One of the world’s biggest accountancy firms has moved part of its digital team to East London’s Tech City.
Deloitte — one of the “Big Four” professional services firms alongside PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and KPMG — will initially move 170 of its digital team to its Technology Studio on Clerkenwell Green. KPMG has already opened a high-tech office nearby with retailer Tesco and betting chain William Hill moving in earlier this year.
In the past two years Deloitte has increased its digital division by 50 per cent. It now has a 400-strong team of specialists, working out of 15 offices, across five continents. Its new Tech City team will be the company’s largest single digital unit.
Its new London office features an experimental digital wall, which will enable technology to be tested across a variety of devices. It also includes several client apartments, providing Deloitte’s staff with a dedicated space in which they can work and collaborate with customers.
“We have created a physical space at Clerkenwell which allows a modern style of working with all the technical advantages,” explained Deloitte partner, Royston Seward.
“If you look at how clients and business are adopting the use of technology to communicate with their customers, the way we work with our clients is also changing dramatically. It’s becoming much more collaborative and visual in the way we solve problems.
“Part of moving here is to be in the heart of London’s tech sector, if our clients are moving here then we want to be here. We want to be able to bring staff and clients together in a dynamic way to solve problems,” he said, while adding the move would also allow Deloitte to “attract the right kind of talent, with the right skills, to support our digital growth”.
East London’s Tech City — also known as Silicon Roundabout — started as a local and national government attempt to attract fledgling state-of-the-art innovators to the capital’s neglected east end. Since then it has grown to become the third-largest technology startup cluster in the world, after San Francisco and New York City, and has also attracted hundreds of established global players.
By 2011, approximately 200 firms were occupying the area. Within a year Wired magazine updated this figure to suggest that some 5,000 tech companies were located in the wider area centred on the Old Street roundabout. Among the biggest are Google, Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Intel and McKinsey & Company.
Several academic partners also have projects based in the cluster, including The City University London, Imperial College London, Loughborough University and University College London.
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