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Business Risk Services
Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
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Corporate Finance and Deal Advisory
We offer a dedicated team of experienced individuals with a focus on successfully executing transactions for corporates and financial institutions. We offer an integrated approach, with our corporate finance specialists working seamlessly with tax and other specialists to ensure that every angle is covered.
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Economic Advisory
Our all-island Economics Advisory team combines expertise in economics and business with a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors.
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Forensic Accounting
We have a different way of doing business by delivering real insight through a combination of technical rigour, commercial experience and intuitive judgment. We take pride in delivering responsive and tailored solutions to all our clients, capitalising on the wealth of experience housed within our Belfast and wider Forensics team
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People and Change Consulting
The Grant Thornton People & Change Consulting practice works with clients on these issues as well as on all aspects of how they attract, retain, engage develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
We work with a wide variety of clients and stakeholders such as high street banks, private equity funds, directors, government agencies and creditors to implement solutions which provide the best possible outcomes.
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Technology Consulting
Motivating and assisting our clients to pursue, maintain and secure the benefits of digital solutions is at the core of our Digital Transformation teams' agenda and goals. We work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Corporate and International Tax
Northern Ireland businesses face further challenges as they operate in the only part of the UK that has a land border with a country offering a lower tax rate.
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Employer Solutions
Our team specialises in remuneration and incentive planning and works closely with employers, shareholders and employees to ensure that business strategies are aligned and goals achieved in the most tax efficient, cost-effective manner.
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Entrepreneur and Private Client Taxes
Our team of experienced advisors are on hand to guide you through any decision or transaction ranging from the establishment of new business ventures, to realising value on exit, to succession planning and providing for loved ones.
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Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced service provides valued service to over 150 separate PAYE schemes. These ranging from 1 to 1000 employees, working for micro, SME and global employers. The service is supported by the integrated network of tax and global mobility teams and the wider Grant Thornton network delivering a seamless service. Experienced staff deliver a personal service built around your business needs.
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Tax Disputes and Investigations
Our Tax Disputes and Investigation team is made up of tax experts and former HMRC investigators who have years of experience in dealing with a variety of tax investigations. Our expertise and insight can guide you through all interactions, keeping your cost at a minimum while allowing you to continue with the day to day running of your business.
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VAT and Indirect Taxes
At Grant Thornton (NI) LLP, our team helps Northern Ireland businesses manage their UK and global indirect tax risks which, as transactional taxes, can quickly become big liabilities.
Planning for an uncertain future
20 Oct 2020Over the years I have facilitated many strategic planning workshops for clients. ‘Vision 2020’ was a popular theme three to four years ago, as organisations looked to the new decade with optimism of clarity of perfect vision. Little did any of us know that 2020 would bring anything but clarity!
That doesn’t mean that strategic planning is not an important leadership activity. However, rather than creating a step-by-step instruction manual for how to navigate the medium-term, a strategic plan should be viewed as a roadmap; knowing that detours, bumps in the road, and diversions are likely, as they are on any long journey, but the destination or vision provides the fixed point on the horizon that you are heading towards.
Some people think strategic planning is a dark art, where very senior executives lock themselves away in a room for days, until they emerge with the plan. Maybe in some organisations, that’s how it is done. The flaw with that approach is that the plan reflects the experience and insights of a few, when it is much more robust if it includes the perspectives of many.
So where to begin? As with planning any journey, there are two critical pieces of information that google maps will ask you, “Where do you want to go?” and “Where are you now?”. When creating an organisational roadmap, you must know where you want to get to, in terms of customers, markets, people, financials, etc. Then you compare that with your current situation, and you are left with the gap. The gap then needs to be broken down into milestones; shorter time periods that make the large gap more attainable in smaller chunks. These milestones are like road signs, that let you know you are on the right path, and getting closer to your destination.
Because vision should always be aspirational and slightly out of grasp, the end goal will change as you get closer. Most organisations are no longer looking 10 or 20 years to the future; given the amount of uncertainty and change, a five-year goal is as far as most will look ahead. To even look five years into the future requires the insights of many. That’s why strategic planning requires consultation and discussion with all departments and teams; to glean their ideas for where to take the company; what customers want, staff expectations, and the financials that are possible. By engaging widely, not only will you have a better plan, but you then don’t have to sell the plan to your staff once it is complete – they should see their fingerprints all over it.
All those ‘Vision 2020’ plans will have had their purpose, regardless of the detour caused by the pandemic. And if the plans were created in the consultative process described, teams of people will help their leaders to adapt and modify the roadmap as the impact of the current crisis started to hit. Yes, it was a bigger detour than we ever could have imagined, but it is still better to have a had a plan than not. The destination will remain the point on the horizon, it just may take longer to get there.