The challenge
Obliged to change auditor due to the new EU legislation that introduces mandatory firm rotation for EU public interest entities (PIEs), Melexis, a global supplier of micro-electronic semiconductor solutions, invited a number of professional services companies to bid.
Surprised that PwC wasn’t included in the process, we set about convincing the firm that with in-depth sector knowledge, a diverse team and broad usage of data analytics we could add real value in the role of auditor.
Discover what Karen Van Griensven, CFO, Melexis, has to say about what makes PwC different.
Global support from a local partner
Melexis is a fast-growing business with an already international footprint - it’s active in 14 countries. It therefore needed an auditor that could mirror its global presence and understand its operations around the world.
PwC has offices in 157 countries around the world, all delivering the same high standard of solutions and working together to serve clients as one global firm. As a centralised organisation with control coming from its headquarters in Belgium, and with most decisions taken there, it was important for Melexis that it has a trusted advisor at local level and can rely on a strong local team.
PwC has six offices in Belgium and our Hasselt site is well situated to support Melexis.
Differentiating with diversity
Counting 36 different nationalities amongst its 1,100 employees, and putting a strong focus on gender diversity, Melexis also wanted to work with a supplier that values diversity as much as it does.
"The importance of diversity for PwC was clear from the make-up of the team; people from different backgrounds, as many senior profiles as junior and women in senior positions. This made it very easy for the two teams to ‘click’ naturally and work well together," explains Karen Van Griensven, CFO, Melexis.
"PwC challenges us and digs deep into the detail to use its understanding of our business in a constructive way. That helps further increase efficiency."
Assuring digital efficiency
Our ability to offer a fresh view on data analytics and digitisation is one of the key reasons Melexis opted for PwC as its auditor. We demonstrated our advanced audit systems as part of our proposal and the benefits the client could expect to enjoy.
By automating the task, we’ve been able to gather required knowledge from firm in a much faster way than the client had experienced in the past which impressed the Melexis team.
Assuring a smooth transition
Although PwC is new to the audit role at Melexis, the transition from its previous auditor has been very smooth, according to the client for the most part due to our ability to "not just learn about the business quickly, but put that knowledge to use and ask targeted questions right from the start. PwC challenges us and digs deep into the detail to use its understanding of our business in a constructive way. That helps further increase efficiency," says Karen Van Griensven, CFO, Melexis.
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