Deloitte Digital expands into New Zealand market
Deloitte has expanded its global suite of digital services into New Zealand. Building on the acquisition of Auckland-based CloudinIT, Deloitte Digital will work to provide an end-to-end offering to clients across the country.
With the lucrative global lust for digital transformation offering a massive opportunity for revenue growth, in recent years, the consulting industry has participated in a gold-rush, collectively clamouring to build its digital capacities. This has seen some of the largest professional services firms in the world rapidly assembling digital wings to help clients realise complex digital transformation projects, often leveraging acquisition campaigns in order to expedite the process.
Deloitte Digital is the digital and creative arm of giant Deloitte, and combines the Big Four firm’s internationally renowned capabilities in business transformation and technology implementation with the offerings of a world-class digital agency. With branches now in 17 different countries, Deloitte Digital launched its presence in Australia several years ago, and has since been using its studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Canberra to serve the entire Oceania region. However, growing demand has pushed it to develop another wing in the South-Western Pacific.
With digital solutions high on the agenda of executives and boards in New Zealand, Deloitte has already grown to become one of New Zealand’s larger digital advisory providers, Deloitte has now brought its digital solutions under the common umbrella with the launch of Deloitte Digital. The intention of the move is to be better placed to meet client demands, and build the firm’s business base. Among the customers the firm already serves in New Zealand are 2degrees, ASB, BNZ, Chorus, Wellington Water and the Inland Revenue.
Deloitte Chief Executive Thomas Pippos said of the move, “The reality is that our clients deal with a lot of noise around digital, and there is no shortage of thought leadership and opinion about the bleeding edge of digital transformation. But by talking and working with our clients, we’ve found some of their biggest challenges are getting the basics right; it’s about making their digital journey real with timely tangible results. This includes tackling sticky challenges like integrating old systems not made for a digital world, getting a single view of the customer and dealing with operational silos.”
The launch comes following the fruition of a number of strategic moves by Deloitte, which collectively supported the firm’s ambition to make digital a priority for its clients in New Zealand. Most recently, this saw the consulting giant complete the purchase of Salesforce partner CloudinIT to further bolster its local digital offerings, with around 25 employees integrated into the Big Four firm’s Auckland operation. Collectively, the flurry of activity aims to strengthen a digital portfolio which is rapidly expanding across the country.
Testing waters
According to Grant Frear, a Partner at Deloitte Digital, the launch and bolstering of Deloitte Digital in New Zealand comes in anticipation of a greater spike in demand for such services there. He claimed that at present, digital maturity comes in many stages across the country, which has already boosted business for Deloitte Digital, but that the majority of Kiwi businesses still in the early phase of deployment, preferring to “test the waters” with specific initiatives. This suggests that more is still to come.
“Given the sheer volume of choice, identifying where to start can put off making material progress,” Frear explained. “This ‘spinning of wheels’ along with too much focus on how to identify the next technology breakthrough can cause them to spend a lot and achieve a little.”
A new Deloitte study of global digital business, undertaken in collaboration with the MIT Sloan Management Review, recently revealed five key practices that the organisations best able to achieve digital maturity employ. Frear told business news site Reseller.co.nz that these form part of a roadmap to digital success, which Deloitte will help clients in New Zealand to deploy.
He expanded, “Firstly, implementing systemic changes in how they organise and develop workforces, spur workplace innovation, and cultivate digitally minded cultures and experiences. Secondly, playing the long game. Digitally mature companies’ strategic planning horizons are consistently longer than those of less digitally mature organisations, looking out five years or more. Thirdly, scaling small digital experiments into enterprise-wide initiatives that have business impact. At digitally mature entities, small “i” innovations or experiments typically lead to more big “I” innovations than at other organisations.”
Fourthly, Frear advised Kiwi businesses to become “talent magnets” in a bid to attract and retain the best staff in the industry. He suggested, “Employees and executives are highly inclined to jump ship if they feel they don’t have opportunities to develop digital skills. Digitally mature organisations typically understand the need for, and place a premium on, attracting and developing digital talent.”
Finally, he suggested that securing leaders with the vision necessary to lead a digital strategy was essential to succeeding. He concluded, “These leaders are more likely to have articulated a compelling ambition for what their digital businesses can be and define digital initiatives as core components to achieving their business strategy.”
Related: Deloitte New Zealand promotes four new consulting directors.
