KPMG Global Analyst Day 2025: Evolving Complex Ecosystems to Solve Enterprise Transformation

Principal Analyst Bozhidar Hristov, Senior Analyst Catie Merrill and Analyst Alex Demeule join “TBR Talks” to share key takeaways top announcements from KPMG’s Global Analyst Day 2025, held in February at KPMG’s global training facility, Lakehouse.

The group also discusses strategies of the leading advisory firm as well as multipartner ecosystem management and co-investment across declared and committed partners, generative AI and data government as a key differentiator, and more.

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KPMG Global Analyst Day 2025: Evolving Complex Ecosystems to Solve Enterprise Transformation

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms, where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem, from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors and chip manufacturers to value added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors. I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about KPMG’s Global Analyst Day at Lakehouse with Boz Hristov, Principal Analyst for TBR’s Digital Transformation Practice, Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst for TBR’s Cloud and Software practice, and Alex Demeule, Analyst for TBR’s Cloud and Software practice.

Boz, Catie and Alex, thank you for coming back to the podcast. Season three, very exciting, and I think the first time we’ve done one with four people in the room that I can recall. So, you guys are breaking some new ground here. The four of us, plus our colleague Kelly Lesiczka, were all at KPMG Lakehouse recently for a global analyst summit, which was enormous fun. A couple days, had a really good time. Played little, little mini golf, which was good. Alex, congratulations, won by one stroke. One stroke over me, I’m not going to say how many strokes you had over Catie and Kelly, but anyway. 

What I thought we would do today is a little bit different. We’ve done sort of event perspectives, and we’re still going to publish an event perspective on this. I’m sure it’s out there already, but what I wanted to do was just capture some of the quotes that I heard and wrote down and get your reactions to them. So, these are, as you know, when I sit there at these events I to just write down verbatim what somebody said when it hits me as being pretty important. I’m not going to say who said this quote. I’m just going to read the quote, and then I’m going to ask you guys to all react to it. 

Many-to-many ecosystem relationships

This first one is about- one of the ecosystem leaders talked about the more than just 1-to-1 alliances, but the many-to-many relationships. And what he said was “we need to show up understanding how these many-to-many relationships work, not working them out ad hoc at clients.” Boz, I’ll make you go first. What do you make of that? 

Bozhidar Hristov, TBR Principal Analyst: I would say this resonates a lot with what first of all, we’ve been talking about for the last 18 months, 24 months now, and actually became very loud and clear in the last iteration of our Voice of the Partner report that we published last summer. So, I think it’s all about trust and preparation and investment in skilled resources, strength resources, knowledge management. You know, kind of thinking about that, the ecosystem is growing, and it’s growing in a different way, meaning that you are not just a two-dimensional partner with this- you still are. But you need to think about the implications of the IT architecture of the client. You have the infrastructure, you have the SaaS layer, you have the PaaS layer, you have the data layer. So, all of these are different vendors that you typically interact with on a one-on-one basis. But as clients consolidate their vendor rosters, as clients look to optimize their existing IT spend, they are also looking to optimize and consolidate their suppliers, right? So, for vendors, they need to be very sharp when they show to the client about who are they partnering best with across the IT stack, understanding the client’s IT architecture. So, the notion of like multi-party alliance is exactly that, demonstrating that trust in preparation with joint investments and really trying to get the most out of for the client essentially because clients already have at least three or more vendors that they are interacting with, you know, on the strategy side, on the implementation side, on the managed services side, and then plus a technology vendor or two. So often clients interact with at least, you know, half a dozen vendors. So, as an IT services provider, as a consultancy and trying to position itself as an orchestrator of that ecosystem, you need to make sure you know which vendors are on site and what’s your relationship with those vendors and how deep you can go with them before you even get to the client. 

Patrick: So, you’re coming at that from the consultancy, from the KPMG mindset. Catie, how did that resonate with you when you think about it from the software or cloud mindset. 

Catie Merrill, TBR Senior Analyst: Sure. So, I think, well to answer your question on the quote, I think it was a testament that KPMG recognized that the opportunity and the money is flowing through the ecosystem. And early on they mentioned building the firm of the future. And of course there’s a lot of moving pieces to that. But one of them that they really hit home was the alliance partners, the tech alliance partners, specifically those seven SaaS and PaaS vendors and maybe you have a different opinion, but I think from some of the peers. Maybe we haven’t seen that kind of emphasis, or at least to the same degree. So that was very compelling. And on the tri-party alliance structure, you know, a recognition that to Boz’s point, to be an orchestrator of the ISVs that may themselves not have the right partnership or go to market with each other. So, you know, KPMG’s role coming in and connecting that with, you know, the system of record in the back end, the actual platform that you’re building on and then the front office. So, all those pieces coming together using that to actually deliver a client outcome. 

Patrick: Yeah. And Alex, did you see it similarly? Your coverage is similar to Catie’s, how did that resonate with you? 

Alex Demeule, TBR Analyst: Yeah, I think very similarly. You know, the technology ecosystems that have been forming for years and are still forming today as we go into new, different emerging technology areas. Technology ecosystems do matter. There is differentiation there. Sometimes it’s the case where, you know, everyone’s working with everyone, but that’s not always the case. There are instances where there’s favoritism to a certain extent. There’s competitive pressures that lead to that favoritism. And we see integrations in technology ecosystems form sort of around these constraints. And so, as a services firm, understanding that landscape and understanding where that differentiation actually exists versus a more, you know, ubiquitous approach. It’s very important and it’s getting more important.

Patrick: Yeah. And I think for me, one of the things that jumped out was this idea of showing up at the client. And so that implies that you- the preparation that goes into it includes understanding that it’s not just like every other ecosystem, understanding that, you know, it is okay to pick those six or seven you’re going to work with, and then Boz, to your point, like it is about who shows up as the orchestrator who shows up as the one that can wrangle all those technology partners together.

Learning with alliance partners

All right. So, let’s go to another quote and we’re going to stick with alliance partners here. So, the quote was “our alliance partners are learning with us,” either leaning or learning, my notes are not always easy for me to read and it’s my own handwriting, I’ll say leaning “are leaning with us, and understanding solutions must be industry specific.” So, Catie, from your perspective, that is something we that the hyperscalers and the software vendors look to their services and their consultancies for. But is that industry specific where the whole ecosystem is going? 

Catie: I think to some extent, yes. I know years ago we covered the trend of industry cloud, and now that’s really morphed into industry AI and I can tell you just on the cloud buyer perspective, industry cloud was really kind of dismissed as like marketing hype. And they didn’t see a lot of value in a quote unquote out of the box industry cloud solution. So, I think in that sense, the value that, you know, a KPMG can provide from that industry perspective, that’s obviously important. I think, you know, it really depends on the vendor. If you look at like a Google Cloud, you know, leading with healthcare and some of their customizations around Vertex. And, you know, KPMG has a big investment in their Google Cloud practice going, versus some other vendors, AWS and maybe some others a little bit more horizontal led. So, I think it really depends on the vendor, but I think we definitely see that level of customization and nuance heading that way.

Patrick: Okay. And Alex, this I think was your first KPMG event, right? 

Alex: It was.

Patrick: It was, so for you is that industry emphasis by KPMG, does that sort of resonate with you when you think about-  

Alex: Oh yeah.

Patrick: Okay.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And like, as Catie just mentioned, with sort of this shift between industry cloud to industry AI, you know, I- because, like, she’s exactly right. You know, we hear around, like, we’re just sort of- it’s more marketing hype than anything else. You know now I’m trying to think about sort of reaction to like industry AI and maybe it’s too early to say whether or not it’ll have that sort of criticism. I feel like, my gut is that it won’t have that criticism because I feel like the power and the- just the data aspect and having domain specific data being in pre-training models on that data, to me it seems like it’s going to be something that is a differentiator and is something that is going to be adding value. I think that right now, maybe it’s too soon to tell, but there’s a lot of money going towards that direction, a lot vendors focusing on building those industry models. So, it’s something that there’s a lot of focus in. And I guess time will tell whether or not that focus ends up being more marketing hype or real differentiating value. 

Patrick: But if it’s going to be real differentiating value, a firm like KPMG, that is already having those industry discussions with their partners-

Alex: Absolutely

Patrick: has an advantage. Boz, this was not your first KPMG event-

Boz: No.

Patrick: not by a long shot. Your thoughts on that quote? 

Boz: I was just listening to what Catie and Alex were talking about and I’m just thinking about, to Alex’s point about those small language models, right. So, there’s definitely an opportunity. I think there has always been an opportunity for vendors to apply their industry knowledge to their clients, because clients live in the industry. Right. And having this industry specific data will be so important to drive a more targeted discussion and more outcomes-based discussions. And obviously it’s easier to talk to existing clients because they know you, they know the industry. But I think there’s the bulk shift, you know, in the cohort of the technology vendors to think about the industry through a different way, as they build the solutions, as they partner. Obviously, the consultancies like KPMG, bring that layer of specialization, and know it, but aligning from the get-go, from the development of a solution, small language model otherwise. I, you know, with the technology partner, thinking about the industry first, I think it would be so important because it could be- it’s going to be the on the partner-based platform. When you go to split the accelerator with the industry wrapper, or it’s going to be a specific custom model development with industry knowledge with the client data. So, having those industry conversations with the technology partners, I think will be really important from the beginning rather than just being a one blanket statement and say we have XYZ, you know, industry models. Right? You need to be very strategic about how you develop, how you sell it and how you manage it with clients. 

Patrick: And if I remember right, there were a few industry specific leaders there, healthcare in particular, at the event, but it would be curious to see a year from now when they do their next analyst summit are there, based on this discussion we’re having now about the importance of industry to their technology partners, will there be more KPMG industry leaders emphasizing the importance of industry, going forward? 

Being client zero

So, all right, two more quotes. This one, Alex I’ll start with you. The quote was “we are passionate about being client zero,” what we often call customer zero. But what do you make of that, passionate about being client zero?

Alex: I think that it’s like the exact stance to take right now. And I think that the big example we always talk about, GenAI, you know, what they’re doing to build in-house GenAI capabilities. You know, when we talk about Velocity and Clara, like stuff that’s core to their business, that’s just something that you can point to in the efficiencies that they can kind of get within their own operations. It’s really the approach that needs to be taken. And, you know, as we just talked about change management and I think maybe we’ll be talking about it more. As you’re setting up a strategy behind GenAI change management, if you’ve already gone through that process internally, you’re so much better prepared to go to the client and say, this is how we got our employees engaging with this internally built tool. This is how we did it. And being able to kind of have those best practices dialed from experience, I think makes a world of difference. 

Patrick: Yeah. And we’re going to get to change management in the second. But you mentioned Clara and I think I was shocked Boz when I told him after the event that the KPMG Clara, the audit platform demo breakout was my favorite. I really kind of- I dug what they were talking about when it comes to audit, which I have never, ever said in my life. So, Boz what’s your thought on the “passionate about being client zero?” 

Boz: Scale. I mean, KPMG, obviously they have a large client base. But the majority of their business comes from large enterprises, right? Obviously they have some mid-size clients as well. The different segments in different countries, jurisdictions, regions, yada yada. But I think because KPMG is a large firm, applying being customer zero, being passionate about it. It’s about understanding how you can apply a technology like that at scale, right? And translating that back to the clients. So, you know that the most important clients are mostly equal to your size. 

Patrick: Yeah. 

Boz: Talking about scale, you need to be able to have that application and be like more of a apples-to-apples comparison. So for me, being passionate about being customer zero is about scale, demonstrating scale, and ability to manage risk at scale. 

Patrick: Yeah, that’s fascinating. I hadn’t thought of it that way. All right. Catie, your thoughts on being passionate about client zero? 

Catie: Yeah. Just to follow in, you know, Boz and Alex, I think it’s more just a necessity, but I will say it’s very aligned too with the tech partners doing client zero and implementing their own tech and communicating, you know, value either quantitatively or qualitatively to the clients around GenAI. So, having the partners, it’s another way for the partners to align on delivering the GenAI value to the client. 

Patrick: Right. And for the tech partner, scale is everything. So that feeds right into what you’re saying Boz. And also, we’ve had so many conversations about when it comes to GenAI, how hard the leap is from a proof of concept to scale and for KPMG to be able to say, you know, we’re coming in with scale proven because we’re client zero.

Boz: Yeah.

Patrick: So that’s pretty fascinating. 

Change management

All right. The last one is in fact change management. And the quote is “the road to value is paved with human behavior and change.” I almost jumped out of my seat when she said this because- to just yell amen, amen, amen. Of course it is. And as we have said for a decade now, the technology is never the problem. The humans are the problem. And change management as you said earlier is really a critical part of this. So, Boz I’ll go back to you to start, “the road to value is paved with human behavior and change.” Obviously, you know what I think about that. How did that quote resonate with you?

Boz: Well, I think if you go back to the previous quotes about the passion of being customer zero, applying change management to itself I think it’s important. But, you know, and that’s another part of the lessons and how you can actually connect with the clients about change management, right. Change management is a core service offering for KPMG and most of the other consultancies that we track here at TBR. But I think we also heard very strong examples of use cases while on site at the event about how KPMG did the change management alongside their clients. So, I think it is probably the hardest of all services any IT services company can do. And not that the companies are incapable of doing it, it’s about how you measure the success of a change management program. 

Patrick: Right.

Boz: So that’s the biggest thing. And it’s a good problem to have because you can always come back and continue the change management. It’s like a digital transformation, change management is never ending essentially. So, it’s a good way to think about it. But it also starts with the recognition, that is to your point, it’s not the technology it’s the people that’s the problem. 

Patrick: Yeah.

Boz: I think we talked earlier in a different conversation about how with AI, just to continue on that technology, any technology, but the AI specifically right now, GenAI is presenting such a hesitation of all employees and almost feels like it’s sometimes enterprise employees may be sabotaging the adoption. And, you know, it’s hard, you know, because they may be seeing that as a threat to their existing, you know, positions. So, change management, it’s a prerequisite, but it’s also just kind of a necessary evil that has to happen. And without it, you know, no technology will survive, Right? 

Patrick: Yeah. So, Catie, KPMG said the road to value is paved with basically change management. Boz just described change management as a necessary evil. So, on the road to value, is there a necessary- how did it resonate with you? What did you think when you heard that?

Catie: Just when I heard that, I mean, we talked to enterprise cloud customers, and I have so many quotes where they’ve actually said like, change management is the hardest part. So, it’s definitely something that we’ve actually seen firsthand in our research. So that’s really the first thing that hit me. And I know there were a lot of customer stories at the event where they talked about where KPMG came in and actually implemented a change management group. Either, you know, after kind of that technology modernization and kind of before the data piece. So, you know, we have a lot of those examples, and just kind of going forward and looking for where AI plays into all this specifically agentic AI and kind of the different types of, you know, the collaborator agents that work with the human and are more context aware and kind of how that will play and more the creative problem solving aspect of it. So, yeah, those are- that’s my thought on that. 

Patrick: Excellent, excellent. All right. And Alex, what do you think when you hear than. 

Alex: Yeah, I mean I feel like I just have to reiterate what my colleagues have already said because I think they hit the nail on the head. You know, the customer breakout for CVS, the Sherwin Williams CFO, like this idea of legacy employees entrenched in old ways making it hard to progress with these transformational efforts. You know, it’s always a recurring theme. And those two didn’t even involve AI. So, it’s something that’s important with all IT projects. And I do think that with AI, it takes a step up in importance because of the magnitude of the change that it can have on an employee’s day-to-day life. If we continue to go down this path of where we think we’re going. So, it’s something that is going to be very hard, and that’s to be at the user level, and it’s going to be something that has to be tackled by a bunch of different ways. Whether that be at the technology layer. You know, I’ve talked about this with others about, you know, abstracting agents away. And so how are you managing orchestrating agents with as few prompts as possible? So, the end person, the human engaging with these agents, they’re interacting with the agents as little as possible. And that is sort of the technology side of it, teaching the user how to prompt accurately, precisely so that the tool can do what the employee wants it to do. It’s a new area that pretty much everybody’s coming at with a beginners mindset, you know, we’re prompt newbies at this point. Like maybe some of us have taken more courses than others. But, you know, across the economy, it is a beginner mindset when it comes to GenAI and interacting and using GenAI. And that has to be something that’s handled with training and technology consideration. 

Patrick: Yeah. And that gets really into the human behavior part of that quote. And I think one thing we heard about during one of the sessions was a transformation that had gone on where they intentionally didn’t use the word transformation. They actually came up with a name for the project. I think it was Leapfrog or something like that, where they talked about- so they didn’t have to use the word transformation, which fits right in with sort of the human behavior part. You want to do this change, but you don’t want to call it change management. You don’t want to call it digital transformation. You want to call it something else. 

Final thoughts

So, as always, when we do these wrap-ups from an event that we attend, we always have to talk about either the most fun part of it, the best part, in this case, about Lakehouse as a facility, or the best food. So, I’ll let you guys choose what you want to say, whether there was something that you really loved about Lakehouse., Boz, you’ve been a couple times now, Catie you’ve been a couple times, too, right? Or was this- this is the first time, too, all right. So, what you loved about Lakehouse, or what food you loved or just overall, what was the most fun part of the experience? Boz you’re the most experienced one, so you have to go first.

Boz: Well, unfortunately, I couldn’t spend the entire time there, so that was kind of like my personal kind of like, “oh, I should’ve” you know, “I could have. I should have,” you know, if I could, I mean, I’m sure I’d spend more time, but what I really enjoy out of, like obviously the facility is fantastic, you know, but I really like how, you know, KPMG, gives us a chance to browse around, you know, the gift shop and pick up some swag. So, I definitely appreciate that. You know-

Patrick: As you’re sitting here in your swag.

Boz: As I’m sitting here in one of my swags that I have picked up, you know, from KPMG. So, yeah. So definitely appreciative about that. 

Patrick: Nice. Catie, how about you. What was the best part, or the best whatever.

Catie: Yeah. The facility obviously. Great. I was very surprised. I mean, you guys told me how big it was before going in there, but I was very surprised at, you know, the magnitude of the facility and all the amenities. I enjoyed using the gym and playing golf with you guys. So, yeah, it was, all around a great experience.

Patrick: Playing golf, but it was mini golf, So it wasn’t-

Catie: But mini golf. 

Patrick: Gotta make it so- We don’t want anyone to mistake that we went to Lakehouse and played nine real holes. Alex?

Alex: For me was the networking with KPMG folk. You know, I like, this is my first KPMG Lakehouse Analyst Day and I’ve been on, you know, Teams calls with a lot of these folks but I’ve never met them in person. And so being able to meet them in person and, you know, get their takes on some of the same questions, I’m thinking of, that was really good. I felt like I walked away feeling like I made some good connections. And, I really enjoyed, you know, talking to them as people and learning about their personal lives a little bit, too. 

Patrick: Yeah. 

Alex: A lot of really good people over there. 

Patrick: Yeah, a lot of really good people. And I’ll say, because this is the podcast that I do all the time, I get to say three things that I loved. One, the one-on-ones, everybody showed up for those one-on-ones, like so tuned in to who we are, like what we care about. Obviously I met a number of them before, but they were, I mean, those one-on-ones were like, let’s go. There was no trying to extract any information. They were just coming right at us with, you know, this is what we think and asking those questions. So that was really good. Another thing I really liked was when one of the KPMG leaders told me that they had read Boz’s most recent piece about the legal acquisition they made. Which was great that they had read it. And then they were like, I don’t know why you even wrote that. It didn’t even matter anyway. So, it’s very dismissive of your piece which I thought was very funny. And then I loved the first night sitting around, having drinks, with it was to your point, Alex talking with Kevin, one of the people that was there, but just sitting around with the KPMG- it was so relaxed. And I also love the fact that I had the Barolo, and by the end of the night, pretty much everybody was having the Barolo. I think we drained all their bottles there of that particular wine. So, it was enormous fun. So, any other last words on the KPMG event before we wrap?

Boz: Looking forward to the next one.

Alex: Yeah. I can’t wait to go back.

Boz: Hopefully I can make it the entire time.

Alex: I love 80-degree heat in the winter. 

Patrick: Yeah, true. Leaving Massachusetts for, the warmth of Orlando was nice a couple of weeks ago, so, excellent. Boz. Catie. Alex, thank you very much. 

Alex: Thank you.

Patrick: Next week I’ll be speaking with TBR Senior Analyst Kelly Lesiczka about her takeaways from KPMG’s Global Analyst Day and all things Management Consulting. Don’t forget to send us your key intelligence questions on business strategy, ecosystems, and management consulting through the form in the show notes below. Visit tbri.com to learn how we help tech companies large and small answer these questions with the research, data and analysis my guests bring to this conversation every week.

Once again, I’m your host Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst at TBR. Thanks for joining us and see you next week.

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