Marty Nicholas (EY)
EY has acquired Sydney-based business consulting services provider Blackdot, to strengthen its customer transformation and growth capabilities.
Founded in Sydney in 2001 by Marty Nicholas, Blackdot has served clients globally through a network covering Australia, the UK, Singapore and Canada.
The acquisition will assist EY teams in serving clients develop and implement customer-centric growth strategies, including design, user experience, digitisation, omni-channel, go-to-market and commercialisation.
“I’m genuinely excited about what joining EY will bring to our clients and people. Combining EY’s complementary strategy, technology, data, digital and people advisory capabilities with our customer and growth expertise sets us up to unlock more value faster for clients looking to transform how they go to market,” Nicholas said.
“Critically, the cultural fit with EY across all our centres has been unforced and energising from the outset. Watching the team get behind the opportunity to help EY fulfil their ambition of building a world class customer and growth capability has been exciting. The personal and professional growth opportunities this enables for us all was unrivalled.”
Nicholas will join the EY partnership in Australia along with 64 Blackdot staff will join EY globally, adding to consulting services in Singapore. Meanwhile, Blackdot EMEA managing director Mark Taylor will join the EY partnership in the UK.
“The customer transformation capability that they bring complements our EY Port Jackson Partners strategy team, bringing deep growth, omni-channel, sales and marketing skills and linking with our customer research, experience, digital and data analytics capabilities,” EY Oceania regional consulting managing partner Justin Greig said.
On the addition to the Singapore team, EY Advisory head of consulting Juang-Wei Mok said Blackdot’s customer and growth expertise comes at a critical juncture where many businesses are institutionalising and evolving how they go to market after the pandemic.
“While this is a huge milestone for everyone who’s contributed to the growth of Blackdot over many years, it really does feel like the end of one great chapter and the beginning of another,” EY Oceania regional managing partner and CEO David Larocca said.
“Blackdot is a great fit for EY. We share an ambition of delivering long-term value for our clients by helping them solve complex challenges, and everything we do has people at the centre. They are a great addition to our already strong customer team, and we look forward to working with them, both here in Australia and around the world.”
Last year EY concentrated on building up its cyber security muscle through purchasing SecureWorx.
