FRANK O’KEEFFE
EY Ireland
EY grew revenue by 9% to €359m in the year to June 2020. The firm has offices in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, and employs c.3,000 people. Frank O’Keeffe was previously Head of Assurance.
ACTIVITY From the outset of the pandemic our approach was people first. Thanks to our agile technologies, we were able to quickly pivot to a virtual world, and to support our clients seamlessly through the disruption. Our business has performed strongly throughout the pandemic and we are pleased to have grown each of our service lines. Clients are turning to EY to help them prepare for and to navigate the challenges thrown up by Covid, global market volatility, Brexit and other issues.
SERVICES We continued to grow all of our services across assurance, tax, consulting, strategy and transactions.
The pandemic has transformed how our consulting services are delivered, with virtual consulting now business as usual, without any impact on the quality of our service delivery and the productivity of our teams. Many of our clients are accelerating their transformation agenda and increasing their focus on the consumer as well as the future of the workforce.
‘Many clients are accelerating their transformation agenda’
Our assurance teams were particularly well placed to pivot to fully remote service delivery last year, due to our significant investment in recent years in customised, cloud-based audit software. All files are now completely electronic, including a secure cloud link for clients to share confidential data with audit teams. This has been a real game-changer for us in the pandemic, as we have continued to deliver to client deadlines even with an increased workload.
REMOTE WORKING In March 2020, we quickly moved more than 3,000 EY people to work from home. Supported by strong, agile technology, from day one our teams were incredible and adapted to the change brilliantly.
ENTERPRISE In our consulting practice we have seen an increase in demand for services around strategic workforce planning and optimisation, and we anticipate this will continue in the short and medium term. We’re working with clients who are using this crisis as a catalyst to accelerate new ways of working; implementing permanent smart and flexible working arrangements, helped by the smart use of emerging technologies.
With such a rapid shift to online shopping in the past year, it’s now more important than ever that business leaders challenge their assumptions about what the digital consumer wants. We’re working with a range of clients in our customer and digital team around the future of consumer behaviour, and how to develop a distinctive online strategy to capitalise on the opportunities being presented by Covid-19.