Some consultants within KPMG advisory feel like the services that KPMG advisory generates for its clients, could be improved. They see a potential solution within the application of design activities related to design paradigms such as user experience and customer experience. However several hurdles are experienced within the introduction of these approaches. In other words there are difficulties with the successful introduction of an approach called design thinking.

According to a market analyses, KPMG’s advisory services has maintained about the same size in a growing advisory market, where competition has increased the past seven years. KPMG is the only company of the Big Four that has not grown within the past seven years. In the meantime KPMG has lost its leading advisory position within the Big Four consultancies to Deloitte.

The market for business services is changing. There is increased competition caused by growing competitors and new European and Dutch audit legislation. In addition clients expect better business services and better business service experiences. KPMG’s position on the advisory market, the growing competition and the development of increased expectations of business services indicate the need for new ways to develop better experiences for clients. Design thinking is an approach that can be used to do just that. Therefore the assignment of this project was to find a way to introduce design thinking in a successful way at KPMG and design a solution that would enable consultants to apply it in their profession.

Design thinking is an approach that centralizes human needs by using technology driven solutions in combination with business feasibility. This way design thinking can be used to develop holistic systems that solve multiple problems at ones. The design thinking process exists out of three stages, inspiration, ideation and implementation. Each of these stages exist out of several design activities. To apply design thinking, a certain mindset is needed. One needs to be empathic, use integrative thinking, collaborative, optimistic and experimental to successfully apply design thinking. This mindset can be created under the right conditions.

There are several hurdles associated with the introduction of design thinking within corporations. To learn why and how design thinking is applied within corporation, qualitative research was done with design professionals. This research resulted into several advantages that design thinking brings into corporations and strategies to introduce the approach into corporations.

Through conversations and interviews with consultants several hurdles and strategies for the introduction of new initiatives, such as design thinking, were identified. Together with the results of the research with design professionals, these findings were translated into a list of requirements for successful design thinking introduction within KPMG.

The value of design thinking should be expressed in terms time and money to make its application interesting for consultants. It should be applied within a service that has often been provided by KPMG and that as many consultants as possible are part of in order to succesfully spread it through the organisation.

The proposal development process meets all the requirements that are addressed in these lists. Through the application of context generating methods, co-creation session and idea testing, design thinking can potentially safe a lot of time, increase proposal acceptance and improve the experience of clients at the same time.

To enable consultants to take advantage of these design thinking characteristics, a toolkit for the proposal development process was designed based upon existing design thinking methods. The toolkit is called KPMG Essence and exists out of four stages that are associated with the design stages. These are 1. Plan, 2. Discover, 3. Ideate and 4. Preview.

The first stage exists out of tools that guide consultants in planning a co-creation session and gathering context about a clients problem. The second and third stages exist out of tools that guide a co-creation session with all consultants that are involved with the development of a proposal. The fourth step enables consultants to preview their ideas to clients and gather feedback about the generated ideas. This enables consultants to learn what direction to take within the further development of the proposal and to estimate whether they can offer the client the solutions they look for, before they spend day on writing a proposal in vain.

The Discover and Ideate stages were tested on a real life client case together with seven consultants. Consultants were very enthusiastic about the session and gave a the value of the session a 6 out of 7.

At the end of the report a plan of implementation and several recommendations are made for further development.

KPMG Essence provides a first step in the further application of design thinking within the proposal process. Furthermore it enables all advisory consultants to experience design thinking. As there are many more opportunities to introduce design thinking within KPMG the tool is expected to create awareness among enthusiastic consultants about how design thinking might also improve other services within KPMG.