EY and ServiceNow are expanding an existing partnership to bring cloud solutions and more automation to the tax and finance industry, the companies announced this week. The companies also plan to take on the tech labor shortage by opening up more training opportunities to neurodiverse individuals. EY expects the partnership to support a $1 billion business by 2025.

Paul D. Webb, EY Global Alliance Leader for ServiceNow, said that the partnership combines industry expertise with a leading cloud platform. 

“We innovate together to deliver workflow automation that enables better connectivity across systems, drives greater resource efficiency and delivers seamless human-centric processes,” Webb said.

Both companies will develop new offerings aimed at streamlining complex enterprise operations, with a focus on finance and tax services. EY was an early adopter of ServiceNow, but the official alliance relationship was established in 2014.

Bill McDermott, ServiceNow CEO, said in a press release that leaders in every industry recognize their technology architecture is their business architecture. 

“The EY organization’s deep functional and industry vertical experience  will help accelerate adoption of the ServiceNow platform,” McDermott said.

Carmine Di Sibio, EY global chairman and CEO, said in a press release that the expanded partnership will improve automation and efficiency for EY and ServiceNow clients.

SEE: Why adding neurodiversity to the cybersecurity world is a win-win for companies and employees

EY clients will have access to ServiceNow Customer Workflows and Creator Workflows, which power managed services for Tax and Payroll outsourcing and Wealth Management, as part of the partnership.

EY research found that 83% of senior global executives expect finance professionals to shift from technical focus to data, process and technology skills over the next three years.

Webb said that this trend is central to business agility as organizations become more dynamic and can focus on innovation to drive business performance and growth. Process optimization, data analysis and mining, and the ServiceNow partnership are part of that transformation. 

As part of the global program, EY will expand its existing EY Neurodiverse Centers of Excellence and establish the ServiceNow Neurodiversity Delivery Center. The program will train participants for technology roles, including developers, testing analysts and consultants. The companies plan to launch the program in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India over the next six months, following the initial U.S. launch.

More fintech partnerships predicted

The EY/ServiceNow alliance is not the only one that will shape the finance and banking industry in 2022. Nick Starai, chief strategy officer at NMI, a payments enablement company, predicts that 2022 will bring more partnerships and even mergers between independent sales organizations and independent software vendors.

“As independent software vendors (ISVs) become more deeply ingrained in payments and independent sales organizations (ISOs) in software, the line between the two will continue to blur as both sides find benefits in expanding their offerings beyond just software or payments, respectively,” Starai said.

ISOs have historically built profitable businesses by selling payment processing services, but as these services became commoditized, ISOs evolved their business models to include software into their offerings, according to Starai.

SEE: Beyond the migration: Accenture and AWS expand partnership to support continuous cloud innovation

This allows ISOs to create stickier solutions and opens additional business channels with merchants that have a higher and more consistent processing volume of payments. 

“As ISOs move into software development, ISVs are becoming more ingrained in the payment process to offer additional recurring revenue streams beyond software licenses,” he said. 

This tactic also allows ISVs to provide a variety of cutting-edge payment features in their software stack. 

“With ISVs embracing fintech, they can add payments data to their volume of customer data by selecting the right payments partner who offers fast and simple API integration alongside full commerce enablement,” Starai said.

He expects ISOs and ISVs to continue to converge as both sides become more knowledgeable in the additional software and offerings they can provide their merchant customers to create a more seamless experience.

Cloud and Everything as a Service Newsletter

This is your go-to resource for XaaS, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, cloud engineering jobs, and cloud security news and tips. Delivered Mondays

Sign up today