(uplifting music)
- So hello, my name is Chris Weber,
I'm pleased to introduce Nichole Jordan.
Nichole thank you for being here.
You're a partner at Grant Thornton,
maybe tell me a little bit about
what you do at Grant Thornton.
- Yes, Chris thank you so much for connecting today
and looking forward to our conversation.
So I am the managing partner for the Central Region
at Grant Thornton.
And Grant Thornton is a public accounting firm,
a global firm, really helping businesses prepare
for the future, whether that is in leading advisory,
technologies and capabilities,
maybe that is in preparing for AI and machine learning
and the digital transformation that we are all under today,
or that might be with leading tax advice
or audit and accounting advice.
So the spirit of it is all about helping businesses prepare
for and really thrive in the future.
- That's terrific, so maybe you can tell me
a little bit about just how your industry's changed
in the past few years, and then certainly
with some of the things that are happening
in the world today around the COVID et cetera.
What things have been accelerated in these times?
- Absolutely Chris, it's a great point
and we certainly are living through change as we speak.
I think probably the biggest transformation
is the digital transformation
that the professional services industry
has been advancing towards
and it really has been accelerated in the pandemic.
So I would categorize it as a bit of the silver lining
that I think the profession is experiencing.
I'm really proud on the one hand
and I'm sorry it took this situation to have us accelerate,
but I'm really proud of the way the teams
and the professions, so beyond Grant Thornton professionals,
but certainly I can speak
to our Grant Thornton professionals,
the way that everyone really pivoted
to a virtual environment overnight.
- It's always excellent to hear,
I mean one, thank you for that,
and how our customers are using the technology.
The other thing we heard from a customer the other day,
and I'm sure you see it as well, we see it internally is
a lot of our meetings, particularly the internal ones
are actually more inclusive than the face to face
'cause normally in face to face
you have one or two people engaging in dialogue,
and we see a very active chat window
in addition to the audio video
and so it feels many more people
are participating in the meetings
and so in some respect, we used to run a set of meetings
where we all got face to face,
we've collectively said, we're more productive
in a remote world and more people
have a voice in those meetings.
- Chris, I completely agree.
And I'll give you a couple of examples.
So we absolutely use the chat feature
and that way everyone kind of keeps the conversation going,
everyone's able to share ideas.
we use the Digital Hand, but also very interestingly,
we use the polling feature and that has been very powerful.
So when you're in a strategic planning meeting,
it's important that you can take these strategic questions
that you have for the group
and be able to get everyone's thoughts
and everyone's interested in what each other is thinking.
And so when we could quickly put these polls up
and understand, okay, that's a quick pulse
of what is this leadership team see
as the most effective way to solve
this particular challenge?
We were able to get through a number
of key strategic issues very quickly,
through the polling feature as well.
- So Nicole, maybe we switched to the customer facing side
with your customers and clients.
And I know you're doing things
that are innovative around LinkedIn
and Sales Insights, and so maybe you can talk a little bit
about those innovative technologies
and things you're doing with your customers and clients.
- Absolutely Chris so, just kind of taking us back
to our three main areas of focus
and this is really how we've leveraged Microsoft
and teamed with you to help us during this pandemic
and help us help our clients.
So, we first were focused on taking care of our people
and then also in being there for our clients.
And here's what we meant by that,
so when the pandemic began it was critical
that we could reach out to our clients, check in with them,
not so much from a commercial standpoint,
but really to reach out to care, to be there for them,
to listen, to learn and to offer help.
And so we started that process, the first thing that we did
is went to our central repository
for all of our customer contacts.
In our business we don't regularly send messages
to all of our customers but this was a first
and we really relied very heavily
on our Microsoft relationship
and our CRM system with Dynamics 365,
just our central repository for all
of our customer contact information, so we started there.
Our firm through our leadership with many wonderful leaders
during this time we're very prepared for the pandemic
and one example is Yvette Connor,
that she and her big team developed
a pandemic resiliency tool.
And we offered that to our clients on a complimentary basis
and clients could basically fill out the tool
and it would provide a risk assessment dashboard
for them around the key areas of their business
and how they were comparing to their competitors,
kind of peer benchmarking around talent
or around risk or the regulatory environment.
And so this was very helpful information for them,
so in order to leverage that tool that was highly valuable
for customers in this environment,
we had to dig in deep to the relationships that we had
and to do that we leveraged our CRM tool,
so we were fully engaged in Dynamics 365.
And then also with LinkedIn Sales Navigator,
we have been on a journey for many years
to expand relationships within our existing clients,
so we run a key account management program within our firm
and we have noted over the years Chris,
it's really wonderful outcomes that
those teams within Grant Thornton
that have a higher number of connections
within their given key account have higher business results.
So they have higher sales, they have a greater depth
of relationship and client loyalty.
So we have seen by really digging into
- Perfect.
- The technology platform with LinkedIn
and connections on LinkedIn is one metric
for understanding how deep your relationship is
within a client organization.
But that's what we compared, how many connections
does this team have versus what are their wins?
What are their sales, what's the value they're bringing
to that particular client?
So we leveraged heavily Dynamics 365,
we leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
And then on the internal side
we use various technology platforms
as a repository to bring it all together
and bring it back to our partners
and our client facing teams around what is working,
around target prioritization
and how to bring similar value across similar sectors
and similar clients.
So examples of what we use there, Power BI,
We have everything - One of my favorites.
- Yes, indeed, so all of our teams have access
to the BI dashboards,
we run our sales pipeline management through BI,
so it's pulling it from Dynamics 365,
and it's bringing it into the BI environment
because that's a bit easier for our teams
to work through today,
and that gets distributed actually it's updated every night
and our teams have access to it every morning.
So it's built into their routine
to be able to access the pipeline
and the wins and the losses, and helps them understand
the winning areas so that we can double down on that
and bring that value across other clients.
So Power BI has been key,
it's all within the Azure environment.
Very important that we connect
a number of different technologies
into this Azure repository so that we can pull
the different areas that are of interest
to a particular part of the firm.
And then another area, so in using Power Apps
or we have through our relationship Chris
and this has been really meaningful for us.
We teamed with Microsoft around how could we
have target prioritization around opportunities
where we may have brought value to a bank on the East Coast,
in the regulatory environment,
help them solve a regulatory challenge.
And how could we maybe take the principles
of that opportunity and help banks across the US
and let the team all the way
in the West Coast know instantly about
the opportunity and know about the ways
that we were able to bring that value?
So we're using technology to do that,
and we started in a strategy session with the Microsoft team
in explaining how we wanted to basically use technology
to help us bring more value,
to help us kind of cross serve a client
or serve across a particular industry sector.
And through our relationship with Microsoft,
we worked on to develop areas and a custom tool for us,
so it was through a teaming relationship
with Microsoft and Hitachi and Grant Thornton,
and through all of us working together,
we created a tool that helps us with target prioritization.
And so that ties into and leads us into
Sales Insights and the AI enabled selling
that we'll be able to do in the future.
We haven't fully implemented Sales Insights,
within Grant Thornton at this time,
but we're working towards that
and we're working towards training everyone
on the power really of using machine learning
and artificial intelligence to help them focus
on the areas where they will be able to win.
- Yeah, it's inspiring Nicole hearing,
like all the things you're doing both
to digitally enable your internal communication,
collaboration, your connection with customers,
bringing that innovation,
I assume that just didn't magically happen overnight.
Like what was the change management process?
- You're right Chris and we're all human
and we don't always like change
and so I would say it really has been an effort where,
number one, we've tried to unite around
the improved business outcomes we can achieve
by using the technology
and improved business outcomes are real,
they're getting better results by using the technology,
and here are the three improved results.
Number one, they're able to connect
with a broader number of clients
and deepen relationships widely across
an organization using technology.
Number two, they're able to focus on opportunities
where we have a higher likelihood of winning.
We get many opportunities, and in some cases today,
we've got to focus our time on those areas
where we really can connect with the client and bring value
that will resonate and work for their business
and where we will win.
And so we've got to prioritize those opportunities,
we're using technology to be able to do just that.
And then the technology is helping us with the speed
and the accuracy of all that we're doing.
So, just a different example on this Chris,
that today the number of opportunities
that we have that have to be turned around
within a couple of days.
So a business will contact us and our client
and would like us to turn around a proposal
within a very short period of time,
and they need that for various business reasons.
And using technology is really the only way to do that,
and it starts with fundamentals
like OneDrive and being able to allow everyone
to have access to editing the live document
and bringing everybody's ideas into it,
because we believe very strongly
that the best way for us to bring value to clients
is to have a diverse team thinking
about their business problems.
And using technology is a key way to building diversity
and inclusion into the way that you work to solve
a problem for a particular client.
So we use technology, oneDrive where everyone can access,
or we're using teams where we can
have strategy sessions around a client,
and with teams today, I mean, how great is it
that we're not only connected on video,
but we can through the Power Apps
and the different functions within teams,
you can bring up that specific account
and bring up all of the information related
to an individual executive that you're serving,
or maybe all of the different account team notes,
all of the latest information going on with company
or that business, you pull it right up on the screen
and everybody has access to it.
And so just again, the technology improves our speed,
it improves our accuracy with all that we're doing,
it's helping us connect more broadly with clients,
and it's helping us focus our time and our money,
our resources on areas where
we can really bring the greatest value to clients
and where we can win as a firm.
- Now, thank you for sharing, and first of all,
just thank you for the partnership.
Thank you for pushing us, you make us better
in terms of how you're implementing the technology,
the things that address your business,
so we really appreciate that.
And more importantly, thanks for sharing today
and inspiring all of us
on how you're taking care of your employees,
your customers, and business, truly inspirational.
And so, Nicole can't thank you enough
for that partnership and inspiring us today.
- Thank you so much, Chris.
It truly has been a pleasure and I look forward
to all that we have ahead of us in this journey
as we move forward, so thank you Chris.
- Thank you.
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