Payal Maggo, Senior Manager, Technology Consulting, tells us about her role, why change management is so important to business transformation, and what she’s currently reading with her son.

My role is a mix of client delivery and sales enablement. I do this for our external clients as well as for internal initiatives within the organisation.

I’m currently working on an internal business transformation project that’s using our Powered methodology. Powered is our outcome-based approach to accelerating business transformation. It’s how we help our clients redesign their target operating model using leading cloud-based platforms. Ad it enables them to quickly transform their businesses with reduced risk and greater agility.

At the same time, my role involves working on practice development initiatives across Powered Finance. I'm working closely with an experienced sales director in our consulting team to share knowledge on how to apply our Powered methodology to sales and delivery.

For me, it’s the software-as-a-service cloud solutions that provide IT support infrastructure to handle the technical backend of a system. 

This is the stuff that underpins any transformation. And it can provide scalability without incurring large investment costs in infrastructure. That allows companies to focus more on the value adding apps – the tech that will provide exciting customer experiences – rather than managing the backend aspect of the systems. So, for me, that’s really exciting.

There are a couple of things.

The first is simply knowing where to start. That’s where Powered Enterprise comes in: it gives clients a starting point and a structure to their transformation programmes.

But I think the biggest challenge is change management. Organisations worry about the potential change that transformation brings along with it. For example, we’ll often see resistance from employees to learn new technologies or change their ways of working. And there may be some concerns over the impact on jobs.

Change needs to be embedded from the outset. But it’s often ignored early in the transformation journey. Once again, Powered helps here. We help our clients see that there's a bigger piece of work that needs to be done for their transformation to succeed. It’s not just about implementing the tech.

I think the difference is our people. They’re the reason why our clients keep coming back to us. And they’re the reason why KPMG is one of the most trusted organisations when it comes to transformation. 

We’re transparent and authentic in our dealings with clients, and we stay true to our values.

If a project takes us into an area that’s beyond the team’s skills and expertise, we’ll say so, and then we’ll find a solution. We won’t pretend we have something we don’t. We don’t act as just a system implementer for our clients. We act like a true partner, by being part of their end-to-end transformation journey.

I’m really proud of my current project, which is called Project Empowered.

We have a fantastic team of 300 people looking at the cloud-based transformation of multiple systems.

I've had the opportunity to play a few different roles on the project over the last two years – the one I’m on now being the most complicated and exciting. And I’ve also had the opportunity to work with a big team across multiple geographies, including the UK, Germany, Ukraine and India. So, I get to learn from people in different countries, in different time zones, facing different situations in their respective areas.

I’m learning a huge amount and it’s a really exciting project. The learnings from this project will be used to create a go-to-market approach and end-to-end implementation for similar projects externally.

There are lots of things about my job that keep me motivated.

Playing multiple roles in the organisation is one of them. Working with great team members who live by KPMG values and demonstrate this in their day-to-day working life. Having a workplace that feels like a second home is a great place to be in. Talking to clients, helping them to solve problems. The satisfaction of keeping up with the organisation’s brand.  Doing a good job. And most importantly, learning something new every day. Topmost in the list is the fact that KPMG allows me to be me, and manage my personal responsibilities well.

These things give me a strong sense of accomplishment and are my Ikigai!

As a full-time working mum, I spend a lot of time helping my son with his studies. He’s learning new subjects in school, and I love to learn along with him!

We both read fiction books together – we’re currently reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

I like to read my own stuff and sometimes write too. Besides this, talking to family back home in India and just taking one-day at a time.