Entries by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

EY Blockchain Asia: The revolution starts now

EY’s blockchain world EY’s Asia-Pacific Blockchain Summit started with the firm’s Global Blockchain leader, Paul Brody, making three clear points. First, EY is committed to China and to the region, seeing huge potential for blockchain growth. Second, EY is committed to public blockchain as the long-term solution for most business and governments. Third, Brody’s concept […]

KPMG: Fundamentally what blockchain does is digitize trust

In late 2020, KPMG’s blockchain team outlined to TBR the efforts the firm has made to evolve its blockchain practice, expanding into concrete and discrete areas in which the firm can “create an ecosystem around something that already exists, then add a layer of trust, enabled by blockchain,” as made evident by the three focus areas detailed by the KPMG team: cryptoasset […]

Hybrid engagements will become necessary and valuable in 2021

Here comes hybrid Hybrid engagements, in which IT services vendors and consultancies deliver both virtually and face-to-face, did not first arrive in 2020, but there has been one dramatic change from pre-pandemic days: universal acceptance that hybrid engagements will be necessary and can be a valuable way to conduct business. In 2021 vendors and consultancies […]

Secureworks: A force for good in an unsafe world

Taking a holistic fight to the enemy Over the two-day Secureworks Analyst Event, multiple Secureworks (Nasdaq: SCWX) executives emphasized the company’s broad vision of belonging to, and leading, a larger cybersecurity community dedicated to helping customers, in the words of Secureworks CEO Mike Cote, “outpace adversaries.” Through a strategic shift toward providing platforms and software, […]

EY 2021: Hybrid and omnipresent

TBR perspective A few years ago in a wide-ranging discussion, TBR analysts and EY executives considered the future consulting business model, noting how most industries had been fundamentally disrupted by technology while consulting had seemingly remained unchanged. Fast forward to the current pandemic, and EY clearly anticipated where consulting was headed: hybrid engagements, delivered in-person […]

Innovation and transformation centers: Smart strategies pre-2020 will lead to success in a hybrid future

What the elite vendors have known: It is all about talent, location and network In meeting with leaders at innovation and transformation centers around the world and discussing their approaches to talent, TBR learned that the most aggressive and successful vendors understood key human resources elements: Talent developed at a center could be dispersed across the […]

PwC’s design of a Central Lending Platform concept for Singapore: Acceleration and digitization for struggling SMEs

A pandemic-induced national problem with a PwC-designed solution In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic fallout, Singapore’s government sought to bolster the SME market, which employs 70% of the city-state’s workforce and generates 50% of its gross domestic product (GDP), in part through a risk-sharing program for loans to eligible SMEs. Early efforts […]

EY’s Strategy and Transactions practice takes shape amid evolution across the entire firm

A full breadth of services to tackle fundamental capital deployment questions Setting the stage for EY’s shift from Transaction Advisory Services to Strategy and Transactions, Nadine Mirchandani, deputy global vice chair of Strategy and Transactions at EY, and team noted that as COVID-19 has served as an accelerant to disruptive trends across technology, macroeconomics and […]

PwC’s Saratoga, diversity and inclusion challenges amid the shifting landscape of HR management

Beer carts do not lead to promotions   Prior to the pandemic, companies across all industries marketed their diversity and inclusion scores, rankings and awards, demonstrating to clients, investors and potential recruits their efforts in this area and good corporate citizenship. Combine fewer marketing opportunities with increased scrutiny of what exactly well-run diversity and inclusion programs […]