The combination of BDO's tax, audit and legal teams with doubleYou Partners' long-standing expertise in transaction advisory brings new impetus to the industry. Peter Gunda, Managing Partner of BDO Slovakia, Alex Šrank and Henrich Daubner from doubleYou Partners in an interview approach the synergy of mutual cooperation.
BDO as an international brand in Slovakia joins forces with a team of experts from the doubleYou Partners consulting sphere with many years of experience. What do you promise from the cooperation?
Peter Gunda: Slovakia has shifted a lot in the last thirty years, there are a lot of companies in different sectors on the market, which is also related to the demand for consulting services, which must be tailored. We have been focusing on a pro-client approach for years and we are trying to build a comprehensive sector specialization where clients can find support in the areas of tax, law and audit. The final link in this quatrefoil was the area of transactional advisory. I am very excited about the strategic partnership with doubleYou partners and I am confident that through it we will be able to provide A to Z services to BDO clients.
How will the approach of doubleYou Partners and BDO differ in terms of client servicing and internal team allocation?
Alex Šrank: We have decided to bring consulting to the Slovak market in a slightly different form. We want to offer our clients a team of consultants who have more than twenty years of experience in the consulting business and at the board level in multinational companies. I think that we have a unique expertise in this area on the Slovak market. We primarily want to focus on complex projects where we are confident that we can deliver the highest quality. We believe that the combination of our know-how and BDO's international expertise will attract new and existing clients. So far we have had very positive feedback.
Henrich Daubner: For us, the rule is that we want to be responsible for delivering concrete results and change. It is not enough to just send a presentation. The proposed strategy must actually be put into practice and the consultant should be ready to advise the client throughout the process. We don't delegate the work to less experienced colleagues, but we offer clients agility and guarantee that people with a wealth of experience are working on the project all the time.
You mentioned that you are trying to take a pro-client approach. In what context do you apply it?
Peter Gunda: We see a hunger in the market for an advisor to come up with a tangible solution that fits the size of the company. We have a hunger to spend time with the client and maintain day-to-day contact. At BDO, we conduct a satisfaction survey every two years. One of those things that always resonates is our directness in communication. We communicate openly with our clients and don't lose the courage to verbalize even messages that may be uncomfortable at first. The client then has the opportunity to prepare for the situation in good time.
Alex Šrank: We want to avoid the inefficient "Review and Rework" process that sometimes arises due to a lack of expertise and frustrates clients. Indeed, the experienced experts that the client will see in the business proposal will also work directly with them in all phases of the project, from the definition of the input data and the study of documents in the data room to the presentation to the board of directors. At the same time, we only want to work on as many projects as we can realistically deliver in this way and only in areas where we have real deep expertise. The goal is to make all our clients feel like a "Key Account" at all times.
Henrich Daubner: You need three things for an M&A transaction - a transaction advisor, a lawyer and a tax advisor. Through our strategic partnership, we are able to solve complex problems. At the same time, we have partners capable of negotiating changes with the board of directors. The great synergy between doubleYou Partners and BDO is also in the high quality legal and tax expertise that BDO has at a very high level.
In what ways does international expertise enrich your service to clients?
Peter Gunda: BDO's global network allows us to draw on the industry knowledge of colleagues in 160 countries in our "Centres of Excellence". The closest one is in Vienna. The range of services we offer is also important to our clients. During the Corona crisis, we did not wait, but used this period to create the BDO Legal division. The cooperation with the transaction experts from doubleYou Partners is a logical step that will bring superior expertise in this area as well.
General uncertainty prevailed in the market last year. You are currently strengthening your M&A competence. Do you expect a recovery in this market segment? Where else do you see opportunity?
Alex Šrank: The era of rising interest rates has resulted in lower valuations on the buyers' side, while sellers' expectations have not been fully corrected. Equity markets had a beautiful summer when the S&P 500 was within sight of all-time highs, then came the correction, so the issue of business valuations is a pretty hot topic right now. But we're seeing a pretty active deal market, with owners looking to bring their successful business stories to a close or needing a partner and capital to expand. Our clients are successful entrepreneurs in their businesses. Working with us ensures that they don't learn from their own mistakes about how transactions work and leave millions on the table.
Henrich Daubner: Gone are the days when the business cycle was predictable and moved in amplitude. The black swan does not come once every ten years. We are seeing an increasing importance of agility on both the sellers' and buyers' side. Many sellers need to be prepared to be able to react flexibly; on the buyer side, we are seeing more strategic investors who are buying companies for the long term, not on speculation.
Peter Gunda: We see huge potential in succession. The generation of the founding fathers is coming to retirement age and often they have no one to pass their business on to. This is discussed in many forums and conferences are devoted to this topic in Slovakia. The founders are cautious because they are connected to the companies by umbilical cords. They are afraid of working with an unknown advisor, they have a lot of question marks. The role of the consultant is to show their expertise and reassure business owners that they are working with experienced professionals to sell their business.
For the development of tailor-made solutions, it is now important that IT capacity also complements the consultancy capacity. What innovations are you planning to bring to the market?
Alex Šrank: Even very traditional companies now realise that they will not be able to avoid digitalisation. That's why we have experts directly in the team who can manage and facilitate a workshop with the board of directors to develop the strategy, as well as people who can draw new process maps for the "target business model" and can project-manage the implementation, including software changes.
Henrich Daubner: We want to bring two main directions to the market in this area. The first category is complex solutions that focus on the digitalization of complex processes. In the second category, we are focusing on simplifying traditionally complicated tools such as Business Intelligence platforms or Data warehouses. Our goal is to make these solutions accessible to smaller and medium-sized companies. Using an approach like MVP (Minimum Viable Product), combined with "low code" and "no code" tools, we are able to respond quickly and efficiently to market needs.
Peter Gunda: It is important that, in addition to our technical expertise in IT, we are able to see problems from the perspective of the company's management. This allows us to better understand the company's needs and strategic direction, enabling us to deliver comprehensive solutions that are not only technically advanced, but also in line with the company's business goals.
According to the experts from BDO and doubleYou Partners, the effect of cooperation is demonstrated right from the very beginning. They have already verified the joint functioning on a number of test projects with more than positive results. According to them, the beginning of this partnership is not about finding out how well the mutual chemistry works, but directly launching a new level of consulting.
