EY Managed Services: It’s all about value creation… and compliance

Jay Nibbe and Paul Clark, respectively EY Global Vice Chair Markets and Vice Chair Managed Services hosted EY Managed Services’ Global Analyst Summit this week and gave us a glimpse of the progress made by the business over the past year.

Despite the recent rumours about a potential break up of EY’s audit and advisory business, the focus was firmly set on the strengths and complementarity of the organisation’s multi-disciplinary domain expertise. EY’s Managed services business is currently contributing almost 18% of revenue to the firm’s results thanks to strong growth in the financial and government sectors. 

EY’s Partner ecosystem is seen as a significant part of its current and future development path. Core partners were strongly represented across the event: SAP (celebrating its 10-year relationship with EY), Microsoft and ServiceNow (as the fastest growing partner of the three). 

EY’s platform play that PAC commented on in October 2020 (See “Platform play at the heart of EY Consulting’s strategy“) remains at the heart of the company strategy and is being rolled out throughout the business. A couple of solutions are worth a special mention: 

EY Mobility Pathway, a cloud-based solution running on Microsoft Azure and designed to manage and ensure compliance on a broad range of HR-related challenges linked to people mobility – ranging from demands associated with talent management (e.g. expat support) to remote and hybrid working models. The platform recently added an additional layer of data analytics and insights, allowing for the management of gender equality, inclusiveness, and overall better management of the workforce – compatible with the leading HR and talent management platforms including Oracle TM, Workday, Concur among others.

EY Regulation & Compliance platform, a solution allowing EY’s clients to leverage a regulatory repository based on the strong expertise underpinned by EY’s broader organisation. The service delivers an easily digestible and actionable summary of regulatory compliance to EY’s clients. A compelling solution for large multinationals battling the ever-evolving regulatory landscape and not just for compliance. The firm also offers the forward-looking advisory piece, helping companies to prepare ahead of potential headwinds, assessing the impact of potential regulatory changes on products and business units, using scenario-based planning.

EY ESG service, one of the newest and most exciting solutions aiming to support EY’s clients with ESG metrics definition, data collection, reporting and assurance. ESG is a big bet for EY, dedicating a team of 2,500 practitioners. The service aims to deliver a single pane of glass to define a company’s ESG starting point – a real challenge for most companies – and then to deliver a platform regrouping all non-financial reporting of the company. The big focus is on the “E” – Net Zero right now – but the “S” and “G” are very clearly part of the roadmap. The EY CCaSS team comes into play to provide advisory services on how to improve the company’s ESG credentials.

All these EY platforms can be purchased standalone or with a service wrapper and are designed with a common architecture allowing for a modular and globally consistent approach. These solutions are designed to all connect with each other and the common thread across all these solutions is a combination of domain expertise and compliance assurance. EY is bullish in its view and expectations of EY Managed Services, riding the wave of critical skill shortage and positioning itself as a premium service focusing on being a safe pair of hands focusing on quality and value creation. By the company’s own estimate, its total addressable market sits at $360Bn, so plenty of headroom is left to grow the EY Managed Services practice – whether as an integral part of the group or as a separate entity, should EY CEO Carmine Di Sibio decide to take that path…