In­vestor con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains strong de­spite con­cerns sparked by Nestlé’s de­ci­sion to seek a lo­cal buy­er for its dairy busi­ness, with Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Nicole Lawrence, stat­ing that the move re­flects a glob­al cor­po­rate strat­e­gy rather than a loss of faith in the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Wednes­day, Lawrence cau­tioned against in­ter­pret­ing Nestlé’s de­ci­sion as a sign that multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies are aban­don­ing T&T.

“It’s not that Nestlé is leav­ing. What Nestlé is do­ing is ex­it­ing the milk busi­ness. That’s glob­al. Busi­ness­es evolve and change the way they op­er­ate.”

Her com­ments come as Nestlé’s an­nounce­ment has fu­eled pub­lic de­bate over the coun­try’s in­vest­ment cli­mate and whether in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies are los­ing con­fi­dence in the lo­cal mar­ket. Nestlé has made it clear that it is seek­ing a lo­cal buy­er for its dairy busi­ness while main­tain­ing its pres­ence in T&T.

Lawrence be­lieves that the dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant.

She main­tained that T&T con­tin­ues to of­fer at­trac­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vestors and point­ed to the steady flow of new busi­ness­es en­ter­ing the mar­ket as ev­i­dence that con­fi­dence re­mains in­tact.

“I think Trinidad is still a very prof­itable mar­ket to in­vest in. We have a vi­brant econ­o­my. There are so many things go­ing on be­sides oil and gas,” Lawrence said.

She point­ed to the wave of small busi­ness­es that emerged fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, say­ing the cri­sis demon­strat­ed the re­silience and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of T&T.

“When you look at how we came out of COVID, look at the num­ber of cot­tage in­dus­tries that came out of COVID. We are a peo­ple who are con­stant­ly try­ing to grow and build some­thing.”

Lawrence al­so ref­er­enced the planned ar­rival of in­ter­na­tion­al restau­rant brands IHOP and Ap­ple­bee’s, say­ing they re­in­force the ar­gu­ment that in­vestors con­tin­ue to see op­por­tu­ni­ties in T&T.

“The in­vestor con­fi­dence is there. Peo­ple are will­ing to spend their mon­ey to grow.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains in a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion as the coun­try awaits projects such as Drag­on gas, she ar­gued that the econ­o­my has broad­ened be­yond hy­dro­car­bons and now has mul­ti­ple ar­eas ca­pa­ble of at­tract­ing in­vest­ment.

Rein­ven­tion is no longer op­tion­al

For Lawrence, the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing Nestlé is not sim­ply about one multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny.

It is a re­minder that busi­ness­es must con­stant­ly adapt if they ex­pect to sur­vive.

Whether an or­gan­i­sa­tion has op­er­at­ed for five years or more than a cen­tu­ry, chang­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour, tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion and evolv­ing glob­al mar­kets mean stand­ing still is no longer an op­tion.

“If we don’t con­tin­u­ous­ly rein­vent our­selves, that will hap­pen to us.”

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is among the biggest forces re­shap­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, and Lawrence be­lieves lo­cal busi­ness­es can­not af­ford to ig­nore the changes tak­ing place.

“Are we ready to take on AI? I would say no. But can we just sit back and say when­ev­er it comes? No, we can’t.”

In­stead, she be­lieves firms have to keep search­ing for new prod­ucts, new ser­vice lines and new ways of solv­ing clients’ prob­lems.

That phi­los­o­phy has shaped the evo­lu­tion of Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions.

The com­pa­ny traces its ori­gins to 2006, when Lawrence and for­mer col­league Cameron Muham­mad ac­quired Ernst & Young’s out­sourc­ing prac­tice af­ter the glob­al ac­count­ing firm de­cid­ed to di­vest that busi­ness seg­ment. It was a sig­nif­i­cant leap in­to en­tre­pre­neur­ship. The com­pa­ny opened its doors with six em­ploy­ees and five clients.

With­in a week, it suf­fered its first ma­jor dis­ap­point­ment when one client left be­cause it pre­ferred to re­main with one of the glob­al­ly recog­nised Big Four firms rather than a new­ly es­tab­lished lo­cal com­pa­ny.

In­stead of re­treat­ing, Lawrence and Muham­mad fo­cused on build­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty.

They un­der­stood that ex­pe­ri­ence alone would not be enough to com­pete against in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised ac­count­ing firms. An in­ter­na­tion­al af­fil­i­a­tion would even­tu­al­ly be­come es­sen­tial.

That op­por­tu­ni­ty emerged in 2014 when Grant Thorn­ton be­gan ex­pand­ing its Caribbean foot­print.

Lawrence ap­proached the or­gan­i­sa­tion, its rep­re­sen­ta­tives as­sessed the Trinidad prac­tice, and by Jan­u­ary 2015 Or­bit So­lu­tions of­fi­cial­ly be­came part of the Grant Thorn­ton glob­al net­work.

The af­fil­i­a­tion trans­formed the busi­ness.

To­day, the firm pro­vides au­dit and as­sur­ance ser­vices, ac­count­ing out­sourc­ing, pay­roll ad­min­is­tra­tion, hu­man re­source out­sourc­ing, tax ad­vi­so­ry, cor­po­rate sec­re­tar­i­al ser­vices, com­pa­ny reg­istry sup­port and, more re­cent­ly, trans­ac­tion ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices sup­port­ing merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions.

Lawrence said clients in­creas­ing­ly pre­fer one pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices provider ca­pa­ble of han­dling mul­ti­ple busi­ness func­tions rather than en­gag­ing sep­a­rate firms for dif­fer­ent as­sign­ments.

That trend has al­lowed Grant Thorn­ton to steadi­ly broad­en its ser­vice of­fer­ings.

One of the firm’s more no­table as­sign­ments has been its in­volve­ment in the liq­ui­da­tion of CL Fi­nan­cial. How­ev­er, Lawrence clar­i­fied that the liq­ui­da­tion it­self is not man­aged by the Trinidad of­fice.

“That’s not part of my purview. We just work on the ac­count. That’s ac­tu­al­ly han­dled by Grant Thorn­ton in the UK.”

Look­ing be­yond Trinidad’s bor­ders

Find­ing and re­tain­ing skilled pro­fes­sion­als re­mains one of the in­dus­try’s biggest chal­lenges.

Lawrence does not be­lieve T&T lacks tal­ent.

In­stead, she be­lieves there are sim­ply more em­ploy­ers com­pet­ing for the same lim­it­ed pool of pro­fes­sion­als.

“There is al­ways tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion. The tal­ent pool is there. It’s just that there’s a lot of com­pe­ti­tion for it.”

Rather than al­low­ing that chal­lenge to slow the firm’s ex­pan­sion, Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions has looked be­yond T&T to strength­en its op­er­a­tions.

Last year, Lawrence trav­elled to In­dia to study how Grant Thorn­ton’s of­fices there pro­vide near-shoring ser­vices to clients around the world.

The vis­it was aimed at un­der­stand­ing how el­e­ments of that op­er­at­ing mod­el could be repli­cat­ed lo­cal­ly.

In­dia has be­come one of the world’s lead­ing cen­tres for out­sourced ac­count­ing, fi­nance and busi­ness sup­port be­cause of its large pro­fes­sion­al work­force and low­er op­er­at­ing costs. Lawrence be­lieves T&T can com­bine lo­cal ex­per­tise with in­ter­na­tion­al re­sources to de­liv­er greater val­ue to clients.

That strat­e­gy has be­come in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to face eco­nom­ic pres­sures.

Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions re­cent­ly launched a pi­lot project with its Unit­ed King­dom of­fice, al­low­ing pro­fes­sion­als in T&T to pro­vide ser­vices re­mote­ly to UK clients. The pi­lot ini­tial­ly em­ployed sev­en peo­ple. The re­sults have been strong enough that the UK of­fice has al­ready re­quest­ed an ex­pan­sion, with an­oth­er ten em­ploy­ees ex­pect­ed to be re­cruit­ed.

The ini­tia­tive ef­fec­tive­ly cre­ates a new ex­port ser­vice. In­stead of ex­port­ing man­u­fac­tured goods, T&T is ex­port­ing pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise. Lawrence be­lieves knowl­edge-based ser­vices can be­come an­oth­er av­enue for earn­ing for­eign ex­change while re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy ex­ports.

The mod­el al­so demon­strates that ge­og­ra­phy is be­com­ing less im­por­tant in pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, where tech­nol­o­gy al­lows ac­coun­tants, au­di­tors and con­sul­tants to sup­port clients any­where in the world.

Prepar­ing for the next gen­er­a­tion

Al­though tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing the in­dus­try, Lawrence be­lieves peo­ple re­main the com­pa­ny’s great­est as­set.

Over the last two decades, Grant Thorn­ton has em­ployed hun­dreds of young pro­fes­sion­als in T&T, many of whom have gone on to se­nior po­si­tions through­out the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

She es­ti­mates that be­tween 150 and 300 peo­ple have passed through the or­gan­i­sa­tion since it was es­tab­lished. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to place sig­nif­i­cant em­pha­sis on train­ing and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Lawrence de­scribed the or­gan­i­sa­tion as a learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment where em­ploy­ees are en­cour­aged to build ca­reers rather than sim­ply fill jobs. Its in­tern­ship pro­gramme forms a ma­jor part of that strat­e­gy.

Al­though this year’s in­take was small­er than in pre­vi­ous years, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued re­cruit­ing uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and re­cent Form Six grad­u­ates to give them prac­ti­cal work­place ex­pe­ri­ence.

“If we don’t give young peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­ply their trade, they will nev­er get the ex­pe­ri­ence to then ap­ply for oth­er jobs.”

That com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing fu­ture lead­ers ex­tends through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Lawrence not­ed that the firm’s part­ners, man­agers and se­nior man­agers are con­sid­er­ably younger than she is, re­flect­ing a de­lib­er­ate suc­ces­sion strat­e­gy aimed at en­sur­ing the busi­ness con­tin­ues well in­to the fu­ture.

Grant Thorn­ton has al­so part­nered with a Unit­ed States con­sult­ing firm to strength­en its in­ter­nal cul­ture and cre­ate a com­mon vi­sion across every lev­el of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

From ad­min­is­tra­tive staff to se­nior part­ners, Lawrence wants em­ploy­ees work­ing to­ward the same long-term ob­jec­tives.

Twen­ty years of mea­sured growth

Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions is mark­ing its twen­ti­eth an­niver­sary this year, but Lawrence views the mile­stone as ev­i­dence that con­stant evo­lu­tion, not longevi­ty alone, is what sus­tains a busi­ness.

From six em­ploy­ees and five clients, the com­pa­ny has grown to more than 70 full-time staff and ex­pects to ap­proach the 100-em­ploy­ee mark with­in the next six months.

Its trans­for­ma­tion from a spe­cial­ist out­sourc­ing com­pa­ny in­to a full-ser­vice pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm mir­rors the broad­er changes tak­ing place with­in the ac­count­ing pro­fes­sion.

The ad­di­tion of trans­ac­tion ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices, in­clud­ing merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions, re­flects the firm’s strat­e­gy of ex­pand­ing be­yond its tra­di­tion­al of­fer­ings.

Glob­al­ly, Grant Thorn­ton now op­er­ates in more than 150 coun­tries, while the Caribbean net­work main­tains a pres­ence across vir­tu­al­ly every ter­ri­to­ry in the re­gion, al­low­ing firms to col­lab­o­rate on re­gion­al as­sign­ments and pro­vide cross-bor­der ex­per­tise.

Lawrence made it clear that the com­pa­ny is not cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing ac­qui­si­tions in T&T. Its fo­cus in­stead is on ex­pand­ing ser­vice lines, strength­en­ing in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships and cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties through in­no­va­tion.

The re­cent UK pi­lot project is one ex­am­ple of that strat­e­gy, and the com­pa­ny ex­pects ad­di­tion­al growth op­por­tu­ni­ties to emerge from sim­i­lar col­lab­o­ra­tions.

Af­ter 20 years, Lawrence be­lieves Grant Thorn­ton OR­BIT So­lu­tions has shown that growth is dri­ven not by stand­ing still, but by con­stant­ly look­ing ahead.