## Sleepless nights On 3 June, 2025, we announced EY Studio+ [to the world](https://www.wsj.com/articles/ey-joins-consultants-race-for-marketing-dollars-with-new-unit-b1a79544). When we first kicked off the project, I could barely sleep for the first two nights. I was overflowing with ideas and excitement, knowing what had to be done and the opportunity for our people. I kept a notebook by my bed that later formed the beginning of our project plan and backlog. ## Fragmented, misaligned, and confused _“EY? What’s that?”_ is a question that’s not uncommon to hear when you’re talking to peers or clients in the design industry. As one of the Big 4 professional services firms, it may conjure images of accountants in suits, yet we work in every industry with some of the largest brands in the world to show them the value of human-centred customer experiences. Over the past decade we’ve made over 37 acquisitions to integrate alongside our organically-grown teams, but many kept their old names in order to retain the brand recognition that EY was lacking in customer-centred services. [picture placeholder] Over time, this piled up and led to a number of issues when scaling: There was no one sub-brand that brought to life the sum total of our capabilities. Each sub-brand had a separate set of offerings, websites, branding and operating model. Clients got confused when multiple sub-brands partnered together, undermining our credibility when selling global front-office transformation programs. {/* prettier-ignore */} 37 {/* prettier-ignore */} Acquisitions over the last decade {/* prettier-ignore */} 3 {/* prettier-ignore */} Poorly-integrated competency areas {/* prettier-ignore */} 50 {/* prettier-ignore */} Locations all doing things their own way By solving these problems, we could start to address two key business objectives: An end-to-end enterprise transformation can usually be broken down into three phases, yet EY traditionally serves only two. By being more competitive in the market for front-office transformation, we create opportunities for other EY teams to offer additional integrated transformation services. Customer-centred (”front office”) transformation: {' '} Think of the front office as any business or organisation function that interacts with a customer. Forty-seven percent of enterprise transformation starts here (Forrester Buyer Research (2025)) and works its way to the “back office”. The typical buyer is the CMO, CDO, CInO. EY brand permission is low. Strategy/transaction-led transformation: The typical buyer are the CEO and CSO, and is well-served by EY. Cost & compliance-driven transformation: The typical buyers are the CFO, COO, CIO and CRO. EY brand permission is high. ), }, { title: '2. Aligning our teams opens the door to larger projects', content: ( <> Many of our specialist teams tend to pitch clients in terms of what they do. “I’m a designer and I can design your website”. “I’m a researcher and I can tell you what your users are thinking”. “I’m a developer and I can build your website”. It’s an overly simplistic example, but put them together and you start to see a value greater than the sum of its parts. By aligning our areas of deep expertise to seamlessly work together, we’re better able to handle complex transformations for our clients. ), }, ]} /> ## My role I joined the EY office in NYC as a UX designer before transferring to the design team in London (formerly known as EY Seren, acquired in 2015). I observed the differences in team culture, client offerings and ways of working — it was so apparent how much each team could benefit by sharing notes with the other, and this feeling grew with the more teams I met and international offices I visited. In 2024 I successfully pitched a new internal operations role to our global practice leader (**add a hover effect that says this is Laurence who is now the global S+ leader)** to start addressing these and other goals. ## Impact