EY scales up Microsoft Dynamics commitment with Sonoma Partners acquisition

Ernst & Young LLP (EY) has announced that Sonoma Partners, a consulting firm specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce CRM products, has joined EY in the U.S. The acquisition brings more than 100 experienced practitioners from the Chicago-based firm into EY's digital, data, and analytics practice.

Sonoma Partners' CRM capabilities will better enable EY to help clients on their digital transformation journeys, according to company officials.

"The addition of the Sonoma Partners team adds a critical piece that will help us support our clients in their delivery of exceptional customer and employee experiences, while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales and service functions, said Greg Jenko, principal, Ernst & Young LLP and EY Americas digital, data and analytics leader, in a statement. ‘This adds another piece to our already broad set of Microsoft capabilities across the digital transformation landscape.'"

In an interview, Jenko says that EY's CRM practice was predominantly a business process strategy/business process practice with fewer consultants in Dynamics and Salesforce.

"Obviously, bringing Sonoma on board, this is a significant uplift in terms of market presence, head count, credentials, market presence," he says. "We viewed this as an absolutely necessary step function we had to make to be able to attack the whole front office around marketing, sales, and service for our clients."

EY has had an alliance with Microsoft for about three years, Jenko says.

"When you think about the four big pillars that Microsoft has around the Azure cloud space, [you have] the Cortana analytics space, the productivity suite around Office 365, and the business applications piece," he says.

When the EY and Microsoft first teamed up, EY had very ...