EY strengthens APAC data and analytics team

EY has added 19 new members to its data and analytics team following the acquisition of Bridge Business Consulting.

The Sydney-based professional services firm specialised in data and analytics with a focus on data strategy, data engineering, analytics, AI and data management.

From today, Bridge managing partners Robert Mazevski and John Desmond officially joined EY Australia as partners, and all employees have made the transition to EY as well.

EY managing partner for the data and analytics practice in the Asia-Pacific region, Cameron Wall, told iTnews that the 19 new members include data engineers, cloud engineers, data scientists, and machine learning experts.

“[Bridge] is a very highly experienced team. Data and analytics cloud engineers are a different type than operational system, cloud engineers and are very hard to come by in the market," Wall said.

“We do a lot of those large-scale industrial-sized delivery programs and so the addition of this team enables us to do more of that work."

Wall said the addition of “this supercharged team” enables EY “to expand and do more business transformation work.

“That is really what we were out there to do.”

Wall, who also joined EY as part of its C3 business solutions acquisition, said the addition of Bridge will allow the team to better deliver its transformation programs.

“We're limited in the number of these big transformation programs we can do because we need those top-level experts,” Wall said.

Wall said there’s still a misconception that “the EY brand is in audit and tax” however its data and analytics team is the “biggest” in the APAC region with the buyout as part of the business's “strategic priority to grow out data and analytics”.

The team size “is well over 1500, getting closer to 2000," he said.

“The data and analytics team are seen by the rest of the consulting practice as really being a lead in terms of the work that we do and opening up clients for broader work," Wall said.

“The clients see us as providing really valuable insights, and then there are natural extensions into cyber into other parts of the business.”

Wall added, “EY’s got very aggressive growth plans organically and inorganically”.