One on One with Crowe's Josh Cole

Crowe, a public accounting, consulting and technology firm, recently named Josh Cole as managing principal of the consulting team at Crowe, a convergence of the firm's former Performance Improvement and Risk consulting teams. In this role, Cole leads the new business unit, which includes some 1,200 personnel and generates about $325 million in revenue. The unified consulting team combines Crowe's talent across the entire portfolio of consulting solutions. The organizational change makes it easier for clients to take advantage of what the firm has to offer, Cole says. In his more than 25 years with Crowe, Cole has been instrumental in the growth of the consulting team at Crowe and its industry specializations. The move took effect April 1, the beginning of Crowe's fiscal year. Consulting caught up Cole to discuss the new role and the impact the combined consulting business will have on clients.

Consulting:You took over the position on April 1, so you've been at it for a few months, can you talk to me a little bit about the new position and your role? 

Cole:My new role is to lead the unified Consulting practice within Crowe. This practice is the combination of two former units that segregated our consulting business model into Risk and Performance-based solutions. Our former Performance Consulting practice was built around helping our clients improve through the use of enabling technology, data, and innovative solutions for very focused industries. Our Risk practice was focused on risk-oriented services, such as internal audit, third-party risk, regulatory compliance and cyber security, among others. We brought them together because market needs and expectations for risk and compliance services were merging with needs for performance improvement solutions. Both demanded industry specialization, and both expected our solutions to protect them while delivering value. So, our risk services, for instance, at one time might have been about checking the regulatory box but it's been moving to where companies were looking for a return on risk; they not only wanted to mitigate their risk, but they wanted to improve their businesses as well. Companies wanted to improve their performance without incurring new risks, so the market was demanding such safeguards with any innovation. Bottom line, by bringing them together we really simplified how the market can do business with Crowe.