KPMG Australia buys Chartertech to supercharge tech offering

The consulting firm has bought one of the fastest growing technology financial advisory practices as it looks to supercharge its offering.

George Skillin and Michael McRoberts, co-founding directors of Chartertech, with KPMG’s Naomi Mitchell.

KPMG Australia has bought technology and financial group Chartertech as it looks to bolster its mid-market enterprise business and bring new technology to clients.

Around 140 specialist technology and accounting staff will join the firm’s mid-market business, KPMG Enterprise, expanding team size and bringing new technology capability including IBM TM1 Planning Analytics.

The acquisition follows a major restructure by KPMG to simplify its consulting business amid broader plans to have 60 per cent of its business focused on transformation and implementation of technology systems, instead of focusing on assessment and advice.

KPMG Australia chief executive Andrew Yates said Chartertech was an innovative and forward-thinking business which would play a major role within the professional services firm.

“This is a significant investment in our Enterprise business – which is focused on advising emerging, private, family, government and mid-market organisations,” he said.

“Together, we’ll have greater capacity to serve our clients, and we will become one of the leading TechnologyOne teams in the country.”

Chartertech is a consulting firm specialising in financial advisory, software and technology solutions which helps its clients build better finance capability. It has one of Australia’s top TechnologyOne practices, and also offers specialist financial analytics and forecasting capabilities based on the IBM TM1 and Cognos platforms.

Chartertech co-founding directors George Skillin and Michael McRoberts will join KPMG as partners, bringing with them 140 team members across five offices nationally.

Mr Skillin said KPMG was the perfect match for Chartertech after having undergone a period of a rapid growth after starting with seven staff in 2017

“We are excited to be entering our next phase as part of a global professional services firm. KPMG is the perfect match for us – with our joint ‘people first’ approach clinching it for us,” he said.

“Being part of something values-aligned and bigger will enable us to better support our staff with a new generation of career opportunities, and better serve our clients through expanding services.”

KPMG has beefed-up its tech offering. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The acquisition builds upon KPMG’s strategic expansion into technology enablement. Past acquisitions include Oracle integration firm Certus APAC, SAP consultants Think180, intelligent automation and software integration firm Rubicon Red, and Fiji-based Microsoft specialist firm Acton.

KPMG Enterprise national managing partner Naomi Mitchell said Chartertech were trailblazers in finance technology and enterprise planning and forecasting and had

a national reach and strong relationships with education, private and public sector clients.

“Tech transformation is the number one area of demand for mid-market clients, and it’s incredibly hard to access this talent,” she said.

“Coming together in this way makes great sense for both organisations. We very much look forward to working together to build an exciting future.”

The Chartertech team will merge with KPMG’s Enterprise’s technology and financial advisory practice. The deal is slated to complete in November, subject to satisfaction of conditions.

KPMG has looked to move into the tech space this year to meet changing demand and evolving needs of clients who are expecting major consulting firms to leverage technology to transform their businesses at a much faster pace.

Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC have gone all in on emerging technologies such as generative AI in the past year, investing billions of dollars which has resulted in the rollout of custom-built virtual assistants similar to ChatGPT other systems designed to turn work around quicker.

Commercial terms were not disclosed.