided, while regulators and the capital markets want greater assurance over a wider range of measures and a deeper sense of trust across the business world. And EY people want more varied experiences and opportunities to add greater value.

To meet these expectations, EY Assurance’s aim is to be the pre-eminent and most trusted global Assurance services providers by focusing on three areas.

First, it is continuing to develop the audit of the future, delivering greater insight, assurance and value to clients and the capital markets through ever more sophisticated data analytics. In the past seven years Assurance has invested more than US$700m in digitalization and technology. As a result, EY Canvas is now the leading global audit technology platform connecting more than 145,000 EY audit teams and 280,000 client users and is deployed on all audit engagements.

And EY Helix has analyzed more than 580 billion lines of client journal entry data in the past year on more than 58,000 engagements across 150 countries. Furthermore, EY today is the leader in providing trust and confidence to blockchain ecosystems through the EY Blockchain Analyzer.

Second, Assurance is continuing to respond to the growing need of companies to interpret, communicate and shape their strategy around financial and nonfinancial information. Assurance sits at the heart of the multidisciplinary EY model and Assurance professionals work with teams from other service lines daily to deliver long-term value to clients.

Third, EY Assurance’s people are the greatest asset in delivering quality and value and building trust. We are elevating their experiences, using data and technology, so they can spend more time addressing risks and exercising professional judgement. Enabled by technology, EY Assurance is continuing to build on our multidisciplinary model to deliver more value and insights.

Looking ahead, as data become even more central to everything EY does, EY Assurance will continue to increase the value it brings to clients. EY Assurance will also be the best place for people in applying cutting-edge technologies and sophisticated data analytics – all while serving the public interest and feeling a strong sense of their contribution to Building a better working world.
Consulting

EY Advisory is already world leading in business consultancy. It has been ranked number one in Business Consulting by analysts and named a leader in Risk, Cybersecurity, People Advisory Services, Digital, Innovation, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Finance and Supply Chain, and Operations.

The aim is to become the world’s leading transformation consultants. To reflect this ambition, EY Advisory has changed its name to Consulting; “Consulting” is more widely used in the market and more closely describes what we do.

Transformation is not a new concept; consulting firms have long aspired to wholly transform their clients’ organizations to set them up for greater success.

What is new is the sense of urgency many clients now feel, the need for continual reinvention while meeting short-term financial expectations, the pace of change and the levels of uncertainty that now prevail in many markets. We believe all these factors are reinvigorating demand for transformation and creating new conditions for success.

To help clients generate long-term value, Transformation Realized is the lens through which EY brings together transformative capabilities, skills, solutions and tools to create impact throughout clients’ enterprises and broader ecosystem. We put humans at the center, deliver technology at speed and enable innovation at scale.

Technology is a vital component in every client’s transformation. To that end, we are creating world-class Technology Consulting services within Consulting which will bring the best technology to clients to achieve their objectives – from across the EY ecosystem of alliances and using the in-house capabilities of the 40,000+ specialist technologists who work at EY.
Strategy and Transactions

The challenges that EY clients face today, and tomorrow, require a more connected suite of solutions.

It’s why Strategy and Transactions developed the Connected Capital Solutions (CCS): Strategy, Corporate Finance, Buy and Integrate, Sell and Separate, and Reshaping Results. The CCS help clients to unlock their Capital Agendas, develop their strategic vision and convert it into concrete plans. Then, leveraging the global reach and depth of EY services, clients can execute those plans, transform their businesses and reach their full potential.

To deliver this unique proposition, Strategy and Transactions brings together world-class strategy services in EY-Parthenon (already the fifth-largest strategy consulting providers in the world with revenues of more than US$2b), with teams with Transactions and Corporate Finance experience and International Tax and Transaction Services professionals.

The CCS are supported by Connected Capital Technologies – an integrated suite of technologies that uses AI, automation and advanced analytics to bring deeper analysis and faster insights to enable better decision-making and a more seamless delivery.

Bringing clients the full spectrum of EY strategy and transactions capabilities helps them define their strategic direction, drive actionable plans and deliver against their transformation strategies.

It also means that Strategy and Transactions teams can be even more agile in how their capabilities, know-how and experience are brought together. It puts clients at the heart of every engagement, and it opens exciting opportunities for EY people to accelerate their careers and realize their full potential in an inclusive, high-growth environment.
Tax

More than ever before, in this era of unprecedented economic uncertainty fuelled by the global pandemic, clients see EY Tax as a trusted business advisor on the front line of strategic and transformational decisions that improve their organizations’ resilience and long-term value. In this dynamic environment, we are building a better working world by enabling business decisions through insights on government policy, regulatory obligations and operations.

We continue to provide the market with leading cross-border tax and legal advice. Many companies are faced with challenging supply chain decisions given the changing geopolitical dynamics and shortages caused by the global pandemic. EY Tax has been providing them with real-time tax and legal advice, enabled by leading-edge technology and modelling tools, to empower sound decision making.

Increasingly, businesses are turning to co-sourcing their tax and finance and legal functions to maximize their own capabilities, build a strong, adaptable organization and fortify their bottom line. In a recent survey, 5 out of 10 organizations said they would choose to work with EY Tax, which includes 65,000 highly skilled professionals located in 145 jurisdictions around the globe who are deeply knowledgeable in tax, law and talent-related issues.

The EY Tax and Finance Operate solution and a growing number of other EY Tax managed services offerings, including Legal Managed Services and Payroll Operate, are driven by the EY Global Tax Platform (GTP), which runs on Microsoft Azure. GTP is the first cloud-enabled technology of its kind among the Big Four with global scope, and capability enhancements continue to be added to this market-leading platform. The 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards specifically recognized the GTP among EY teams’ global capabilities, services and solutions that combine innovation, robust skills and Microsoft technologies.

With the acquisitions of EY Riverview Law and Pangea 3 in FY19, EY became the first provider to offer global legal advisory, legal function consulting and a robust, industry-leading legal managed services (LMS) solution. Upon integrating these deals this year, EY Law was recognized by the Financial Times as a disruptor in the legal services space and named the leader in Acritas’ Global Alternative Legal Services Provider brand index.

In June 2020 an agreement was finalized to technology-enable EY global trade services and expand the EY global trade managed services offering through a transaction with software and content solution provider GTKonnect. Connected to GTP, this technology and the talent behind it will greatly strengthen EY’s credentials across many aspects of global trade.

The technological and operational transformations many organizations are now undertaking also require strategic workforce transformations to ensure their success. EY People Advisory Services (PAS) teams continue to help clients address complex workforce issues, including remote working resulting from the pandemic and physical-return transitions. EY’s Global Physical Return and Work Reimagined (PRWR) framework helps clients focus on short-term physical-return related issues as they simultaneously explore longer-term opportunities to transform their work environments and business operations for a seamless shift towards the “next normal”.

Even as we look to the future, EY teams are helping clients navigate the present as governments around the world take action to support businesses and stimulate their economies. The EY COVID-19 Stimulus Response Tool empowers clients by monitoring developments, determining their critical needs, prioritizing a plan and then tailoring actions for continued stabilization. The tool works in tandem with nearly a dozen regularly updated response trackers to display incentives relevant to a client, costs and benefits of a given incentive and the status of any application made.

Over the past fiscal year, we launched the first EY direct-to-consumer service with the enhanced and expanded EY TaxChat™. EY’s award-winning, on-demand mobile tax preparation app offers personalized service from a licensed EY professional. Designed to handle the growing complexities of tax filing, it appeals to time-pressed, mass-affluent individual taxpayers. The EY TaxChat mobile app is currently available in the US, UK and Brazil, with expansion into Australia and the Netherlands underway.

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EY Global

By EY Global

Ernst & Young Global Ltd.

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Creating long-term value for clients

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