Navigating Choppy Waters

William Taylor, director at KPMG’s Strategy practice and national head of KPMG Elevate (an EBITDA rapid improvement service), explains how his background working on North Sea oil platforms is helping clients chart a sustainable and successful path for the future.

The comfortable offices of KPMG’s Soloist Building in the heart of Belfast aren’t where you would expect to need an offshore survival suit. However, in the unlikely event the requirement emerged for clothing which protects against a fall into sub-zero seas, then William Taylor is a good man to know.

That is because before joining KPMG in early 2020, the firm’s head of Elevate in Ireland initially spent five years putting his engineering skills to good use while working for French oil giant TotalEnergies in Aberdeen, part of which involved working offshore where he was able to build up his stash of survival gear.

His current role in KPMG’s Strategy team means a run in with such inclement weather is unlikely, but the skills he learnt operating in challenging conditions in the North Sea are extremely relevant when helping advise business leaders across the island of Ireland and beyond.

William and the team help clients pre-empt and manage disruption, plan for the future, and stitch together both the corporate strategy and operational plan to ensure the organisation is on the right path for sustainable growth and the delivery of their objectives.

That might sound simple, but it often involves a root and branch diagnostic of the client in question, analysing key strengths and opportunities, before deploying KPMG’s expertise and proprietary tools to develop a workable strategy and then, crucially, ensuring it can be implemented across the enterprise.

An engineering background – one which began at Queen’s University Belfast where William gained first class honours in aerospace engineering – provides the ideal skills to achieve those goals, as well as bringing a different mindset to add to the KPMG arsenal.

“As an engineer, I can bring a different approach to the traditional advisory way of problem solving and having that breadth of thinking is very useful. I always ask ‘what do we know, what does it mean, and what do we need to do next?’

“Engineering brings a structured way to figure out problems and really focus on the ‘so what’.”

It is a skillset which William honed during his years at top business consultancy McKinsey and Company where he worked for global clients after hanging up his survival suit at Total.

“I was working in the Total office in Aberdeen when some consultants came in to assist with a transformation,” he said. “I took one of them for coffee and asked them to explain to me how they work with company leadership and help define how the business would operate in future.

“He brilliantly showed me the value which good consultants can add and from that moment I decided to move into consultancy. I really believe the right consulting team can bring structure, pace and rigour across the client agenda, a combination which helps add significant value.

“I get real energy from acting as a client counsellor in the long term, not just during the research and development of the strategy but through the rollout on the operational side.”

After his time at McKinsey, William jumped at the chance to move back to Northern Ireland to help scale KPMG’s allisland strategy team.

“I was hugely excited at the opportunity to grow out the Strategy team with Chris Brown. A key part of strategy is knitting together specialist inputs and so I’ve also loved collaborating with Russell Smyth and the Sustainable Futures team, and our Belfast office’s Digital Centre of Excellence.”

Embracing digital and sustainability are two elements which are key parts of developing high-impact business strategy in the current environment, particularly the latter where the issue has become increasingly important for both internal and external stakeholders.

“We help understand the different agendas across the C-Suite and provide a strategy which shows how organisations can both operate sustainably and realise their ambitions. We provide one document which links ESG through the core commercial strategy and makes it easier for stakeholders – whether shareholders, funders, customers or others like the public – to see that sustainability is embedded in the business, and not a parallel thought process.

“Such a document can bring together corporate strategy, top level business goals, commercial and operational strategy and forms a really powerful tool to answer any stakeholder concerns, while also guiding the business in the short and long term.”

From a strategy point of view, there is certainly growing demand for the firm’s services, particularly in sectors such as manufacturing which face headwinds in the form of unpredictable demand coupled with soaring input costs, rising inflation and supply chain issues. Navigating those issues is core to the offering.

“While the situation may provide opportunities for Northern Ireland businesses to deploy their capabilities and service new customers near-shore in the UK and Europe, some of the other issues aren’t likely to go away anytime soon,” William said. “It’s a case of finding a business model which leverages your strengths and allows you to focus on profitable growth, on preserving capability and capacity, and identifying opportunities to diversify and add value for new and existing customers.

“That might mean pivoting your capabilities to take advantage of green opportunities in growing sectors, or to increase the services and products you can offer to existing customers. For instance, rather than just supplying parts, a manufacturing company might start providing assembly or integration services for their customers, acting as a more critical partner further up the value chain.”

Across the island, William’s roster of work includes clients involved in everything from agri-food to med and reg tech, as well as the third sector.

With his aeronautical background, he also applies the same principles as part of KPMG’s aviation global Centre of Excellence, working with aerospace companies at all stages of the supply chain, both locally and globally.

Meanwhile, as head of KPMG Elevate in Ireland, he focuses on helping clients define and deliver rapid improvement to their bottom-line using data analysis to identify and quantify opportunities, before moving to implementation.

“Our goal is to help clients define and implement bold yet achievable aspirations for performance transformation,” William said. “It is a proven approach which is paying dividends.”

Such a broad spectrum of work means William and the team have quickly become a key part of the KPMG offering across the island of Ireland.

The day-to-day has certainly changed, so, any regrets about hanging up the survival suit?

“None at all. We’re acting as trusted advisors to the leadership of companies of all shapes and sizes and in all sectors, bringing unique perspectives gained from real world experience in a range of industries. It is a privilege to be able to help companies navigate through complex situations and to be part of delivering change which has real impact.

“I love what we are doing at KPMG and look forward to continuing to build out the team in the months and years ahead.”

Version 1 Kickstarts 2023 Signing Two Deals To Acquire Automation Logic And Qubix

Version 1, a leading digital transformation partner, is to acquire two major players in the UK technology space – Automation Logic and Qubix – for an undisclosed sum as part of its ambitious growth strategy for 2023 and beyond. The Automation Logic deal is subject to clearance by the National Security and Investment Act 2021.

Combined, Version 1, Automation Logic and Qubix will have over 3000 employees and more than 650 customers. This places Version 1 as the largest Irish-founded technology employer and comes after significant growth for the firm, doubling its headcount from 1500 in 2020 to 3000 in 2023. Version 1 navigated headwinds and global talent challenges to surpass revenues of over €255 million in 2023. Founded in 2010 in London, the Cloud and DevOps specialist Automation Logic is on a mission is to help its clients build the teams and infrastructure they need to thrive in the digital economy.

With over 160 employees, Automation Logic partners with technology giants such as AWS and Microsoft to enable the organisation to offer a diverse range of cloud solutions to customers including the Ministry of Justice, HM Revenue & Customs and Lloyds Banking Group.

Enda Diggins, Managing Director of Version 1’s UK Digital, Data and Cloud practice, commented on the significant benefits Automation Logic will bring to Version 1’s customers:

“Version 1 and Automation Logic are coming together to create one of the strongest cloud transformation capabilities in the UK. With both Version 1 and Automation Logic being partners to market-leading Cloud providers AWS and Microsoft, we will be in a very advantageous position for our customers to tap into an unappareled depth and breadth of expertise in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, DevOps and Platform Engineering. This acquisition deepens our Digital, Data and Cloud expertise, providing more opportunities for our people to develop professionally, and to do what they love – work on interesting challenges with our customers.”

Dublin Airport Welcomed 28.1 Million Passengers In 2022

Just over 28.1 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport in 2022, representing a 231% increase on 2021 activity and an 85% recovery of 2019 levels.

The revival in passenger numbers following the Covid-19 pandemic continued to accelerate as the year progressed, with passenger levels in the final three months of 2022 totaling 7.1 million – equivalent to 96% of numbers in the same period of 2019.

During the month of December 2022 alone, 2.2 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport – an increase of 1 million passengers compared to 2021 and 95% of the passenger numbers seen pre-pandemic in December 2019.

According to daa’s new CEO, Kenny Jacobs, the airport operator of Dublin Airport: “Following two years of Covid disruption, 2022 was the year in which international travel came back very strong. When you consider that passenger numbers during the first two months of 2022 were very low due to uncertainty around the Omicron variant, the recovery in passenger numbers from March onwards was way beyond the expectations of even the most optimistic of travel forecasters.

“This resurgence in travel has posed challenges for Dublin Airport and airports all around the world. I’d like to pay tribute to the incredible team there which has worked tirelessly to facilitate more than 28 million journeys over the past 12 months. Their hard work over the Christmas period – the busiest in three years – saw 93% of passengers pass through security screening in under 20 minutes, with 99% through in under 30 minutes. In the year ahead, we are determined to maintain this security performance and make further improvements to the standards at Dublin Airport so that the travelling public get the service they expect.”