EY Australia acquires boutique change consultancy Articulate Consulting
Ernst & Young in Australia has acquired Articulate Consulting for an undisclosed sum. The Sydney-based consulting firm was founded in 2003 and specialises in change management, training and information technologies.
EY has propped up its change management and learning services portfolio with its latest acquisition of Articulate Consulting. Co-founder Sarah Arnold and her team at Articulate will join EY Australia’s People Advisory Services practice.
The acquisition will see Sarah Arnold become a partner with EY, taking the number of partners at the firm in Australia to 561. The deal will also bring in 16 Articulate staff and 45 contractors to EY. “This acquisition gives us enormous scope to expand, and gives our people access to diverse career development opportunities, which is important to me,”Arnold said.
“We are thrilled to be joining EY. We’ve worked with them on a number of engagements over the years and admire their work and their people. This is a natural evolution of our partnering relationship,” she added.
Sarah Arnold began her career with Deloitte in 2000 as a management consultant and worked with the firm for two years before joining Linfox. She worked with Linfox as a training manager before moving on to a two year stint at Orica, and, in 2006, Arnold co-founded Articulate. She received her bachelors from the University of Queensland in science and mathematics.
Darren Gibson, the EY Asia Pacific Leader of People Advisory Services commented on the acquisition, saying, “The team at Articulate are a perfect fit to further assist our clients in driving change in their business and ensuring new business processes are aligned and adopted to system changes.”
“With the wave of next generation systems, such as SAP S4 HANA, upon us, training is critical to successful change and the addition of Articulate expands our services and offerings.”
“With the first class talent of Articulate’s team we have increased our capacity to deliver meaningful ERP system change, and our ability to help our clients reduce the ‘risk of rejection’ with the end users of these solutions.
“By integrating organisational change and training capabilities into our People Advisory Services practice, we are now a ‘one-stop-shop’ on technology transformation projects, from creating the strategic roadmap and case for change, right through to training and supporting the user,” Gibson said.
The People Advisory Service practice at EY works with organisations to support developing their talent agenda;ensuring their people to have the skills they need to succeed in an ever-changing business environment. Digital transition is a major factor of human resources strategy and one of the key specialities of Articulate Consulting.
“This transaction demonstrates EY’s commitment to provide all the services our clients need to successfully deliver complex business and systems change projects, by providing a market leading learning and training capability to get their people ready, and drive adoption of these new technologies,” said EY Oceania CEO Tony Johnson.
“It is another way we are staying at the forefront of digital transformation by providing clients with the expertise and experience to manage and embed new technology in the way their organisations work,” he concluded.
EY’s move comes shortly after rivals Deloitte and PwC both also bolstered their consulting practices. PwC Australia earlier this month bought teams from PPB Advisory and Litmus Group join, while Deloitte purchased Australian data science consultancy Connected Analytics.
