Ernst & Young

Summary

International financial and business advisory firm Ernst & Young has successfully created an organization focused on delivering value to its clients. Key to this has been a far-reaching culture change programme that catalysed all employees to achieve this.

Introduction

With about 85,000 employees worldwide, Ernst & Young is one of the world's leading financial and business advisers. Financial results for the UK, headquartered in London, showed fee income in 1998 at £663 million (up 19 per cent from 1997), profit per partner also up 19 per cent to £308,000 and partnership funds employed up 22 per cent to £190 million.

Impressively, this success was achieved as the firm made its greatest ever investment in service and product development, knowledge management, information technology (IT) and the development and recruitment of people.

Delivering Client Value

Active in over 132 countries, Ernst & Young, a result of a 1989 merger of the UK's financial advisory firms Arthur Young and Ernst & Whinney, has one overriding business objective – to deliver demonstrable and measurable business benefits to its clients.

According to Edmund White, the firm's national head of internal communications, this culture of client focus is firmly embedded in the minds of its employee-base. He says:

"If you ask most people in the organization to describe Ernst & Young, they'd say that we're in business for the benefit of our clients full stop.

"This, they'd say, is underpinned by demonstrating value to our employees and a performance focus on outgrowing our competitors."

If you are a subscriber, click here to read the full case study.

Click here to find out how to subscribe.