Volume Twenty: Issue Four / April 2018 EY’s NEW AGE · with a new content management system dubbed the “Transformative ... sectors with issue-based marketing and thought leadership,”

Volume Twenty: Issue Four / April 2018

PLUS

That’s what Hank Prybylski, new Americas Vice Chair of Advisory Services, wants the firm to be. If successful, EY Advisory will top $10 billion by 2023.

Q & A with The Segal Group’s Ed KaplanThe Consultant’s Checklist

DOUBLING DOWN on R&D The rise of innovation hubs, and the ability to interact with clients in a new way, will fuel the next wave of consulting

www.consultingmag.com

NEWAGE

EY’s

“Value Navigators in a Transformative Age.”

Reprinted with permission from the April edition of Consulting Magazine © 2018 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or [email protected].

EY’sC O V E R S T O R Y

Hank Prybylski, EY’s new Americas Vice Chair of Advisory Services, wants better-connected consultants to be ‘value navigators in a transformative age.’ If successful, EY Advisory will double revenue to top $10 billion by 2023. BY JOSEPH KORNIK



late last year aimed to put consult-ing at the heart of the EY brand. Tra-ditionally, EY is a brand that hasn’t spent very much on advertising. But Prybylski says the firm realized there were areas where EY had great strengths but the market wasn’t nec-essarily recognizing them. It was all about letting the market know that EY is the navigator of the transform-ative age, he says.

“I’ve really come to understand the power of being connected. Our brand campaign is about consulting it’s not about advisory,” he says. “Consulting is when the multiple service lines of EY work together to solve a client’s problem. It’s not about one service line. We had a brand deficit; we weren’t being viewed as a consulting firm. We felt we were really innovative but may-be people weren’t viewing us that way,” Prybylski says. “We wanted to put consulting at the center of the conversation but really lead with the conversation around what are the ar-eas of interest to us and what are the areas of interest to our clients.”

And EY’s linked the campaign with a new content management system dubbed the “Transformative Hub” where EY clients log in to a portal to get custom content about their market, industry or even the status of their project via another online initiative called EY Synapse.

The whole idea is to customize EY thought leadership to specific accounts and communicate with cli-ents in a whole new way.

And, Prybylski says EY’s already gotten a lift from the new branding campaign. “I think it’s been so ef-fective because we targeted specific sectors with issue-based marketing and thought leadership,” he says. “We’re not just claiming we’re lead-ers in innovation; we’re showing it.”

Case in point: Prybylski says he was meeting recently with a CEO of one of the largest financial services firms and the two were talking about cybersecurity. “As you might imag-ine, cyber is a big deal for them,” he says. “The consulting industry prides itself on execution and we’ve done plenty of cyber work, but the CEO says ‘we want you to come in here and push our thinking, give us bold ideas to think about it.”

WHERE DISRUPTION MEETS INNOVATION

Clients don’t wonder anymore if they’ll be disrupted, he says, they ex-pect to be disrupted so it’s all about making sure they’re doing all they can. “They recognize that maybe their industry isn’t the most innova-tive so maybe they even want a so-lution from another industry. That’s part of the deal now,” Prybylski says. “They know that if they don’t move forward they will be disrupted. It’s that balance of truly innovative dis-ruptive ideas and a safe pair of hands to help them with it. That’s where EY has a unique opportunity. It really is a fascinating time.”

As a result, Prybylski says EY is being invited into that brainstorming session. Clients want to have a more provocative conversation. They want EY to put new ideas and new solu-tions on the table. “That’s probably been one of the biggest mindshift changes we’ve seen from clients.”

That’s why EY opened 17 inno-vation hub centers called “waves-paces” around the world with more on the way. wavespaces are a global network of growth and innovation centers to help clients catch the next wave in radical breakthroughs in business transformation by tap-ping into innovative thinking across EY disciplines, experience and in-dustry sectors. “This is the future of brainstorming and the future of business,” Prybylski says. “It’s com-pletely interactive and the delivera-bles are built as you go. It’s bringing together different types of people, a diversity of thoughts and styles. It’s what we call ‘suits and jeans inte-gration,’ and it really works.”

Prybylski says he believes cli-ents want innovation and thought leadership and knows EY does that exceedingly well. “Clients want to

Late last year, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line reached out to EY for help. No, not tax or audit assistance, but rather to lead its effort to completely transform the line’s cruise vaca-

tions into a connected and high-tech experience on the high seas. Royal Caribbean tapped EY for a complete digital transformation that touches everything from the customer book-ing process to the entire onboard experience to the ships’ engines.

EY’s work with Royal Caribbean highlights a new end-to-end digital experience, including everything from virtual reality dining experi-ences and shore excursions to on-board facial recognition software.

“Royal Caribbean hired us to fundamentally transform the entire cruise experience,” says Hank Pryb-ylski, Americas Vice Chair of Advi-sory Services. “They asked us to help them with their digital journey; they wanted to completely transform their end-to-end customer experience.”

And not only was the project a big success for Royal Caribbean, but the work, and the exposure it brought, also led to several conversations with other EY clients. “When Roy-al Caribbean held their SeaBeyond event, we had ten banking clients that wanted to go with us,” Prybyl-ski says. “Why? Well, going through this type of digital transformation is not unique to the cruise industry. Banking clients are trying to figure out how to completely transform its customer experience, too. These problems and solutions touch almost every industry.”

It’s this type of engagement, and the synergies it creates within EY and with its clients, that excites Prybylski so much these days.

“EY needs to be the firm that’s creating the most value for its cli-ents through this transformative age. Business models are changing and clients want more innovation. We want to be value navigators in the transformative age,” Prybylski says. “And secondly, we need to be the leaders who fundamentally trans-form how consulting services are ex-ecuted and delivered to clients. We can’t think about consulting being immune from digital disruption.”

To that end, he says EY thinks a lot about how it proposes and de-livers its services. “We execute our services in a more collaborative way. You can’t show up at a client and say, ‘I’m going to be your value nav-igator for digital transformation and here’s my 100-page PowerPoint.’ Those days are long gone.”

LEADING THE WAYIt’s been a little over six months

since Prybylski took over as Ameri-cas Vice Chair of Advisory Services for Bob Patton, who has shifted roles within EY. Patton, now Americas Vice Chair of Accounts, handed off an Advisory practice that’s in great shape and growing.

During his tenure, Patton grew Americas Advisory revenues from $1.5 billion with 6,000 consultants to $5 billion and 16,000 consultants. On his watch, the firm also made more than 25 strategic acquisitions.

Based in New York, Prybylski brings more than 30 years of experi-ence serving top-tier institutions with-in the financial services industry. In Prybylski’s previous role as Americas Advisory Performance Improvement Leader, he led 7,000 consultants who helped clients transform their supply chain, finance, technology and opera-tions. Under his leadership, the prac-tice posted market-leading growth

over the past several years, including an 18 percent increase in 2017.

Since taking over his new role, Prybylski says he’s been keenly fo-cused on asking some tough ques-tions: “Do we have the services to create new customer experiences and employee experiences? What is the experience we want to provide to our clients? What is our workforce of the future? Do we have the right balance of skills for global delivery? Do we have the right technical skills? How do we deliver those services?”

To help answer them, he em-barked on a client-listening tour to gather feedback about their top priorities and goals. “What I was hearing from clients is completely parallel to what I thought we needed to focus on,” he says. “They need to create momentum; they need to move forward. They see a lot of op-portunity and, not surprisingly, they have a fear of disruption.”

Prybylski says in the past, much of EY’s work was highly focused—helping companies migrate an appli-cation to the cloud, for instance.

“It was one function, one tech-nology. That’s changing. Clients are asking us about fundamentally trans-forming their business; that’s the future. We want to take the collec-tive integration of what I’ll call the digital ecosystem. This is an exciting time for the EY consulting practice, as client demand for connected solu-tions is on the rise.” Prybylski says. “At EY, we’ve always been proud of how purpose-driven we are. We are proud to be ‘focused on building a better working world,’ leading with purpose-led transformation. That’s an anchor that Bob left us with and we’ll continue that work.”

But part of a new EY is a freshen up on that vision, complete with a new branding campaign launched

C O V E R S T O R Y



see solutions to problems not in a PowerPoint, but in an application.” ‘Show me something in a visual and immersive experience,’ which is what we do in our wavespace.”

This ‘suits and jeans integration’ and sitting side by side with clients has led to a whole different way of doing business, including a push of moving more clients from more traditional pricing models to value-based pricing, Prybylski says.

To demonstrate the value, Pryb-ylski points to a project EY recently did with a big consumer products company. During the initial conver-sation, EY asked the client to iden-tify its biggest problem, which was “procure to pay.” EY requested for permission to interview some of the client’s customers. The firm spent two weeks doing just that and came back with some ideas. “We asked the client if we could take these ide-as and come up a plan that created

some value. Would they be willing to give us a piece of that value? We said, ‘If you don’t like the ideas, you don’t have to pay us.”

Prybylski says the client came into a wavespace with EY, which included its tax team. The tax team found the client $1 million in tax refunds. EY’s fees were roughly $1 million, so this is a win-win.

“Now, it’s a project,” Prybylski says. “This is such a good example of how we can bring new and inno-vative ideas and solutions to a client. The conversation changed and now the engagement is this: Every six months or so we get in a wavespace with their leadership team and ask them about their biggest problem. It’s a completely different approach, but we think this is the future.”

THE $10 BILLION PLANSpeaking of the future, EY just

rolled out its 2023 vision. The plan

is to double the Advisory business from about $5 billion to more than $10 billion by the end of 2023. That’s about 14 to 15 percent CAGR over the next six years. “We believe that growth rate will continue to put us in a market leadership position,” Prybylski says. “When we step back and look at it, we still see very strong market opportunities. Every time I visit a client I realize there’s never been a more exciting time to be in the consulting profession, especially the way we look at consulting.”

Prybylski says EY plans for or-ganic growth but is also open to any and all opportunities that may arise. “We’ll continue to do stra-tegic acquisitions where we focus on firms in the $50 to $100 million range because we think that’s the right size,” he says.

The biggest market opportunities, he says, include Healthcare, Public Sector, Financial Services, Industrial

C O V E R S T O R Y

In order to have the level of growth fore-casted in its 2023 plan, EY has to be laser-focused on talent, a topic Hank Prybylski, the newly minted EY Ameri-cas Vice Chair of Advisory Services, is

sharply focused on these days.With the plan calling for doubling revenue

over the next five-and-a-half years, it’s no secret lots of hiring will need to take place. Often, that can lead to a dramatic drop in culture and employee satisfaction. Even with the rampant hiring the last few years, EY has remained a stalwart on Consulting’s annual ranking of the Best Firms to Work For. Cur-rently, a little more than 16,000 consultants fall under Prybylski’s jurisdiction. How many more will he need and where will they come from?

Prybylski says the talent will come from several sources, but a lot will come from cam-pus, a pipeline he’s still extremely high on. He pointed to a Universum survey that indicated

EY is one of the Top 4 brands on campus right now behind only Apple, Google and Goldman Sachs. “That’s a statistic that I’m sure people don’t really think about, but to compete in a world that’s changing and grow like we’re growing, you’ve got to be able to compete on campus and that’s one area where we’ve been really focused.”

Meanwhile, Prybylski says EY’s headcount growth won’t be linear but rather needs and skills based. “Our goal is to have the most di-verse consulting practice in terms of skills and abilities.”

To meet the new demands of consulting, those skills and abilities are changing, he says. “We’re moving from 70 percent business degrees to more liberal arts, design thinking and STEM degrees,” he says. “Some of those candidates don’t even know they want to be consultants, especially how it’s been tradition-ally defined. But they do know they want to work on really interesting problems, they want

Products and Consumer Products. “All of these industries are going through massive transformation and we see a ton of upside.”

If EY’s going to remain relevant, he says, the firm will need to be able to solve at least 70 percent of its cli-ents’ biggest issues. And those big issues tend to be in a few areas and across several sectors, he says.

THE CONNECTED-GROWTH PLATFORM

And the solutions can only come by being connected as a firm. How does EY connect its digital projects to its cyber resources and then con-nect both with its tax resources?

To help solve this, EY recently launched its Connected-Growth Plat-form to facilitate cross-sector con-vergence. The focus is on connect-ing skill sets—from blockchain to digital to cyber, Prybylski says. “We don’t have a separate digital business

because we thought that would be limiting. What we wanted to do with our Connected-Growth Platform is bring together practices that we see as being the fastest growing and where we need to put our investment, where we need to tie them together to meet our clients’ needs.”

That includes all digital user experience areas, the Cyber prac-tice, the Cloud practice, the loT practice and the AI practice. “We spent a lot of time thinking about creating the right environment for that group. We wanted it to be high growth and highly integrated,” he says. “This is an area where we’re putting big bets on.”

Prybylski says digital transfor-mation is touching about half of all projects in EY right now, but in the future it will touch about 80 percent of projects. That requires a con-nected firm with full end-to-end ca-pabilities. “Clients want a firm that

can go from strategy to business to technology,” he says. “And we think there are only seven firms that can do that—The Big 4, Accenture, IBM and McKinsey. Those firms are the firms that we put into our competi-tive set, but when we compete with an IBM, Accenture or McKinsey, they don’t have tax people—that’s a real differentiator for us.”

But at the end of the day, “I’m fo-cused on what we need to do and less on what our competitors are doing around us. If we execute on our plan and vision, I’m very confident we’ll achieve our goals,” he says. “We’ve built our entire business on having extremely deep, long-term, trusted client relationships, and when we bring them a brand new idea that’s a little out-of-the-box or innovative, we’re asking them to rely on our relationship and to trust us and our vision. And they have. They’ve re-sponded to us in a big way.”

Talking Talent,

Training and Tech



to work in a collaborative environment; they want to be challenged every day; and, they want to have diverse experiences.”

It’s EY’s job to communicate to them that the skills they’ve acquired on campus are going to be valued and they’re going to be leveraged in a diverse environment. “We’re hiring a mosaic of different skills and they need to live and feel that,” Prybylski says. “They also need to understand that they’re going to be challenged in the project they work on. If you get those two things right, I don’t think you’re going to have any prob-lem attracting great talent.”

Once they arrive, EY will make sure they contin-ue to learn. That’s because the firm just launched a program called “EY Badges” where consultants earn badges based on a degree of expertise in particu-lar content area, including Artificial Intelligence and Analytics, among others.

“It’s a balance of self-training online and experience-

based training focused on improving one’s skills in high-demand areas,” he says. “And we’re going to make the designations—Gold, Silver and Bronze—public so col-leagues and clients will be aware someone’s earned that designation. It’s just one of the many things we’re doing to make sure we take care of, and develop, our people.” —J.K.

Documents

Volume Twenty: Issue Four / April 2018 EY’s NEW AGE · with a new content management system dubbed the “Transformative ... sectors with issue-based marketing and thought leadership,”