Published on the 01/07/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Consulting firms are hitching on to the digital disruption train which is hurtling through just about every sector of the Australian economy – including Government…
Deloitte Digital is opening a studio in Canberra to tap into the rising demand for transformative digitally enabled services. According to Deloitte, the studio offers expertise in mobile, web, ecommerce, social and content management along with digital strategy, design, engineering and integration services.
It’s a timely initiative given that the Government’s new Digital Transformation Office (DTO) officially opens its doors today (1 July).
The Government’s transformation agenda is funded to the tune of $254.7million over four years from 2015-16 with $95.4million earmarked for the establishment of the DTO.
Deloitte Digital’s latest studio (its 21st internationally) is clearly geared to tap into the hunger for new digital approaches to delivering government services.
According to Frank Farrall, Deloitte Digital lead partner, the ACT is facing a disproportionate amount of digital disruption compared to the rest of the country.
Deloitte has hung out its shingle to help, but it’s not alone.
All four major accounting firms have digital consulting practices in Australia. PwC’s digital unit for example has grown strongly through acquisition, has a Canberra footprint, and the firm launched a digital services consulting business in New Zealand last week.
The sector is also served by management and technology consultants including Accenture, Bearing Point, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, IBM and McKinsey & Co.
In May analyst IDC ranked Deloitte, IBM, KPMG and PwC as the four leaders in its 2015 worldwide digital enterprise strategy consulting services vendor assessment.
That report however contains some potentially sobering reading for Canberra’s technocrats. It noted that the consulting companies were generally adept at crafting information architectures to support digital transformation initiatives; and helping clients deploy digital tools.
Where IDC felt that consulting firms were less capable was in the area of leveraging digital solutions “to improve customer service or to improve the visual design and ‘consumability’ of their client’s information resources”. It is that which is precisely the remit of the DTO.
