As Chief Digital Officer for KPMG UK, Lisa Heneghan is charged with main enterprise-wide transformation for the auditor and tax big, delivering higher shopper experiences and guaranteeing that KPMG is “match for the digital age”.
“I’m accountable for all issues know-how associated within the agency,” Heneghan says. “If you break that down in KPMG, that truly means I’ve all of our [2,000] client-facing technologists, our inner know-how organisation, and I’m additionally accountable for the digital transformation of our enterprise.”
A CDO’s give attention to shopper outcomes
Heneghan has been at KPMG since 2011 however took on the CDO position three years in the past, overseeing the know-how perform throughout the audit, advisory, offers, and tax departments. She says the position has modified over time, from establishing the suitable know-how foundations to constructing the suitable group; Heneghan has not too long ago constructed out a CTO group to assist develop KPMG’s three-year transformation plan.
Lisa Heneghan, CDO of KPMG UK
KPMG
“After I began the job, it was extra about putting in sturdy foundations when it comes to functionality, structure and safety,” she says. “This concerned understanding the panorama and figuring out a path to the cloud and constructing an IT organisation to assist the long run and, critically, putting in construction and governance to drive sustainable change.”
“Stage two was extra about rolling out the instruments to assist our individuals to do their jobs – bodily instruments, collaboration instruments – and set up new methods of working. Now, we’re in a position to give attention to our built-in worth chain and the way we simplify and optimise.”
Her focus now could be firmly on bettering experiences for KPMG workers and shoppers.
“I at all times preserve that concentrate on the shoppers: what our shoppers want and the way we work with them,” says Heneghan, who equally acknowledges KPMG’s auditing challenges in current months.
“A giant a part of what I’ve bought is our client-facing technologists. So, I spend in all probability half of my week working with them and dealing on the large transformation programmes that we’ve bought for shoppers. The opposite half of my time is the place I’m linking into world… to verify we’re related, and that we are able to convey the worth from world.”
Digital ninjas and hybrid innovation centres
KPMG’s digital transformation journey has 4 pillars, Heneghan says: creating the digital model, constructing digital tradition, guaranteeing the organisation has sturdy know-how foundations and putting in instruments and applied sciences.
Robust know-how foundations boil right down to bettering structure, safety and functionality, and embedding the know-how perform throughout the enterprise by KPMG’s group of CTOs, who’ve constructed the roadmaps for transformation. Constructing a digital tradition, in the meantime, depends closely on KPMG’s “digital ninjas” programme to drive the adoption and use of know-how put in place.
KPMG’s Digital Ninjas are consultants who provide one-on-one periods, shows, and reply to advert hoc IT enquiries
KPMG
Because the onset of the worldwide pandemic, and the introduction of hybrid and distant working, KPMG rolled out Microsoft Floor gadgets and Microsoft Groups for company-wide communication – nevertheless it shortly realised that there have been differing ranges of technical literacy. The auditor turned to its digital ninjas for assist.
Focusing explicitly on Microsoft abilities, digital ninjas provide one-on-one periods, shows, and a response to advert hoc enquiries on every part from the way to use Groups to OneDrive and OneNote, in addition to SAP’s Concur and Pointprogress’s MyTime cellular timesheets.
“We’ve now bought almost 1,000 Ninjas throughout the agency…in all workplaces within the UK. It actually builds into the demographic of our organisation, the place we have now a mean age of 28.”
“They’re individuals who have a day job to do, and so they’re studying inside these companies, however they’re digital natives; they perceive and are obsessed with know-how. They need their expertise right here to be pretty much as good as their expertise at dwelling,” Heneghan says.
Outcomes from the Digital Ninjas programme embody:
- Serving to to drive 100% adoption of Microsoft Groups (equalling greater than 15,000 KPMG UK colleagues utilizing the device). All workers now use Groups as their go-to collaboration device.
- Coaching greater than 5,000 KPMG workers in Microsoft Groups in March 2020, when the pandemic first hit and the corporate moved to digital working.
- Coaching greater than 500 NSPCC workers on utilizing Microsoft merchandise – enabling their workers to attach and assist youngsters and households who most want their assist throughout COVID-19.
- Digital Ninjas are serving to outline and enhance hybrid working tradition. As one such instance, in hybrid conferences, Ninjas have discovered it feels extra inclusive if these attending just about communicate first.
KPMG has additionally educated 30,000 individuals within the programming language Python, whereas the skilled providers agency is experimenting with new methods of working by Ignition, its know-how innovation, insights, and collaboration hub at its headquarters in Canary Wharf, London.
The Ignition centre facilitates sprints and innovation periods and aids workers and companions in brainstorming extra important “complicated working mannequin sort points”, Heneghan says.
Profession development for ladies in tech, plus abilities gaps
Encouraging ladies to pursue tech careers is near Heneghan’s coronary heart and maybe unsurprisingly so, given virtually half of KPMGs know-how workforce is now feminine, thanks largely to the agency’s IT’s Her Future initiative.
“We’ve had a large improve,” she says. “We began off specializing in bringing in individuals as females on the graduate degree, after which constructing that up, after which we began to give attention to how can we assist them to progress? As a result of it’s extremely necessary that you just maintain constructing that pipeline.”
“As of July 2021, 43% of the general know-how groups are feminine. Ladies span a complete array of know-how roles at KPMG, together with knowledge engineers, knowledge analysts, synthetic intelligence consultants, builders, software program testers, data safety analysts, cloud engineers…the record goes on.”
IT’s Her Future initiative is now trickling into universities and schools, too.
“We’ve devoted streams which work to encourage ladies from universities into know-how apprentices and graduate programmes. We additionally maintain exterior occasions for younger ladies seeking to embark on a profession in STEM to allow them to see the choices obtainable to them at KPMG.”
The agency is now exploring different methods of working with larger training. For instance, its relationship with the College of Nottingham focuses on advancing native knowledge analytics abilities and capabilities.
Specialists from the college’s Knowledge-Pushed Discovery Initiative (3Di) and KPMG are working collectively to develop new analysis and supply perception that may improve knowledge and analytics providers for companies, and the partnership will maintain occasions to assist the progressive concepts of small and medium sized enterprises within the East Midlands Area and supply knowledge abilities coaching to assist shut the digital abilities hole.
The collaboration between KPMG and the College of Nottingham kinds a part of the college’s new programme, Digital Nottingham, which has ambitions to remodel the East Midlands metropolis by knowledge science, know-how and innovation.
