Deloitte has taken on two former directors from US-headquartered consulting firm, CBIG Consulting, Cameron Price and Gerard Skybey, and their team of nearly 40 big data and analytics experts, many of which will be based in Deloitte's Australian offices.
According to Deloitte, the consulting giant hired the two former CBIG Consulting partners in response to the rapid growth in demand for data analytics across the Asia Pacific region.
Prior to joining Deloitte, Price and Skybey were the Asia Pacific region leads for CBIG Consulting, which specialises in business intelligence, big data analytics, data warehouse and cloud computing analytics.
The pair worked across the Asia region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. In their prior roles, Price was CBIG’s APAC managing director, and Skybey was CBIG’s APAC director.
“As well as improving career growth opportunities for our staff, joining Deloitte accelerates our ability to scale across the region," Price said. “The combination of the Deloitte brand with our analytics and information management capabilities is expected to be highly synergistic in the way we service clients and attract talent.
“As awareness increases of the potential for data-driven insights to create competitive advantage, there is a growing shortfall between an organisation’s aspirations for the automated collection and analysis of big data and what traditional platform solutions are able to support,” he said.
Deloitte claims that the new partners’ capabilities in big data and advanced analytics were synergistic with its own service offerings and opportunities across the region, creating a “strong value proposition to work together”.
The new arrangement will see Price and Skybey join Deloitte as partners, in Sydney and Singapore respectively.
A team of 39 from Price and Skybey’s former ranks will also join Deloitte’s analytics and information management teams in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore. The majority of the team, about 31 people, will join Deloitte’s offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
The transaction is expected to further extend Deloitte’s data capabilities in Asia Pacific.
“Joining forces with Cameron, Gerard and their team extends our market leading capabilities in big data, and enhances our identified strategic priorities to build-out advanced analytics and intelligent automation capabilities,” Deloitte Australia CEO, Cindy Hook, said.
According to Tim Nugent, Deloitte’s Asia Pacific leader for analytics and information management, the timing of the deal reflects the opportunity the company sees in both big data and analytics.
“In a newly connected world, the convergence of data and connectivity provides enormous opportunities. It underpins the way businesses operate and is at the centre of what drives competitive advantage today,” Nugent said.
Deloitte's move to take on CBIG Consulting's former talent comes less than a month after the consulting firm acquired Australian IT consultancy, JKVine, in a deal aimed at building out a new platform test and optimisation unit in Deloitte Consulting.
The terms of that acquisition saw JKVine’s 30-plus team move into Deloitte’s Melbourne and Sydney offices.
In May, Deloitte acquired boutique managed services provider, Strut Digital, in a bid to bolster its cloud practice in Australia while October, it was Sydney-based Concur partner, Nesoi, that was acquired.
Last year, Deloitte snapped up Melbourne-based systems integrator, Plenary Networks, Melbourne-based systems integrator, Sixtree, and marketing technology implementation specialist, Cinder Agency, among others.
