EY's Chris Degenaar
Consulting practice EY has appointed managing partner Chris Degenaar to lead its technology consulting services across Oceania, a move coinciding with the repositioning of its technology services business.
Degenaar takes the reins from Jeff Eberwein who will focus on bringing EY tech-enabled transformation initiatives to market and enhance the organisation’s collaboration with Microsoft.
EY is seeking to build its dominance as a key Microsoft and SAP service provider as well as strengthen its position in data and analytics, cyber and technology transformation.
“Technology Consulting will be elevated to one of the three pillars of EY Consulting service line, and together with People and Business Consulting will establish EY as the transformation leader,” EY Oceania Consulting service leader, Justin Greig said.
Degenaar maintains more than two decades of management consulting experience at EY, IBM and PwC, and has spent the past five years as one of the managing partners of its Data and Analytics practice in Asia-Pacific.
He will be focused on key technology strengths around data and analytics, cyber security, digital and emerging technology, technology solution delivery (including SAP solutions), and technology transformation for both large corporates and government clients.
EY is expected to roll out plans for the Technology Consulting practices across the globe in July 2020.
“We are bringing together almost a thousand highly skilled practitioners across Technology, Cyber and Data in Australia and New Zealand to create a truly leading capability that allows EY to provide Technology at speed for clients,” Degenaar said.
Additionally, Degenaar said many organisations were already in the process of accelerating their digital transformation investments as they have either realised that current operations are not resilient, sustainable, efficient or optimised for change.
“This not only impacts their own business, but also their customers and we’re seeing a lot of focus being revised around cloud, and a ramp up of automation and artificial intelligence in business workflow and decision making,” Degenaar said.
“This will also flow into organisational reflections on the nature of the workplace as every business now knows that a connected workforce is not the same as a collaborative and engaged workforce.
“We will see more consideration given to the deployment of new technology on people, which is why we have developed solid experience in using collaboration tools.”
EY has made a number of strategic acquisitions in the past 18 months including specialist SAP consulting and technical services provider Plaut IT, along with its local subsidiary EchoJunction and Malaysian subsidiary, Baseliner; and Sydney-based cyber security company Aleron.
This followed the launch of its cyber security centre in Melbourne, which forms part of the company’s global network and is the biggest in Asia Pacific.
