Our businesses and industries
Deloitte is organised in five businesses: Audit & Assurance, Consulting, Tax & Legal, Risk Advisory and Financial Advisory. These businesses all work across various economic sectors that we consider as six industry groups: consumer; energy, resources and industrials; financial services; government and the public sector; technology, media and telecommunications; and the private sector. Our Support Organisation serves both the businesses and the industries. Working with a matrix of businesses and industries that is identical in every geography where Deloitte operates, allows us to meet the needs of our clients by combining expertise with experience.
In this section, we provide the 2022/2023 financial results and market developments of our five businesses and our Support Organisation, and explore their key challenges and opportunities. In addition, we discuss the main developments and activities within our industries.
Our strategic objectives are cascaded down to our businesses, which have plans in place to put our strategy into action by adding context and content to our five strategic pillars. The results of their activities feed back into our strategic dashboard.
Hear from our Business & Industry Leaders
Amidst all kinds of turbulence in the world, we pride ourselves on the adaptability of our professionals and clients in managing disruption and it resulted in a solid performance. It has been extraordinary to see how committed and resourceful people are. Two aspects that excite me, are the possibilities of generative AI to innovate, and our scale-up in the ESG domain servicing clients towards audit readiness. These are both of pivotal importance to the future of us all. Both clients and ourselves are now stepping up ESG efforts. It serves as a prime example of how we are making an impact by broadening the skillset of our professionals and increasing the attractiveness of the audit profession, while adding value to our clients and society on these highly pressing themes.
We add integrity and trust to society by attesting to both financial and non-financial information for a wide range of market leading organisations. Over the past year, we have made our mark on Sustainability, Digital, Trust and Transformation. An excellent example is our annual Stakeholder Dialogue. This event brings together leading organisations, regulators, scientists, and stakeholder representatives, for which we facilitate dialogue on topics that require us to connect for impact. This year’s central theme was Sustainability, with the aim to stretch ambitions and overcome challenges together.
More and more we see the added value of our multidisciplinary model, also in client feedback. The value of collaboration and integration has proven to be crucial towards our people and clients, also internationally. The ESG space is one example of where we bring knowledge and expertise to our Audit & Advisory services, specialist knowledge on fraud, continuity and the digital space are others. For the upcoming year, our top priority is to continue to engage with our stakeholders, whether it be with our valued clients, our current and future talent, or society at large. We want to lead the debate on societal challenges, both in the media and on a wide range of platforms and events.
Reflecting on 2022/2023, I am very proud of the continued focus on our people. We have put a lot of effort in enhancing our coaching skills. Our summer school on this topic was sold out within two days and was rated as the best training ever. We prioritise and develop our people, even amidst market volatility. At Deloitte Netherlands, we have unique capabilities and through effective cross-business collaboration we were still able to make an important impact on the market. Our increased collaboration across Europe facilitates this, allowing us to better serve our clients from strategy to execution.
At Consulting, we aim to lead the way in technology-enabled business transformations, enabling our clients to move the needle on big societal issues. The ‘Future of’ themes Food, Mobility, Health, and Energy are highly relevant to our clients, and we see major opportunities for leveraging our distinct innovation, analytical and data skills, our ability to orchestrate ecosystems and our execution power. For example, through our Future of Food initiative we orchestrate the ecosystem from field to plate, aiming to make our future food ‘net zero’.
Generative AI will heavily influence our profession going forward. By using AI as a co-pilot for our people, we can further modernise our delivery methods. It also opens a whole new world of opportunities for our clients. Substantial joint investments are being made to harvest this opportunity in the coming year.
Compared to last year, we are dealing with a less confident market. The ongoing war in Ukraine and associated geopolitical events have dampened the total volume of the Dutch M&A market by about 30 per cent. At the same time there are sectors, such as life sciences, healthcare, technology, and energy, that remain vibrant. At Financial Advisory, we aim to be the undisputed leader in orchestrating financial events that have a substantial impact on both our clients and society at large. We are making a solid contribution to big societal challenges in these sectors including the energy transition, housing, financial crime, the healthcare system, and sustainability.
There are many projects I am proud of, such as our project in Suriname, where we helped the banking industry with an asset quality review. In nine months, we conducted a solvency survey at all banks in Suriname. Additionally, we successfully helped raise debt financing for vertical farming and battery technology, which perfectly aligns with our Future of Food and Future of Energy themes. And we supported the Dutch government on major societal issues, such as WoonNL.
The events of the past year have made me realise once again that our business is extremely agile, and that we are able to quickly respond to questions that arise in the market. With high-quality expertise, we will continue to help our clients prepare for the future, especially in the field of energy transition and sustainability. The best way to do this is a holistic approach, powerfully combining all our areas of expertise within the firm to deliver impactful results.
Over the past year, we made extensive progress in helping our clients with their sustainability transformation. Our Risk Advisory clients in particular, are dealing with ESG reporting, climate, and nature risks, in response to EU legislation. We help them to take the next step, become more resilient and make a real impact on a more sustainable future, which is important for all of us.
We are especially proud to have worked together as a team to build Africa Talent, an offshore centre in Africa dedicated to identifying, training, and developing local talent. The centre helps us secure the right talent for our clients and provide global solutions. In turn, we create new jobs for local people. It is an important initiative with impact and a heart.
Our clients increasingly expect us to be more than advisors, and to also help them implement solutions and operate processes for them. This challenges us to develop new business models. We need to scale up to meet our clients’ demand, which will be our strategy for the next four years. We will continue to have a strong voice and focus on the regulatory challenges our clients face around sustainability and digitalisation, helping them become more responsible businesses.
To be a transformation partner for our clients is at the heart of our strategy. Over the past year, we have demonstrated our value by helping our clients navigate digitalisation and increasingly complex international regulations such as ESG, Pillar 2 and CESOP. Our strength lies in our multi-disciplined approach, combining our extensive knowledge in tax and legal with data and technology. We have continued to invest in our technology and transformation capabilities, expanding the depth and breadth of our services.
I am very proud of our strong people-first focus. Despite the challenges we faced, we successfully attracted new talent. We fostered an inclusive and diverse culture, stimulated personal development, and generated meaningful jobs. Our practice continues to internationalise, offering plenty of exciting opportunities for our talent.
Next to our dedication to contribute to a better society by using the collective expertise and capabilities of our people in areas like the future of Energy and Food, we continue to invest in our Legal, Tax, Transformation and Technology capabilities to meet the evolving demands of our clients. We will focus on further internationalisation by leveraging the benefits of our large firm and deploying scale in key investments. Together, we are leading our clients through a sustainable and successful transformation.
The environment we work in and the services we offer have become more complex. Therefore it is more important than ever to collaborate across teams and departments. This enables us to take end-to-end responsibility and advise practitioners with the broad range of expertise our Support organisation offers. This is where we have seen a step change: our Support organisation has become more united. From the way we work and collaborate across teams to the positive culture that has emerged from it. The record-high turnout at our community events demonstrates this enthusiasm of our colleagues to get together, connect and learn from each other.
This past year we had a strong focus on improving opportunities for personal growth and career development. We achieved this by enriching our learning curriculum, providing more clarity regarding potential career paths, and transparency in the talent standards. This has been a successful next step in our GSC 2.0 programme. We are confident that our focus on development has enabled us to live up to our ambition of being professionals for professionals.
This year, our focus will remain on our multiyear GSC 2.0 programme. At the same time, the NSE and Global organisations are investing in the centralisation of processes, and it is up to us to strike the right balance between better utilisation of our global network and what we do in the Netherlands and the support we offer locally. And of course, it will continue to be our priority to foster the pride and engagement that has grown these past years.
With economic and geopolitical developments constantly affecting consumer behaviour, we continued to help our clients navigate the everchanging consumer market landscape. We supported them in digitalising their business processes and personalised consumer interaction.
Our focus has been on integrating our services across businesses. We create value combining our capabilities around cloud, digital, privacy, cyber and tax, enabling us to provide our clients with market differentiating quality and tailor-made solutions. And by looking at our diverse capabilities from the perspective of our clients, we can effectively support them around digital transformations, supply chain, and customer- and employee relations. It is always with a long-term perspective, because becoming a more responsible and sustainable business is moving to the forefront of the decision-making process of our clients, shifting to intrinsic values and being drivers of a successful business. The balance between ‘profit only’ versus ‘profit and being responsible’ is clearly tipping to the latter.
I’m also proud of the progress around the Future of Food, bringing together the players in the food ecosystem through our Dining to Net positive movement around topics such as generative agriculture, alternative protein, food labels and healthy nutrition. Our ambition is to make a difference by accelerating the transition to a more sustainable food system, increasing the impact by orchestrating the ecosystem and driving common goals. Continuing to invest in this will remain a key priority for us in Consumer in the coming years.
Through the Future of Energy, we help our clients deal with the massive challenge of energy transition. In 2022/2023, we further solidified our position as the leading service provider in this domain. We published market-leading eminence about decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors and collaborated with Delft University of Technology to organise the Future of Energy Business Course for a group of 40 high-potential technical students.
I am proud to say that many organisations asked us to help them with projects that will ultimately lead to lower emissions. For instance, we are supporting our clients with iconic projects such as the NortH2 green hydrogen project and the Aqua Sector project. To help our clients further on their path to lower emissions, we are establishing a global Hydrogen Center of Excellence in the Netherlands where our brightest minds will work on scale hydrogen deployment. With our efforts in the Future of Energy we make a profound impact on the energy transition.
Developments in the past year have made it clear that it is essential that sustainability, affordability, and security of energy supply remain in balance. Our clients are facing very volatile economic and political developments, causing supply chain issues, high energy prices and manufacturing cost, and record inflation rates. We will continue to help them navigate these challenges, and even come out on top, with valuable insights into the likely scenarios for their company, to advise on solid financial and asset planning and to provide support on technological innovations.
Also in the coming years, the Financial Services sector will continue to face a substantial need to adapt, driven by increasing regulatory and societal pressure (e.g., AML, ESG, CESOP, DORA, etc.) and changing customer demand for frictionless, tailor-made, and relevant solutions. To address this effectively and efficiently, new technological developments must be embraced to benefit, for example, from the innovation and delivery power of the global hyper scaler platforms. In many of our engagements we have closely collaborated with alliance partners, which enabled us to rapidly create new market-ready technology solutions. Combined with our in-depth market expertise and content knowledge, this effectively accelerated the transformation of many of our clients’ primary processes.
To address Financial Health-related challenges in society, we launched a nationwide coalition together with partners from the FSI industry. This coalition aims to improve the financial health of employees across various sectors. We have already reached over 600,000 employees. The coalition was launched by Queen Máxima, and our CEO Hans Honig is the first chairman. Working alongside our key clients, we are making an impact that matters, especially in these times of high inflation and energy prices
Together with our clients, we are committed to making the Netherlands a better place for its people. Through our focus on ‘Future of’ themes like Health, we help improve public services to create and maintain a healthy and safe country. We will continue to do this in an open, honest, and transparent way, shoulder to shoulder with our clients.
Our assignments have increasingly focused on the primary processes and most pressing topics, such as the scale-up of vaccination coverage, facilitating COVID-19 support payments, and important product procurement. With our extensive experience, knowledge, and skills, we are working on complex cases to help the public sector address their biggest issues. Last November, a team of Deloitte public sector experts enabled the Dutch government to design and deliver a comprehensive national energy price ceiling. In a remarkable 16-week period, The Netherlands became the first European nation to mitigate the effects of extreme gas price fluctuations for all households and small businesses.
It makes me proud to see our people making a positive impact on society every day, driven by an unwavering motivation and commitment. Our workload can be substantial, but we are intrinsically motivated and living our purpose. In the upcoming year, our number one priority will therefore remain to improve outcomes that have a meaningful impact on society.
The true value of Deloitte Private resides in our relational approach. We build long-term relationships with leading private companies and their owners, based on empathy, trust and loyalty. And we deeply understand the complexity and dynamics of shareholder structures and company life stages and all related challenges. A study we conducted last year to gain insights from our clients confirmed that this unique combination of expertise and relational approach is an even bigger differentiator than we thought.
Next year’s client-related challenge I am most excited about to tackle is Sustainability. There are so many sustainability challenges to solve that it can feel overwhelming, leaving clients unsure of where to begin. As Deloitte Private, we can make it easier for our clients to make the right choices. We believe that participating in meaningful, effective, and commercially attractive ecosystems is one of the biggest solutions. This needs a shift in mindset, from traditional structures to ecosystem thinking. We can take on the role of orchestrator, as we already do in Brainport, collaborating and co-creating with all participants, not just our clients, to solve societal challenges.
I am looking forward to continuing to grow Deloitte Private based on collaboration with our clients, the other industries, and other Deloitte Private geographies. Doing things together, that is what I like the most.
The energy crisis, high inflation and challenging geopolitical developments further exacerbated existing supply chain shortages for many companies in the TMT market, especially the semiconductor industry. However, the resilience of our TMT industry is very powerful, and by providing innovative responses, as always, we aim to help our clients thrive within their ecosystem.
As the industry faces supply chain shortages, we continue to play an important role in sharing industry insights and thinking with clients to find a long-term solution to operate independently of supply chain disruptions. As AI, robotics and virtual reality will increasingly impact our society because consumers progressively adopt and accept these technologies, we will guide our clients in understanding and using exciting new technologies, such as generative AI like ChatGPT.
Even in these difficult times, our industry is taking important steps in implementing an ESG strategy. Sustainability is here to stay. While this is partly regulation-driven, the vast majority demonstrated that they are intrinsically motivated and truly committed to sustainability. As are we. In the coming years, we want to continue being the driving force behind the digital transformation of our clients in a purpose-led way.