The Transformation Era

In business, change and transformation occur naturally over time as new trends, technologies, laws, regulations and trade partnerships come into play, and as societal, client and employee expectations evolve. As we have witnessed over the last two years, the global pandemic has acted as a catalyst for the increased rate of change in all these areas and this fast pace of evolution has shown no signs of slowing. Demonstrating agility and the ability to rapidly transform operations and approaches has become a necessity for businesses and organisations around the world in order to remain relevant, profitable and futureproofed for potential crises. To achieve this, RSM re-assessed its business priorities, activities and initiatives to provide clarity and focus on the key areas of its operations, resulting in the development of the Transformation Era concept. This is summarised in the image below and is supported by three core areas of work: Transition, Growth and Purpose. Furthermore, it highlighted the operational areas that many of our clients will also be focusing on over the coming months and years to remain successful through and post the global pandemic.

TRANSITION

Moving from traditional ways of working, to approaches that utilise new collaborative working practices, new technologies, and new ideas and insights.

TRANSITION

Transforming for a new business age

GROWTH PURPOSE

GROWTH

Through relationship building, maintaining a proactive, strategic focus, and being at the forefront of quality and technological processes to build trust and resilience.

PURPOSE

Led by the changing expectations of our people and clients around RSM’s wider societal impact, and in pursuing and leading improvements across a range of ESG-related issues.

Thinking ahead and responding rapidly.

Transition

Purposefully moving from traditional ways of working to approaches that utilise new collaborative working practices, new technologies, and new ideas and insights, towards meeting the changing needs of clients and consumers, and to retain and develop talent.

Collaboration: Breaking down silos to encourage increased cross-functional and cross-team working, while embedding a one-team mentality. Understanding: Equipping employees for the future and building widespread understanding of capabilities and strengths. Ideas and insight: Developing existing and new services and products, harnessing data and technology to evolve service delivery and the sharing of forward-focused insight.

RSM has accelerated its efforts to celebrate the rich and diverse opinions throughout the global organisation through a programme of events and online learning. We continue to invest in digital and virtual collaboration technologies to achieve this, including virtual conference platforms, a Global Innovation Hub, and cloud technologies. Our global learning management system has been central to the sharing of ideas and insight with over 100 new courses developed in 2021. This system also facilitated the first virtual RSM Academy which included more than 300 participants from 70 countries.

Growth

Seizing new and exciting opportunities to drive growth through internal and external relationship building, maintaining a proactive, strategic focus on targeting new business channels, and being at the forefront of quality and technological processes to build trust and resilience.

Relationship building: Intentionally seeking to better understand and build relevance with clients, suppliers and thirdparty partners, while also nurturing deeper relations between different offices and professionals. Proactive, strategic focus: Actively exploring acquisitive opportunities, while pursuing sustainable and profitable new service engagements to support the development of existing and new clients. Quality systems and processes: Increasing the sophistication of processes, methodologies and technologies to further build trust, transparency and security, to more confidently grow and serve clients effectively.

RSM continues to proactively grow in its size and sophistication through the development and provision of new and existing services and products, while also increasing its geographical presence. In the last twelve months, RSM has added to its global representation in the Bahamas, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Turkey. Business referrals and cross-border work continues to increase year-on-year, supported by training and the implementation of consistent tools and approaches to business development, service approaches, and client relationship building. We have also invested in obtaining the ISO 27001 accreditation for all RSM Member Firms to enhance RSM’s information security position.

Purpose

Activating and amplifying our brand purpose, both internally and externally, and defining a sustainability journey and actions to drive meaningful change.

Defining our role as an organisation in relation to those with whom we engage. Agreeing shared values internally across RSM Member Firms and the Network as a whole, and externally with whomever we partner. Evolving our brand to better reflect the organisation we are today and the organisation we strive to be in the future.

Delivering on RSM’s purpose, ‘The Power of Being Understood’, remains central to our success in exceeding the expectations of our clients, colleagues and communities. In 2021, a Purpose and Sustainability Programme was launched to ensure these themes are central to the future development of RSM. Collating information on how we currently deliver on The Power of Being Understood across the Network and gathering details on the wealth of activity being undertaken in relation to ESG across all RSM Member Firms, work has begun to create a global framework and supporting tools to empower all RSM Member Firms to lead improvements across a range of ESG-related issues. Diversity and inclusion is a core focus area, with last year seeing the launch of mental wellness support and training, and a quarterly ‘Women in Leadership Summit’. As we embrace the Transformation Era, we are reviewing every element of our brand to ensure it meets our business objectives and are considering ways we can evolve to ensure RSM has a positive contribution to the environment and society across the different cultures and markets we work in.

The development of a new global strategy for RSM

With RSM’s existing global strategy in its final year of application and with the learnings from the global pandemic and new insight around the changing world of business, RSM has been working along a roadmap to develop a new, modern and ambitious global strategy for the organisation. This roadmap was put in place to ensure RSM’s new global strategy is developed collaboratively, capturing leading-edge thinking from an extensive range of experts, both outside RSM and from within RSM Member Firms, and leadership teams.

A key initiative as part of this Roadmap was the ‘RSM Leaders – Reimagining our Future’ programme. Running from July 2020 to July 2021, this initiative was designed as a core activity for engaging with experts throughout the RSM Network on key strategic topics. Over three phases, RSM leaders collaborated using an Agile Learning Process to provide ideas and insight around current and relevant strategic issues, with a view to identifying trends and defining long-term innovative solutions and priorities. To achieve this, 80+ leaders from over 30 RSM Member Firms were placed in one of six ‘Action Learning Groups’, offering different cultural, generational, service line, sector and professional perspectives, with the aim of shaping revolutionary and progressive change for the global organisation and its Members.

A Global Strategy Taskforce was created to make informed and focused recommendations to the International Board regarding RSM’s future global strategy, drawing from the ‘RSM Leaders - Reimagining our Future’ Programme and a wealth of additional expertise and input from additional workstreams and projects. RSM’s new global strategy will be launched in 2022 for implementation in 2023.