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Business Consulting
Our Consulting team guarantees quick turnarounds, lower partner-to-staff ratio than most and superior results delivered on a range of services.
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Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
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Deal Advisory
Our experienced Deal Advisory team has provided a range of transaction, valuation, deal advisory and restructuring services to clients for the past two decades.
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Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
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Digital Transformation
Our Digital Transformation team work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Forensic Accounting
Our Forensic and Investigation Services team have targeted solutions to solve difficult challenges - making the difference between finding the truth or being left in the dark.
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Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal setting framework that helps teams, individuals and organisations set and track measurable goals.
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People and Change Consulting
Our People & Change Consulting team help clients adapt to the changing nature of the workforce - how they attract, retain, engage, develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
Grant Thornton is Ireland’s leading provider of insolvency and corporate recovery solutions.
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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced payroll teams become your dedicated payroll department, aiming to process your payroll in the most cost effective and compliant manner.
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Grant Thornton's reliable and cost-effective outsourcing services help you streamline your business operations by taking care of your workload.
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Audit and Accounting Advisory
Our Audit and Accounting Advisory team takes the headache out of multi-jurisdictional audit compliance requirements as well as technical compliance with accounting standards and legislation for clients.
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Business Process Outsourcing
Grant Thornton’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team serves the needs of rapidly growing mid-tier multinationals operating out of Ireland and other hubs through the provision of services across the full range of finance functions.
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Flexible People Solutions
At Grant Thornton, our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) department have a dedicated team that help finance functions maximise efficiency.
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Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions
Our Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions service offering covers a full suite of compliance services including financial statement preparation and related filings, dual bookkeeping, direct and indirect tax, statistical returns and payroll.
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Global Payroll Solutions
At Grant Thornton, we meet the challenges of our clients. Our Global payroll compliance service offering is tailored to meet all your payroll requirements through a single point of contact.
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Actuarial
Our Actuarial team provides a comprehensive range of services to our insurance clients. From regulatory support for compliance to delivering specialist expertise in insurance & reinsurance.
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We recognise that businesses are operating at different levels of maturity when it comes to sustainability, and pride ourselves on working with our clients to develop bespoke solutions to their needs.
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Our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) team designs and implements creative solutions for organisations expanding into new markets or undertaking functional financial transformations.
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Grant Thornton Financial Counselling (GTFC) comprises a team of highly qualified professionals who offer financial advice to individuals and corporates across a range of areas including savings, investments, pension planning, and inheritance and succession planning.
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Our services on Inheritance Planning mirror those on Succession Planning whereby the foundations of the plan are derived from meaningful conversations with those that wish to pass on or protect their asset base.
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We have extensive experience guiding our clients successfully through the succession process. This involves advice on both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the process. While there is a business at the core of each succession plan we advise on, it is all predicated on understanding the people and their respective wishes.
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Attracting and retaining key talent, managing employment costs and ensuring compliance with complex tax rules presents one of the most serious challenges today for many businesses. You need to ensure that your business complies with increasingly complex tax legislation and can adapt to updated Revenue guidance in a cost-effective way and we are here to help.
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Financial Services Tax
The Grant Thornton team is made up of experts who are fully up to date in terms of changing and evolving tax legislation. This is combined with industry expertise and an in-depth knowledge of the evolving financial services regulatory landscape.
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Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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We develop close relationships with clients in order to gain a deep understanding of their businesses to ensure they make the right operational decisions. The wrong decision on how a company sells into a new market or establishes a new subsidiary can have major tax implications.
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Real Estate Tax Advisory
The Irish real estate market has experienced considerable change in recent years. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of challenges for investors, but has also brought about significant opportunities. With this in mind, taxation is now more than ever one of the key factors for real estate investors when appraising investments, financing methods and development structuring.
Cloud computing is evolving rapidly, but the commercial value is still being weighed in favour of the suppliers.
In 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was reputedly asked what he thought was the historic impact of the French Revolution. After considering the question for a moment he is said to have replied: “It’s too soon to tell”. This statement can in a way be applied to cloud computing in 2016. While the technology is maturing rapidly, true clarity around cloud costs and contracts remains underdeveloped.
In today’s world, IT and business strategies converge as IT is intrinsically linked with the business strategy of modern organisations both big and small. The explosion of cloud is a feature of this trend and while there are many positives, it behoves the buyer to beware of the hidden impacts and costs of cloud computing, a sample of which include:
Business case
Understand your current costs in detail before deciding that cloud will save you money. Make sure you know all the components and costs that go into delivering your on-premise solution and map how moving to the cloud will impact them.
Hidden costs
Hidden costs are lurking everywhere and quickly undermine a cloud business case. Headline figures often do not show the true cost attached with a cloud service. Examples that can lead to nasty surprises include: post-promotional period pricing, back-up fees, storage fees; threshold breach charges, additional instances and language packs. Similarly be aware that the much vaunted ‘elasticity’ of the cloud does not mean that a reduction in your requirement results in a reduction in your fee.
Switching cost
Do not assume that your software licences simply ‘transfer’ if you move that same software application to the cloud. There is often a migration fee involved. Similarly, do not underestimate the costs involved in switching from one cloud provider to another (or bringing your application back on-premise).
Suitability for cloud
Is the application you are migrating suitable for the cloud and have you factored in the time it will take you to implement it? While certain cloud solutions can be operational in a very short time, a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, for example, will still take time to get up and running and you may have paid your annual subscription fee up front. Supplier ecosystem
Contract dangers
Beware the hidden subcontractors - a cloud provider is only as good as his weakest subcontracting company. Many, in fairness, do not engage subcontractors, but you need to know.
Another danger is a lack of clarity on where and how your data is stored, with whom it is co-located and how you can get it back if you need it. Similarly, regarding service levels, pay close attention to the performance targets and the credits you receive when the cloud provider fails you – both are often underwhelming. Likewise, be aware of an annual inflation plus a percentage uplift on your subscription fee.
In summary, the cloud is here to stay and this is largely a good thing. However, it is your responsibility to read the contract (don’t just click ‘Accept’), understand the costs and model the impacts on your business over a three to five year period. Exit and renewal clauses should be studied, total costs of ownership should be computed and be aware that your supplier management capabilities will be tested.
Cloud computing technology is evolving rapidly, but we are still early in the contract and commercial maturity stakes, with these being weighted decidedly in favour of the cloud supplier. We do not know when a more equitable balance will be achieved – it’s still too early to tell.
First appeared in The Sunday Business Post November 27, 2016
