Industry & Business

EY has announced the expansion of its digital design and customer innovation consultancy capabilities with the introduction of EY Seren into the Irish market. EY Seren is a recent acquisition by EY as part of the continued growth of its digital consulting practice.

With a team of 20 in Ireland and over 100 globally, EY Seren is an international leader in digital design and innovation working with firms across different industry sectors. EY Seren has worked closely with governments, banks and media organisations around the world to drive digital business transformation using a customer-centred approach to design. This approach focuses on customer research capabilities, user experience, user interaction design, rapid prototyping, digital analytics and customer data visualisation.

Yvonne Kiely, Director, Customer and Digital Lead, Advisory, EY said: “We are leading the way in our digital transformation offering across the island of Ireland, and I’m really excited by the investment and expansion of our existing capabilities. EY Seren Ireland will extend the innovative digital customer engagement strategy and customer experience design services we provide to our clients.”

According to the EY “Digital Transformation for 2020 and Beyond” survey, more than 50% of business cited digital business models, customer experience and service design as their top three strategic priorities until 2020.

Mike McKerr, EY Country Managing Partner for Ireland said: “This launch of EY Seren in the Irish market is a great addition to our service offering. We are committed to bringing the best in practice offerings to the Irish market, whether through organic or inorganic growth. Our consulting business continued to grow by over 30% last year as disruptive forces present opportunities and threats where our clients seek our help. Customers are at the centre of our clients business and digital disruption is top of mind. With the introduction of EY Seren, we are excited to be able to help them with this very different customer research based approach to outcome aligned digital transformation.”

“Customer expectation today is being led by market leaders in the digital space, who are providing simple and intuitive customer journeys for their products and services. More traditional organisations that weren’t founded on this basis need to work hard to keep pace with the rapid innovation we’re seeing today. Excellent customer experience is a key driver in building more profitable relationships, shape industries and transform business performance,” Yvonne added.

In a continuously-evolving global marketplace, market leaders are making progress by continually analysing data and using the resulting insights to rapidly identify and respond to their customers’ problems. The digital and commercial leadership teams of a major supermarket asked EY Seren to build the tools and capabilities to track performance of its £1 billion eCommerce business. With the help of EY Seren the supermarket identified more than £1mn a week in lost revenues through issues in the checkout journey. The issues were identified through a new digital measurement solution drawing together and analysing 15 data sources to create integrated dashboards. This strategy was a catalyst for change within the business, with teams from different areas able to collaborate with a shared understanding of data.

EY made a commitment to grow its global strategy consulting practice to over 2,500 professionals by 2020, both organically and through acquisitions and has progressed this rapidly already with a particular focus on client’s digital transformation agenda.

CAPTION:

Pictured at the launch of EY Seren in Ireland are (L to R): Frank O’Dea, Chief Innovation Officer, EY Ireland; Yvonne Kiely, Customer and Digital Lead, EY Ireland; and Mike McKerr, Managing Partner, EY Ireland at the new EY-Seren office space on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.