Steve Chase to lead firm's advisory management consulting business
Steve Chase was named U.S. Management Consulting leader of the firm's Advisory practice where he'll help clients drive business performance and lead change in the face of unprecedented disruption from increased regulation, greater competition, expanding markets and digital and technology advances. "I'm excited to move into this position at a time when our investments in technology and acquisitions for our management consulting business are paying dividends and driving unprecedented growth," he says. "We are extremely well-positioned to advise our clients on integrated business transformation—and how to best capitalize on disruptions in the marketplace to help them deliver the most engaging experiences to their customers." Chase has more than 20 years of management consulting and technology experience focusing primarily on driving technology-enabled business transformation in technology, retail, finance, supply chain and other sectors. Consulting caught up with Chase recently as he took over the new role in early January.
Consulting: What's the state of the Advisory Management Consulting business?
Chase: Well, we're coming off of five years of over double-digit growth. I'm really excited about where we are and proud of what the team has done. We're in a very enviable position. I'm sort of pinching myself thinking back to having left BearingPoint in 2004 and not sure where any of the old Big 4 were headed. Now, to see where we are is exciting. I really think the way KPMG is positioned to do project-based transformation work from strategy through execution is a big difference for us and a big reason that I feel fortunate to be leading this business right now. It's pretty clear this is the business we want to be in, especially in these times when clients are really demanding that sort of capability and wanting full-service partners, people that can take clients from the beginning to the end.
Consulting: What are you seeing for this year. What's the forecast for 2015?
Chase: As I look at 2015, our business is extremely bullish on management consulting and for advisory, overall. We are making larger investments this year than last, which was a record year for investment for us. We're doing that because of the market opportunities we see—everything from cyber security to the transformational nature of data as an asset, toward cost pressures in certain industries to growth opportunities enabled by the lower-cost of energy. For instance, going in front of a transformational advisor and helping them see where the company is going over the next three to five years, these are the projects we want to be executing. Even in December, which is typically a slower period, we saw our pipeline grow with quality opportunities with clients where we have really long relationships. That's been really encouraging.
Consulting: Where do you see the most opportunities in the market?
Chase: I mentioned the investments we were making last year and that's a really good indicator of where we see opportunities to round out our transformation message. For example, we're really continuing to see opportunities to bring digital and mobile into the core enterprise. We think there's a great opportunity around customer experience-driven transformation and how that creates better customer experiences and how that cascades throughout an entire organization. We also think the internal enterprise customers, our clients, are beginning to demand the same high-quality experience for its employees. It's a huge enabler, makes change management happen faster, makes adoption rates go up. We're seeing a lot of clients considering this and thinking that they don't want to keep making little, incremental investments, but rather something enterprising. When that happens, that's where KPMG can be really powerful.
We're also seeing the connection of those things to data and analytics to improve the business. SAS opportunities continue to achieve the growth rates that we've all sort of been predicting. I've been really proud of the investments we made around ServiceNow and the Workday Consulting Practice from AXIA Consulting, for instance. And this isn't just happening in the U.S., KPMG just announced an intent to acquire a Microsoft Dynamics firm in Europe. It's the first time in a while that we've got everybody on the same page. It's hard to do in a dynamically changing marketplace, but it's very powerful.
Consulting: What do you see as the biggest challenges?
Chase: I think our challenge is in meeting our clients' challenges is we have to continue to grow our capabilities around transformation as those drivers and enablers of transformation continue to change. Our risk consulting group acquired certain aspects of Qubera Solutions last year, which was really on point. We teamed with them to bring security control into our engagements around data security. It's just so topic-relevant right now. Again, bringing enablers to the transformation agenda is where we're going to continue to focus. It's not our goal, by the way, to grow by acquiring companies. We'll continue to evaluate the landscape for those opportunities, but the lifeblood of the business is the hiring of our people, the training of our people and continuing to build those capabilities to serve the market.
Consulting: Where do you see the market going and how does that impact the talent acquisition strategy?
Chase: We are in the most rapid change in what those capabilities drivers are and what they mean to business. That gets us to one of our biggest challenges—we've got to constantly evolve our talent base. It's probably one of the most important roles that I have. This evolution of talent and deciding where to place bets is key. As you grow you always put your culture at risk if you're not careful. We want to be known as an entrepreneurial firm, but at the same time, it's critically important to be able to deliver high-quality solutions to our clients. Keeping our culture strong and sustaining it is really crucial. If you ask me: what's the one thing you have to get done in this new role—that would be it. Keeping our culture strong and sustaining it as we continue to grow.
Consulting: What's KPMG's differentiator? Why is the firm so well positioned to advise clients on integrated business transformation?
Chase: Our aspiration is to be the world's greatest transformation company and I think that's different than some of the aspirations of our competitors. Yes, they do this work, but that may not be where they're putting the most focus. Clients tell us all the time they like our message and our people. They like the fact that KPMG can take them from strategy through execution on their biggest initiatives, and we can put a world-class team in place to help them through that transformation. That word gets out and some of our very best opportunities come from our existing clients or referrals. From a client perspective, they want to work with a company that has the same sort of focus on transformation, there aren't that many firms that are able to deliver that capability all in one bundle. As for the Big 4, we've all made different investments, and I think you'll see new winners and losers emerge. One of the investments we've made is what we're calling our ignition centers. We're putting some of our deep-skilled folks—people who traditionally would've been on-site folks—into these centers we're opening around the country. This is sort of different for us, and we think people—clients included—work better when they get together to collaborate. Sometimes, magic happens at the Ping Pong table.
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