Annual report for the fiscal year from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012

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Marketplace
Healthy client dialogue is
vital for success
We focus on delivering quality – and this
commitment has two sides to it. On one
side, we want to continuously improve
the quality of our services in a range
spanning almost all industries; on the
other, we want to further increase entrepreneurial
quality for our clients. Our
commitment to our clients is therefore
governed by the core idea of developing
potential on both sides. In this chapter,
we will examine the marketplace in which
we operate every day. At the heart of our
activities are dialogue with clients and
the quality standards we set ourselves.
Our clients reflect the variety of the Swiss economy as a
whole, emanating from all sectors of industry and commerce,
including the public sector. We provide the sector-specific
knowledge that firms are looking for. We render services
for a large number of major international organizations,
but also count numerous SMEs and dynamic growth companies
among our clients. Special programs have been
developed for each of the three segments so that we can
address our clients’ specific challenges and offer them
optimum support as they move forward in the future.
In Switzerland, we are proud of our particularly strong
Financial Services Organization, which meets the needs
of banks, insurance companies, pension funds, hedge
funds and private equity companies.
Targeted knowledge transfer
Knowledge is our most valuable resource and our greatest
asset. Targeted knowledge transfer is very important to
us. Our clients are aware of this strength and benefit from
the quality of our expertise; we are always up to speed
on the topics that matter. For us, quality means service
tailored to individual needs. Besides a pleasant working
relationship, our clients enjoy peace of mind that their
concerns are in the right hands.
With the basics taken care of, our clients are equipped
to focus on quality in their own dealings with business partners
and other stakeholders. The benefits are clear – we
ultimately create real added value for society as a whole and
not just the individual companies. Aside from our commercial
work, we are passionate about promoting entrepreneurship.
Industry expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit fuel
the engine of economic innovation. We want to keep this
powerful machine running and therefore promote entrepreneurship
at many different levels (see page 60).
Measurable service quality
Our relationship with clients is the building block for successful
work. We attach great importance to maintaining a
constant and open dialogue with our clients and ask them
to provide feedback on our services at face-to-face meetings
and via surveys. As part of our Assessment of Service Quality
(ASQ) program, we have conducted 242 structured interviews
with Swiss clients and sent out 650 questionnaires
this year. When carrying out the interviews, we are especially
keen to find out how the Ernst & Young service measures
up to the expectations of the client; we ask about trends
in the quality of our business relationship and whether
the client would recommend us to others.
The Ernst & Young interviewer is always an independent
person, often a senior partner, who has had no involvement
with the client or their projects. This enables the interviewee
to provide positive and negative feedback without feeling
inhibited. In the written questionnaires, we invite our clients
to comment on our technical expertise and to assess our
solution-oriented approach. We also ask them to evaluate
the team skills of the Ernst & Young employees.
The return rate of our latest survey campaign was
43percent compared to 58 percent in the previous year.
Annual report 2012