Deloitte was voted “Most Innovative Firm in Professional Services” in the inaugural BRW-St George Client Choice Awards in March.

The business magazine polled 6,500 professional services clients who were asked to rate 150 professional services firms across a range of industries. Deloitte was the “standout winner” in the area of innovation, according to judges.

“The award supports our decision to do things differently at Deloitte,” Deloitte CEO Giam Swiegers said. “The award validates the decision we took a couple of years ago to retain our consulting business and develop innovative solutions to the big, complex challenges our clients face in the areas of compliance, transactions, risk, governance and performance.”

According to Lucinda Schmidt, BRW senior writer, “The awards are not about who earned the most fees or did the biggest deals. Nor are they about who a panel of experts thinks is best. The awards are about the opinions of people whose views should matter the most – the clients.”
Deloitte’s strengths, as identified by BRW include:

• Finding out what clients want through client interviews
• Building on what works
• Involving the executive team and top-level managers in innovation
• Inviting each employee to contribute ideas
• Holding workshops to identify volunteer innovation champions
• Creating a state-of-the art intranet, The Innovation Zone, to capture ideas
• Forming an Innovation Council to assess ideas regularly and quickly
• Recognising and rewarding ideas
• Communicating, communicating, communicating