McKinsey often helps clients grow by assessing new business opportunities, finding new partners, and undertaking due diligence. But in the case of our newest acquisition, Candid Partners, it happened to be a client who helped us make the match.
A large organization asked us to help them with a major cloud transformation. They independently brought McKinsey and Candid together to solve a complex technical problem, and we worked side by side from initial strategy development through final implementation.
This is just one of several examples in which our firms collaborated. Recognizing the value of our combined capabilities, we recently formalized the relationship, welcoming Candid Partners and their accomplished team of 100+ senior technical experts into our community.
Moving forward, we will continue to bring our deep industry and functional expertise to cloud projects and Candid Partners’ distinctive assets will be incorporated into the work processes, including their Matter platform, which assists in planning, provisioning and managing cloud security compliance.
“We were immediately struck by the impressive depth and collaborative approach of the people we met at Candid Partners—and their track record of both solving complex technical challenges and delivering cloud programs for some of the world’s largest organizations,” said Steve Van Kuiken, a senior partner and global leader of McKinsey Technology.
“With Candid Partners’ people and knowledge, we will scale our technical capabilities and accelerate the rate at which we can help our clients achieve tangible business value from cloud adoption,” said Liz Hilton Segel, managing partner for North America.
While our firms’ talent profiles differ, the cultures are very similar. “As an organization, Candid Partners applauds technical depth, creative problem solving, and a total focus on getting the job done,” explains Merrick Olives, who co-founded the firm with John Peak. “What our people value most is the opportunity to work on the most challenging technology projects out there – McKinsey can help our team realize this.”
When you have a client migrating a critical financial application into the cloud, we can bring experts to the table who’ve done this multiple times.
Merrick Olives, co-founder of Candid Partners
This partnership comes at a time when companies are increasingly turning to cloud for its advantages over traditional IT models in terms of flexibility, speed, resilience, and scalability–critical features for virtual working, collaboration and accessing data—that have become more important during the pandemic.
“Cloud is now a significant CEO/Board level topic and the most pressing enterprise tech opportunity our clients are dealing with today. It’s an important area that we will continue to grow,” said Kevin Sneader, global managing partner of McKinsey.
Candid Partners, founded in 2013 in Atlanta, is one of the fastest-growing cloud firms in the country, with 95 percent of their work focused on Fortune 500 companies. They have successfully completed 250 cloud programs and are one of the only companies to migrate 100 percent of a Fortune 100 client’s applications to the cloud.
“We have assembled a group of very experienced people including engineers, developers, architects and agile coaches. When you have a client migrating a critical financial application into the cloud, we can bring experts to the table who’ve done this multiple times,” says Merrick. “Our average technical person is 20 years into his or her career, which makes a big difference.”
The integrated McKinsey-Candid Partners team will help clients with end-to-end cloud transformations, from initial strategy, business-case development and road mapping through to designing the architecture, migrating applications, and optimizing workloads.
Our capabilities are essential given the greatest value from the cloud is in enabling businesses to realize their strategic goals such as enhancing innovation, speed and scale, rather than simply cutting costs.
For example, airlines can streamline their customer experiences, manage global information networks, and route crews and aircraft more effectively. Healthcare systems can rationalize complex infrastructures and deploy patient services that are mobile and flexible while adhering to regulatory requirements. Automotive manufacturers can seamlessly connect thousands of suppliers in real-time across the value chain.
“We believe the cloud holds immense potential, but most companies are only scratching the surface”, says Steve. “We are going to continue to invest in this area to bring the most distinctive capabilities to our clients.”
