KPMG is ramping up on its growing customer, brand and marketing efforts as the auditing powerhouse hires Google Australia's mobile and new business leader Lisa Bora.
Bora has traded in her Sydney-based gig with the American multinational technology company to lead sales transformation for KPMG's new specialist 'Customer, Brand & Marketing Advisory' business.
Part of her role will involve driving the alignment of the chief marketing officer, chief technology officer and chief sales officer disciplines within business, which are notoriously often operating in silos.
Launched last month, KPMG’s Customer, Brand & Marketing practice now has a team of 46 specialists, including seven partners. Its services include marketing and product transformation, customer journey, customer experience, sales and channel transformation and more.
As one of the 'big four' auditors, KPMG's moves echo its rival PwC in this market. In March this year PwC revealed it would create a CMO Advisory board with members including PwC's chief creative officer Russel Howcroft; PwC CMO Mike McGrath; chief commercial and strategy officer at Network Ten Sunita Gloster, Foxtel MD of customer and retail Mark Buckman and more
PwC pulled off a major coup when it convinced Ten Melbourne GM Howcroft to join the new business in December.
KPMG says it is still actively expanding capability by “pursuing acquisitions, and recruiting more specialist talent”.
Paul Howes, partner in charge of KPMG’s Customer, Brand & Marketing Advisory, says: “Lisa specialises in adapting organisations’ sales and marketing strategies though digital disruption and organisational change. She has a strong history of successfully driving new ways of business, new partnerships, new revenue and new distribution channels - which is exactly what our clients are looking for from our new business.”
Bora was at Google for five years and her responsibilities included managing the company’s media and creative agency partnerships, driving mobile sales initiatives, YouTube content programs and packages and developing stronger client partnerships. She has more than 20 years of experience leading marketing for organisations including News Corp, Voyages Hotels & Resorts and Village Roadshow.
Marketing must not operate as a cost centre
Bora's new role sees her working with KPMG’s clients to ensure all their customer touch points are “delivering and delighting” customers’ expectations; that distribution channels are effective and future-proofed for digital disruption; and that they are building new business partnerships and marketing and sales operations for future-oriented consumer behaviours.
”Put simply, sales transformation is about putting the customer at the centre of your business by ensuring marketing, sales and distribution are aligned for profit building,” Bora says.
“It’s about making marketing operate as a profit and insight centre for a business, rather than a cost centre,” she explained.
She says being at the heart of driving this change across marketing, sales and distribution channels is what attracted her to KPMG.
Starting in late August, Bora will build a 'Sales Transformation' team focusing on areas such as technology choices, data integration, full marketing and sales supply chain reviews, loyalty program and customer service and packaging reviews, as well as helping the CMO, CTO and CSO work better together.
PwC continues to pluck talent from adland. In May Facebook’s former MD Stephen Scheeler resurfaced to lead mobile strategy and last month, it hired OMD Australia's head of strategy and innovation Ben Shepherd. Shepherd will lead the media investment and planning discipline across the CMO Advisory business.
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