Transformation Realized™

Consulting at EY is building a better working world by realizing business transformation through the power of people, technology and innovation.

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How can you transform from market leader to market maker?

9 minute read 9 Jun 2020

The transformation imperative is urgent, challenging and opportunity-rich

Leaders are reframing their businesses to adapt to a new landscape by innovating their business model, elevating their customer experience, and finding new ways to leverage data and technology. This demands a careful balance: sustaining performance while investing in the skills, technologies and resources to accelerate growth and create new opportunities.

Maximize the success of your transformation

While speed and change are imperatives, businesses can’t afford for their transformation to fail. Those who succeed do more than prosper — they create exponential value that lasts. What we have seen from companies that create exponential value is that they place humans at the center of their organization, leverage technology at speed and innovate at scale.

Know where to invest your efforts to drive value

These new drivers of value creation demand a fundamental shift both in how companies reorient to create value and in what they value — agility versus predictability; innovation versus strategic planning; systems thinking versus operating model.

It’s a transformative mindset that also requires the parallel processing of multiple, interdependent time horizons: 70% of effort now to build a foundation for future growth; 20% of effort on new value propositions and optimizing existing capabilities for 12 months from now; and 10% of effort on exploring completely new and disruptive opportunities for the future.

Live your purpose and confront bold decision-making to reframe your future

In times of change, companies that experience exponential growth take what we call a “future-back” approach. Leading organizations start by asking, “Will my business still be relevant in 2, 5 or 10 years’ time from now? And how can I grow our competitive advantage with bold and informed decision-making?”

With their purpose as a central guide, they explore the future and their vision, working through future-back scenarios that can flex and adapt, following a path to maintain relevance today — and 15 years from now.

EY can turn your transformation ambitions into reality

Consulting at EY is building a better working world by realizing business transformation through the power of people, technology and innovation. Putting humans at the center, deploying technology at speed and innovating at scale form the core of value creation of our Transformation Realized™ approach.

Transformation Realized can help you enhance your ability to adapt and create more agility in your operating model to deliver inclusive growth to drive long-term value. It can help you understand and connect with customers through richer experiences, and leverage and deploy new technology faster. It can inspire and engage your employees, and help to build the next generation of transformation leaders with a clear and powerful purpose, enabled by productive and engaging cultures. Transformation Realized can also help you mitigate constant threats and remain relevant while developing the capacity for continuous business reinvention and innovation.

EY has the breadth of capabilities, experience and technologies and a proven track record to turn transformation ambitions into reality. From strategists to designers and engineers, from data scientists and technologists to people advisory, from risk to cyber to tax, EY can guide you through the entire lifecycle of your transformation in a way few organizations can match.

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How EY can help

Digital Strategy and Transformation

We help companies thrive in the transformative age by refreshing themselves constantly, experimenting with new ideas and scaling successes.

Change management and experience

Amongst growing disruption, increased complexity and heightened employee expectations, new approaches to change management can drive improved transformation outcomes.

Culture, talent and leadership

Demographic shifts and new technologies are changing how, why and where people work and the requirements and expectations of the workforce. To secure the skills they require, organizations need a new approach to attracting, developing and inspiring their workers.

Reshaping results

We help you respond to the challenges of COVID -19, providing trusted leadership in these urgent, critical and complex situations to help you recover and preserve value for a better future.

Customer experience

When it comes to serving the customer of the future, the answers lie in being client-centric, especially in today’s world.

Customer engagement

In today’s world of empowered customers, competitive advantage shifts from being purely competing over product and price to building trust. To prosper, you need to consider a customer-centric marketing model built on unwavering trust and loyalty.

Technology transformation

Organizations must consider foundational transformation rather than quick fixes and ad hoc investments to give them the agility to adapt.

Supply chain and operations

Based on your overarching strategy, we’ll help redefine your end-to-end supply chain and operations to support your enterprise objectives.

Strategy consulting

EY-Parthenon professionals recognize that CEOs and business leaders are tasked with achieving maximum value for their organizations’ stakeholders in this transformative age. We challenge assumptions to design and deliver strategies that help improve profitability and long-term value.

The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

How blockchain helped a gaming platform become a game changer

Microsoft Xbox and EY implemented a transparent blockchain network so game publishers, creators and asset owners can focus on the future.

The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

How can blockchain transform a gaming platform into a game changer?

A blockchain solution gives Microsoft Xbox an infrastructure that helps them manage and provide a better partner experience.

The $120b video game industry employs some of the brightest creative and technological minds. While this marriage of creativity and technology was bringing enjoyment to the masses, Microsoft Xbox’s royalty process meant that game publishers faced some unique challenges due to legacy technologies limitations.

Global gaming industry

$120b

of forecasted revenue, serving over 2.7 billion consumers worldwide.

The gaming industry serves over 2.7 billion consumers worldwide. This is enabled through partnerships between gaming platforms such as Xbox and thousands of publishers, developers, authors, designers, production houses and distributors. These relationships are all key in maintaining a high-quality product and attracting the best talent and creators to the platform.

Microsoft Xbox’s legacy system for securing and managing royalty processing was cumbersome, taking 45 days to access validated financial information about royalties earned. Along with paperwork, this was not giving the best experience to many game publishers, especially the ones with small businesses and limited resources.

EY and Microsoft wanted to help the gaming industry play fair, so the team asked themselves: could blockchain be a game-changer for the gaming industry?

Reframe your future xbox gaming grid static no zoom article

The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

A blockchain solution that integrates with publishers and creators

Together, EY and Microsoft Xbox are implementing smart digital solutions to help game publishers and creators do their best work.

Microsoft Xbox and EY worked together as one team to help deliver a transformation. Microsoft and EY teams’ joint capabilities and suite of digital solutions became a game-changer, helping Microsoft Xbox reduce the manual effort and the operational hours associated with processing royalties for publishers through automation of the royalties processing, starting to transition off the legacy system.

Smart contracts encode game creators’ IP rights

The first step in refreshing Microsoft’s legacy systems was to onboard royalty contracts onto blockchain in the form of digital contracts. The legal terms were then encoded in the blockchain network in the form of smart contracts. By opting in, industry participants can review and validate that onboarded digital contracts are the same as the royalty contracts in a confidential manner.

An automated solution that brings down operational costs

Building on the foundation of contractual transparency, the team focused on providing improved transparency to the game publisher for the royalty processing — a major pain point for Microsoft Xbox. The existing system of processing and distributing royalties was plagued by loads of reviews and tedious manual processes. Automation of the system sped up the process, reduced the effort and provided more transparency to participants, while at the same time maintaining a high degree of privacy and confidentiality between Microsoft and the game publisher. A user-centric interface adds a simple, well-designed interaction layer to the royalty distribution system for game developers.

Near real-time purchase records show game creators what they have earned

While smart contracts were used to accurately and transparently process the royalties for Microsoft Xbox’s partners, the next step was to securely and transparently share the information with them in near real-time, cutting access to royalties from 45 days to 4 minutes.

Providing near real-time access to data greatly improves the process’s effectiveness, and insights that lead to a more enriching experience for the partners,” Tim Stuart, Xbox Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft.

How EY can help

Blockchain consulting services

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger of each transaction that occurs across a network, enabling the decentralized exchange of trusted data.

As consumers purchase Xbox games, other merchandise and digital content, the smart contracts apply the encoded contractual logic and instantly calculate the royalty. This information, when ready, is then sent to each participant who has a node, creating an immutable record of transactions and royalty obligations in a secure and confidential manner. Not only does this provide creators peace of mind, it allows them to record financial transactions daily, it can also vastly improve their forecasting and reporting capabilities.

How EY can help

Artificial intelligence consulting services

Our Advisory approach to the adoption of AI and intelligent automation is human-centered, pragmatic, outcomes-focused and ethical.

Providing near real-time access to data greatly improves the process’s effectiveness, and insights that lead to a more enriching experience for the partners.

Tim Stuart

Xbox Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft.

Student using digital tablet vr classoom

The better the question. The better the answer. The better the world works.

A transparent blockchain ecosystem that empowers creators

Microsoft Xbox’s new blockchain network is better for business and better for game creators.

The technology solutions implemented in this project — including instant transactional details — led to profound benefits for Microsoft Xbox and its partners. It seamlessly connected these parties and enhanced their experience.

The blockchain solution integrates closely with game creators to give Microsoft Xbox an infrastructure that helps them manage and reward game publishers and creators. Creators now have more trust in the process and can focus on creating new games.

“By implementing a blockchain-based network and streamlined royalty processing, game publishers and Xbox benefit from a more trusted, transparent and connected system from contract creation through to royalty settlements,” Luke Fewel, General Manager, Global Finance Operations at Microsoft. The new solution enables a 99% improvement in processing time and is fully integrated with ERP for automated invoicing and recording accounting entries. It enables near-100% real-time royalty statements for game publishers, 40% plus operational effort reduction and eliminates reconciliation needs.

This technology will help transform the future of entertainment.

By implementing a blockchain-based network and streamlined royalty processing, game publishers and Xbox benefit from a more trusted, transparent and connected system from contract creation through to royalty settlements.

Luke Fewel

General Manager, Global Finance Operations at Microsoft.