EY acquires Sydney's Blackdot Consulting

Big four consulting firm EY has acquired Sydney-headquartered customer transformation specialist Blackdot Consulting for an undisclosed sum.

EY said the acquisition aimed to strengthen its customer transformation and growth capabilities, providing its teams with customer-centric growth strategies.

Founded in 2001, Blackdot has offices across Australia, the UK, Singapore and Canada. Chief executive and founder Marty Nicholas will join the EY partnership in Sydney, with the 64 staff also coming over. Blackdot EMEA managing director Mark Taylor will join EY’s UK partnership.

Blackdot specialises in customer strategy, design and implementation services, which include design, user experience, digitisation, omni-channel, go-to-market and commercialisation.

Speaking of the acquisition, Nicholas said, “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.

“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 are unrivalled.

“Whilst 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 consulting managing partner Justin Grieg said, “We are very excited to have the team from Blackdot join EY. The customer transformation capability that they bring complements our world class EY Port Jackson Partners strategy team, bringing deep growth, omni-channel, sales and marketing skills and linking perfectly with our customer research, experience, digital and data analytics capabilities.”

“As a result, EY Australia now offers clients a market leading set of customer and growth services spanning innovation through to successful commercial execution – and further strengthens EY transformation leadership momentum.”

Last month, EY appointed former AustCyber CEO Michelle Price as its newest partner for its Oceania cyber security, privacy and trusted technology practice.