Industry highlights

We work across six industries to best support our clients through our expertise and capabilities. Here’s an overview of what’s been happening in each of them over the past year.

Consumer

Our revenue grew by nine percent to £854 million in FY20, with increased demand in the Consumer Products sector and our Consulting and Financial Advisory businesses.

This was a year of significant transformation for the Consumer industry with a long-term backdrop of perpetual change in consumer habits and lifestyles (driven mostly by sentiment around sustainability, climate change and Brexit) alongside the clear and instant effects of a lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re helping clients to respond and thrive in three key areas:

1. The changing consumer (see our Shifting Sands report)
2. New business models and fragmenting competition
3. Driving efficiencies

For example, COVID-19 has accelerated the need to improve – and in some cases implement – digital consumer experiences. This is an area where we’ve successfully helped many clients to transform their approaches to create enhanced consumer interactions

Energy, Resources & Industrials

Our revenue saw marginal growth to £366 million in FY20. Our client base now includes some major audit appointments coupled with strong advisory client demand in the Industrial Products & Construction, Oil, Gas & Chemicals and Mining & Metals sectors.

Multiple complex topics impacted the industry during FY20. These include a clear direction on the future of energy in a world where energy must be sustainable yet abundant, smart industrial and energy operations that are ever more connected, and continuing unprecedented commodity price volatility. Clearly COVID-19 had an immediate effect on commercial aerospace and construction in particular, while also impacting consumer and transportation energy consumption.

We’ve added significant value for our clients by navigating Smart Factories (connected production environments), shifting to an Energy-as-a-Service mindset and building resilience through operational effectiveness. In particular, we’ve helped our clients address long-term issues such as rapid technological innovation and disruption, and upstream oil and gas supply chain collaboration, while helping them to deal with the immediate impact of the pandemic.

Financial Services

Our revenue grew by eight percent in FY20 to £1,255 million, with increased advisory client demand in all sectors and some major audit appointments driving the growth.

Rising consumer expectations, regulatory pressure and advances in technology continued to disrupt swathes of the industry. The pandemic provided a stress test, challenging business profitability, balance sheets and delivery models. In many parts of the industry, business models remain fundamentally intact but incumbents are being forced to innovate to defend profit margins and adapt to new societal expectations.

Throughout the pandemic, our focus has been on understanding how the disruption will impact, and change, the industry and society. This has included not only working with our clients to navigate the new strategic landscape and deliver solutions, but engaging with the wider financial services ecosystem to make an impact that matters and support the UK’s economic rebound.

Government & Public Services

Our revenue grew by 19 percent to £429 million. Key events in the year have determined the focus of the Government & Public Services sector. In December, the general election resulted in a new parliament and government with a mandate and a promise to deliver Brexit. However, since March, the government has been focused on the response to COVID-19, including establishing a testing regime and mitigation against the economic effects of the crisis. In addition to this, it remains committed to its ‘levelling-up’ agenda as a way to refresh and renew economic performance across the UK and unleash businesses’ potential.

We’ve supported our government clients with their transformation agendas so they can continue to provide quality public services to society. This has included helping them to harness the power of new technologies as well as improving productivity and outcomes for citizens. We’ve also supported the government’s response to COVID-19 across a number of programmes, providing valuable skills at this critical time.

Life Sciences & Health Care

In FY20 our revenue decreased by four percent to £154 million.

This has been a year like no other for the industry. The already pervasive themes of data-driven technologies, new value creation and increased efficiencies continued in a world where people are living longer and consuming health care in new ways.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the industry has been significant and we’ve supported our clients through this. Our ConvergeHEALTH solution is helping them to provide a future that can effectively meet the evolving needs of patients, researchers, healthcare providers and payers.

We have also established two UK Regional Hubs, the Life Sciences Catalyst in Cambridge to enable connections between people, businesses and investors to support companies, regardless of their evolutionary stage. In addition the Health Tech Catalyst in the Midlands brings together health care providers, technology companies and public sector organisations to collaborate around the challenges, ideas and lessons relating to digital solutions for the sector.

Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT)

Our revenue grew by 38 percent to £565 million, with notable growth in the Telecoms and Media sub-sectors as well as our Audit and Assurance business.

This year the importance of the TMT industry was made clear as we saw digital transformation across all areas of industry and consumer life. COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of change for both our TMT clients and the markets and consumers they serve.

We continued to focus on the future by, for example, hosting our renowned Media & Telecoms 2020 & Beyond conference , where we discussed key topics such as purpose, 5G, partnerships and collaboration. We shared our global TMT predictions, which looked at future trends including industrial 5G and advertising on demand. We were also invited to present our thoughts on the future of TV at the Annual RTS Cambridge convention.