Editors’ Note

Julie Linn Teigland is the EY Regional Managing Partner – Germany, Switzerland, Austria (GSA) and a member of the EMEIA Operations Executive. She has served in different leadership roles within EY, such as EMEIA Growth Markets Leader and most recently as EMEIA Accounts Leader. She has more than 27 years’ experience working in professional services and has been with EY for over 15 years. She became partner in 2002. Teigland has served for years as an international tax advisor, before beginning her career in assurance. She is a champion of gender parity and very much engaged in EY’s Women.Fast forward programme.

Company Brief

The global EY organization (ey.com) is a leader in assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services. In the Americas – EY’s largest area – member firms employ more than 70,000 people across 30 countries and generate $14.5 billion in revenues. Globally, EY member firms employ nearly 250,000 people and generate $31.4 billion in revenues.

Will you discuss the strength of EY within the GSA region?

In the GSA region, we are executing our EY strategy to be the leading advisor for transformation in the new reality. We are able to offer integrated solutions, from tax to transaction advisory services, and can help our clients to succeed in their digital transformation. Therefore, we are working in diverse, high-performing teams from all our service lines, providing tailor-made, client specific solutions. This is our strongest competitive advantage, combined with the investments made on our talents. In our advisory service line, for example, we’ve also made some acquisitions to complement our depth of sector expertise with innovative solutions in order to offer to our clients the best new digitally based strategies and business models.

How close is the coordination from region to region?

Many of the EY clients in GSA are global with cross border operations, and our organization needs to mirror those of our clients. In my role, I focus on ensuring that those top global clients are served in the best way. At the same time, we have a strong middle-market practice across the region, which represents the core of the business in the three countries. This means that we need to maintain our practice’s face to the customer: we do that by bringing together the best local knowledge, insights, specific market trends and relationships.

Given that focus, are you looking to attract local talent and how strong is the talent pool?

Within those three markets, we have 12,000 employees. Diversity is at the heart of EY’s talent agenda. We have a strong talent pool, not just by numbers, but also looking at the range of the profiles and skills we’ve built in our teams. I like to bring into our local teams those people coming from abroad as I believe that the diversity of backgrounds and knowledge unlocks the best innovative solutions for our clients. English is a common language across this region, which helps support our inclusive culture.

Will you discuss the impact of the digital transformation taking place?

I’ve been in professional services for 27 years and our profession has changed profoundly, and it will change even more in the future. At the current pace of evolution, we won’t have to wait 10 years to see radical changes happening in the business. While no one can predict what the digital transformation is going to bring us in the future, I can say that the pace of change has disrupted every business model. Businesses are now global in nature, they have changed their currency portfolio; their distribution systems with customers are moving more toward pull-based models and their processes have been completely reviewed and sometimes roboticized. The competition that they face is no longer just brand to brand but ecosystem to ecosystem.

Our job is to make sure we’re helping our clients in that transition from old reality to new reality. Our professional services firm is one of only a few that can advise companies in that new reality journey from top to bottom.•