One of BDO Australia’s, key advisory offerings, BDO Digital, is designed to help businesses navigate the complexities of digital transformation and unlock revenue opportunities.
BDO is an adviser to clients seeking audit, tax, advisory and business services across 164 countries and networks. An advantageous offering for manufacturers is the company’s advisory services that guide clients through challenges, changes, and opportunities.
BDO Digital Partner, Kamal Prasad, said this advisory is crucial in a business’s digital transformation.
“During COVID, everyone was preserving capital. Now, we have seen a lot more demand and discussions happening in the market,” he said.
Working to grow the company’s digital advisory offering, Prasad is one part of the team that
helps enhance a business’ digital presence to reach objectives.
“We help clients understand what digital transformation entails and partner with them to drive these changes,” said Prasad.
“It’s about making sure that the business understands what is holding them back.”
This service was born in response to a context where industries, like manufacturing, rely on intangibles to succeed.
“Supply and the customer base are becoming global. Connectedness to what’s happening overseas is a big part of what’s making manufacturers successful,” he said.
Considering the importance of connectivity, along with data requirements, regulations, and cyber security threats, Prasad said manufacturers often lack the guidance needed to keep up with technology, resulting in wasted investments.
“When you have a static setup, and everything else around you is changing, the only thing that you can do is put on expensive band aids,” said Prasad.
To ensure manufacturers avoid wasted investment, BDO’s Digital Advisory Services target digitisation across five pillars.
Advising on digital transformation
BDO’s most evident advisory pillar is its digital strategy consulting, which offers businesses a roadmap that is critical to remaining competitive. This strategy includes planning and executing projects involving data, insights, prototyping, learning, and refinement.
“We discuss what’s happening in the marketplace, where you are, where you want to go, what investment is required, what options are available, and what value – such as revenue, cost optimisation, or risk minimisation – can be generated,”
said Prasad.
This planning leads to a board discussion for the approval of BDO’s next pillar, technology modernisation. This focuses on consolidating a business’s technology capabilities, addressing its technology gaps and prioritising suitable solutions.
“The technologies can do whatever you want them to do, but BDO ensures clients make the right choices on prioritisation and configuration,” said Prasad.
This technology-focused pillar connects to the company’s next offering that uses AI to turn data and analytics into insights that reveal market and business trends.
“With tech modernisation, you collect good data,” said Prasad.
An example of this is BDO’s partnership with Microsoft, which has proven beneficial for
many clients.
“Microsoft opens the whole new world of analytics that leverage all the AI co-pilot type capabilities to unlock insights,” said Prasad.
BDO also provides business technology solutions that tailor each system to meet clients’ specific needs and drive efficiency.
“When a packaged solution doesn’t make sense for a client, we build a custom solution,” said Prasad.
Aside from technology advisory, BDO offers cyber security services to identify vulnerabilities and provide protection for digital assets.
“We make sure we secure the technology. It’s a lifecycle of support, from strategy to execution,”
said Prasad.
A future of digitisation
Putting these five pillars together, BDO successfully helped a pharmaceutical company that was focused on investing “as late as possible”.
“We helped the company, which grew from $5 million to around $40 or $50 million,” said Prasad.
Due to this success, the company has extended beyond BDO’s digital strategy guidance, to leverage its expertise in technology modernisation and solutions.
“In aiming to reach $100 million in the next three years, they realised that their systems will hold them down,” said Prasad.
“We are in the process of identifying the right technology for them and vendors to enable it.”
BDO has also serviced a $2 billion global manufacturing organisation working out of Australia using its analytics expertise.
“We started looking for anomalies within their order patterns of the last three years,” said Prasad.
By looking at this data, Prasad and his team were able to increase the forecast accuracy leading to efficient inventory planning, less supply chain wastage and better customer service.
Moving into the future, Prasad said BDO will continue to diversify its offerings to offer an
end-to-end service.
“I think what we are doing now to support the clients through the whole journey is helping them implement technology,” he said.
In finishing, Prasad acknowledged that none of these transformations are in one straight line, however BDO’s support can help turn a complex situation into a successful one.
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