KPMG announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Towers Watson (TW) to acquire the company's Human Resources Service Delivery (HRSD) practice. The announcement closely follows last week's news that Willis Group and Towers Watson will be merging to form Willis Towers Watson by end of 2015, which leads me to believe the discussions between KPMG and Towers Watson pre-dated the Willis deal.
Either way, this is a coup for KPMG, which has been making great strides in the HR transformation consulting space over the last few years. In fact, Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory named KPMG a Vanguard HR transformation consulting firm in its research, a position that will further solidify with the integration of TW's HRSD capability. Here are two key reasons why:
1.) Workday advisory and implementation—Towers Watson has a dedicated Workday team of HR process and technology consultants focused on the design and configuration of Workday's human capital management applications. The combination of HR consulting and Workday technical expertise accelerates the solutions design process, giving HR professionals more bandwidth to work on the cultural impact of migrating to a cloud platform. This is an especially appealing value proposition for today's companies, which are seeking to modernize their HR operations quickly to better service a workforce empowered by digital technologies and with expectations for consumerized HR service delivery.
2.) Research-driven HR transformation consulting—Towers Watson conducts an ongoing, global research study that provides a body of evidence not only for developing the business case, but also for benchmarking consulting in HR transformation engagements. The HR Service and Delivery Technology Survey, now in its 17th year, is a comprehensive study of trends, strategies, tactics, and tools used by more than 1,000 HR professionals in over 30 countries. This intellectual property gives KPMG a strong foothold and pedigree amongst multinational companies—TW's sweet spot—as a thought leader in HR transformation.
Overall, the deal adds tremendous value to KPMG's People & Change practice, led by Mark Spears. TW's deep HR function expertise, years of experience providing HR transformation consulting, long-term partnership with Workday, and internal Workday implementation team of cross-functional specialists create a compelling mix of traditional HR consulting and technology-led innovation in this segment of the HR consulting space.
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