Tag: Deloitte Consulting

All of the Big 4 Land on This Year’s Vault Consulting 50 List (2012)

Back with more lists that include your favorite accounting firm. Today’s edition is the Vault Consulting 50. Mostly this list consists of firms that you wish you could work for but you can’t because you either have no pedigree or are dumber than a sack of hammers. That said, all the Big 4 are represented with Deloitte Consulting breaking into the top 5 (2011 ranking in parenthesis):

1 (1) Bain & Co.
2 (3) McKinsey
3 (2) Boston Consulting Group
4 (6) Deloitte Consulting
5 (25) Monitor Group


6 (8) A.T. Kearney
7 (7) Oliver Wyman
8 (5) The Cambridge Group
9 (4) Analysis Group, Inc.
10 (16) Booz & Company

This is a pretty fun list mostly because there was a lot of jumping around by the firms (*ahem* Monitor Group, where did you come from?). Other notables that you’re probably curious about include:

11 (32) Accenture
12 (13) PwC
21 (19) PRTM (who PwC just purchased)
36 (44) Navigant Consulting
42 (45) Capgemini
45 (42) FTI Consulting
47 (NR) Ernst & Young
50 (NR) KPMG

Jump over to the full list if you’re interested to see the rest of the Top 50 and here’s Vault’s methodology for those curious about that sort of thing.

Vault Consulting 50 [Vault]
Last year’s coverage:
Big 4 Have Big Presence on Vault’s Prestige List, Less So in Top 50

Tara Reid’s New Husband Is a Deloitte Consultant

The lucky new Mr. Tara Reid is none other than Zack (aka Zach, aka Zachary) Kehayov and he works out of Deloitte Consulting’s Washington, D.C. office, according to this LinkedIn profile. Frankly, the profile could use some work but now that he’s got access to American Pie residuals, it probably doesn’t make any difference.

We were tipped off to this information by reader who wrote, “For anyone who thought their aspirations of being in TMZ would be on hold while at Deloitte, think again.” Indeed.


For those not up to speed on their partygirl-suddenly-gets-married news, Reid and Kehayov got married an hour after being engaged on the Greek Isle of Santorini. Reid first announced their engagement on Twitter and then two tweets later she announced “Love in Greece…I am now a wife.”

She then tweeted several pictures including her ring and two portraits of the newlyweds. Her most recent tweet was simply “Bulgaria we love u!” Bulgaria being the home country of the Kehayov.

Anyway, more about Zach – like we said, his LinkedIn profile says he’s in the DC Metro area but on his D Street (that’s Deloitte’s internal Facebook) profile that you can see on the next page, it says he’s in Pittsburgh. His profile also says that he’s a Marymount University graduate, majoring in Financial Economics. He lists Georgetown Private Cliente (now part of DC-based Manna Capital Management) as a previous employer and as co-founder of Semper Sports, LLC (Google search turns up empty).

Gawker called a Kehayov a “a random giant-ring-buying rich guy who works in finance” but a Deloitte consultant hardly qualifies as a “rich guy.” Maybe his father is some captain-of-industry type in Bulgaria who gave his son boatloads of money to study/live/spread seed in the States but even if that’s the case, why would he go to school at Marymount? Perhaps the female to male ratio? But more importantly, why would he work at Deloitte? In Pittsburgh? Anyway, it appears he’s back in DC and is obviously doing all right for himself.

Although judging by this picture from the Daily Mail, Zach looks as though he needed some time away from the Green Dot. The man looks like he was ready for a vacation. We left messages for the numbers we could get for Mr. Kehayov but so far have heard nothing and considering he’s abroad, that’s understandable. Don’t rush back, Zach. You’ve got co-workers that have found peace while on vacation, you can do it too!

Deloitte Consultant Inadvertently Finds Peace on Vacation

Barbara Adachi, a principal in Deloitte Consulting’s human capital practice, started creating a stricter separation between vacation and work when she was in Patagonia on vacation several years ago. Her BlackBerry didn’t get reception there, she said, “and I had no choice but not to check it — it was very freeing.” [NYT]

Deloitte Announces New Heads of Tax, Consulting

Rounding out the spring of leadership changes for Deloitte are Jim Moffatt who will be the new Chairman and CEO of Deloitte Consulting and Carl Allegretti who will serve in the same roles for Deloitte Tax.

U.S. CEO Elect Joe Echevarria is already finding his stride with the boilerplate praise, saying of Moffatt, “Jim is an excellent choice to build Deloitte Consulting’s market leadership. During his 23 years with Deloitte, Jim has served clients with distinction, and demonstrated his ability to drive the Deloitte Consulting strategy and seize market advantage.”

And he’s equally stoked for Allegretti, “In each of his leadership roles, Carl has made and maintained strong connections with both clients and people. This is a formula for success that has served him well.”

That should do it for announcing new Deloitte overlords since the new fiscal year starts next Wednesday but if someone else gets squeezed in between now and then, we’ll let you know. And since the new fiscal year means compensation speculation, drop us any rumors you’re hearing around merit increases and bonuses.

[via Deloitte and er…Deloitte]

Deloitte Is Lending Michigan a Helping Hand

Did I say lending? Sorry, that’s not technically accurate. Deloitte Consulting is monitoring Michigan’s welfare computer systems and that involves billable hours. Lots of them. $15 million worth.

The state of Michigan is spending millions of dollars on a contractor to run its welfare computer system partly because it doesn’t offer enough money to attract new hires. A system called Bridges keeps track of welfare cases in the Department of Human Services. In February, Deloitte Consulting was given a one-year contract for about $15 million to maintain it and make regular updates.

Of course it would be cheaper if the Wolverine State did this themselves but there’s a small problem:

[The State’s technology department] lost 15 people to early retirement in December and had several vacancies starting at roughly $42,000 a year. Nobody applied.

Mich. spends millions on contractor [AP]

Consulting Magazine Throws a Few Bones to the Big 4 with Latest “Best” Rankings

The Big 4 managed to squeeze onto a a couple different recent lists for their consulting efforts including Consulting Magazine’s 2010 Best Firms to Work For and Vault’s 2011 Consulting 50.

We’ll roll out the particulars of Consulting Mag’s lists first and give you Vault’s results later today.


Consulting Mag has several different lists but we’ll stick to the most relevant for the Big 4 . We’ll start off with the overall ranking:

1. Bain & Company
2. The Boston Consulting Group
3. North Highland
4. Point B
5. McKinsey & Company
6. Deloitte Consulting
7. Booz Allen Hamilton
8. PricewaterhouseCoopers
9. Accenture
10. Slalom Consulting
11. Milliman
12. Booz & Company
13. A.T. Kearney
14. Capco
15. PRTM

So the Big 4 really makes two appearances here with Deloitte and PwC. You could throw Accenture in there for old time’s sake. Back when we covered Barry Salzberg’s little merger chat in the Journal, two names that were thrown at him were Booz and A.T. Kearney. While this list is certainly no indication, you’ll see that based on the rankings, Deloitte ranks above both those firms despite commenters suggestion that Booz and A.T. are superior brands.

The list dominated by the Big 4 was the Business Advisory Services:

1. PricewaterhouseCoopers
2. Alvarez & Marsal
3. Ernst & Young
4. KPMG
5. FTI

You don’t see Deloitte and Accenture on this list since they fall on the “Multi-Service” list at #1 and #2 respectively and Capgemini (purchased E&Y Consulting in 2000) is numero uno on the Information Technology list.

Deloitte Consulting and PwC get dropped on a few more lists that include: Career Development, Work/Life Balance and Culture while KPMG and E&Y are nowhere to be found. A list of “Best Places to Start a Career” listed Deloitte at #3 and KPMG at #6 with PwC and E&Y MIA.

Naturally there is room for bellyaching and there are vaguely familiar frustrations in the feedback portion:

Leadership
You have to manage your career with little help from management. Here’s the rope, climb the mountain or hang yourself…

Work/Life Balance
The concept of a work life balance is talked about, but only as an afterthought.

Compensation/Benefits Satisfaction
Your work will double, but salary may not.

Those aren’t specific to any one firm but something tells us you could find someone in any of the Big 4 consulting/advisory groups griping about these issues. OH! And as far as scoring for morale goes, the Big 4 are shutout of the top ten.

So a bit of a mixed bag on this particular list but you’ll likely see a rash of press releases in the coming days and weeks along with emails and whatnot from your leadership.

So feel free to debunk the latest seemingly arbitrary rankings. We certainly expect the consulting purists of the bunch to be disgusted with the Big 4 sullying these particular grounds.

The Best Firms to Work For, 2010 [Consulting Magazine]
PricewaterhouseCoopers Named Among the Top 10 Best Firms to Work For by Consulting Magazine [PR Newswire]

Marin County Accuses Deloitte of, Among Other Things, Using ‘Neophytes’ on SAP Project

Deloitte is being sued by Marin County in California, who is alleging fraud by misrepresenting its “skills and experience.” In other words, the County says that D used their ERP project as more or less a training ground for its newbie consultants. And no client likes it when you bring the blades of grass on site. They can’t even turn on their laptops without causing some sort of scene, amiright?


Channel Web has some of the particulars:

The County in April 2005 hired Deloitte to implement its SAP ERP system. However, the County alleged in the court document, “rather than providing the County with SAP and public sector expd the County’s SAP project as a trial-and-error training ground to teach its consultants — many of them neophytes — about SAP for Public Sector software, all at the county’s expense.”

Plus! The County claims Deloitte promised their very best people. From the complaint: “Deloitte further represented that for the County’s SAP implementation, Deloitte had assembled a team of its ‘best resources’ who had ‘deep SAP and public sector knowledge.’ “

A Big 4 firm promising their best and brightest on the job in an RFP? There’s a shocker. “Best” being relative, as we all know but Marin County (obviously not familiar with a Big 4 sales pitch) must have been expecting a team to fly in from hyperspace that could slap this thing in lickity.

Thankfully, Michael Krigsman explains over at ZDNet that this isn’t exactly rare:

1. The court filing describes sales practices that are common through the consulting and systems integration industry.

For example, the complaint alleges that Deloitte committed to “dedicate our best resources and bring tailored implementation strategies to meet [Marin’s] long-term needs.” Many IT customers complain their system integrators do not follow through on such commitments and use inexperienced labor in attempts to reduce their own costs and increase profits.

We’d be so bold to say that this true of many Big 4 engagements, whatever the service line. Newbies have to get their teeth cut somewhere – why not on a public service job where money obviously grows on trees?

Deloitte isn’t impressed with this gnat of a lawsuit, claiming that they did exactly what they were supposed to do (not to mention to put up with the amateurs at MC that have zilch ERP experience) and the system was working just fine when they left:

As stated previously, we fulfilled each and every one of our obligations under the contract, as evidenced three years ago when all of our work was approved by the County officials responsible for the project. To be clear, the SAP (NYSE:SAP) software was working properly when we completed our work in November 2007. Not only is the complaint without merit, but we are filing our own claim against the County for breach of agreement and unpaid invoices. Although we are confident that we will prevail in court, it remains our belief that this dispute can and should be resolved in a more logical fashion that benefits the County and its taxpayers.

So Deloitte gets a little huffy basically saying, “Suck it, Marin County. MBAs love Deloitte. OH, and btw, you owe us some money,” but ultimately wants to keep things civilized for the sake of the taxpayers. Let’s hope it stays childish just for the sake of entertainment purposes. Taxpayers in California are f—ed anyway.

Marin County complaint against Deloitte Consulting on failed SAP project

California County Sues Deloitte For Fraud In SAP ERP Project [Channel Web]
Marin County sues Deloitte: Alleges fraud on SAP project [IT Project Failures/ZDNet]