KPMG partner Hannah Dobson is a third of the trio that head up the technology team at KPMG Enterprise, the privately owned business offering the firm launched, alongside small business accounting, with a £40m investment in 2014.

The simple goal of the technology division is to become the go-to team for technology businesses at almost any level. It leverages a wide breadth of skills and experience within its team, from mergers and acquisitions to research and development, audit and cyber security.

While the big four are generally known for dealing with vast corporations, KPMG Enterprise has turned its attention to businesses great and small, and it is raring to find the big technology business of tomorrow. So much so, that the firm has established a co-working space at Huckletree in London’s Tech City.

Part of the strategy over the next three years is to build relationships with businesses in their infancy – where each have received seed funding – right along the chain to where proponents are seeking an exit, and turnover is in the hundreds of millions.

Dobson said: “We’re trying to build relationships right at very beginning and at some point some of them will become the UK’s Facebook or Twitter of tomorrow.

“We are keen to be with them from day one and stay with them whilst they go on their journey irrespective of diversity of founders.”

This approach could open up more funding opportunities for female-led business in the technology space, which, statistics show, find it difficult to get access to finance.

Capital constraints

Analysis from Crunchbase indicated that between 2010 and 2015, only ten per cent of venture capital funding from a global total of $31.5bn, went towards tech startups that reported at least one female founder.

During the same period, 17 per cent of seed or angel investment ($2.35bn) went to startups with one female founder.

According to Compass Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking, one reason for this could be that not enough women start tech businesses in the first place. The rankings show that the percentage of women founders in the global startup scene was an average 18 per cent last year, while in 2012, it stood at just ten per cent.

“It is often a volume game,” added Dobson. “Most venture capitalists will receive in the region of 100 to 300 investment portfolios across their desks every week and you can imagine this may well reflect the proportion of businesses started by men.

“If we change that statistic to 50/50, by virtue of this alone you will start to see the tech world become more balanced with women founders, but that is just not happening at the moment unfortunately.”

Research has also suggested that one of the biggest obstacles women face when it comes to funding their business is that majority of investors are white British men, who are more comfortable investing in entrepreneurs that fit within that same demographic.

A separate Crunchbase study found that only seven per cent of investing partners at top venture capital firms are women. When viewed against statistics from a Harvard, MIT and Wharton study, which found that men are 60 per cent more likely to succeed in pitching to investors than women, even when the content of the pitches were the same, it is clear that women face double jeopardy when it comes to accessing finance.

Interestingly, studies have suggested that businesses with female and male co-founders, tend to do better with funding, which supports the view that most investors are more comfortable to invest in entrepreneurs they can identify with. When it is all unravelled, it comes down to unconscious bias.

The problem is, in a massively multicultural society such as the UK, more often than not, entrepreneurs will come in all shapes and forms. Colleagues and clients will not fulfil the typical stereotype of a white English man.

“On a personal level, I would be genuinely concerned if we looked like the traditional accounting firm of 300 years ago,” said Dobson. “If you have a room full of people that appear to be similar to each other but different from the client, it can difficult to build rapport and relationships.”

Successful businesses are those that grasp the value of being reflective and understanding of people from all walks of life. Indeed the McKinsey report, and several others that have followed, insisted that teams, and organisations ultimately, function much better when its people are diverse.

From her experience, Dobson has seen frequently how this can play out when meeting KPMG Enterprise clients. “There are relationships that I might not be able to build with a client but someone in the team can,” she explained.

“If ten of us were sat in a room with clients, one or two of the ten will get on better with any one client than the others, and that could be for any number of reasons.”

Cracking the code

With a firm grasp of the value in diversity, KPMG has a dedicated team working on its gender and diversity balance. In 2014 it implemented a five-year strategy to embed diversity and inclusion across all areas of the business.

This included targets for 2018, to have women make up 25 per cent of partners, 36 per cent of directors and 46 per cent senior managers.

KPMG has implemented flexible working and various programmes such as the in-house Parent Power Programme which supports parents throughout pregnancy, during maternity or paternity leave, and when returning to work.

It has also worked with the 30 per cent club and global business psychologist firm, YSC, to produce myth busting research in to the number of women on executive boards entitled “Cracking The Code”.

“We have a dedicated diversity team which strives to improve workplace equality because we acknowledge that it is incredibly difficult to attract and retain female talent.

“I personally consider it part of my role to support junior women, particularly women that have potentially been on a similar journey to mine. I mentor a few individuals within the firm, including women and those from minority backgrounds that sit in the Enterprise team.

“Part of my job is to demonstrate that they have a future role to play within the firm, so we meet regularly and ensure that they’re satisfied in their role and what it is they want to do beyond that.”

The other side of the coin is supporting women who are coming back into work after having children. Dobson has been on maternity leave three times and she believes that supporting women going through that process is supremely important.

“Having been in position where you’re considering staying at home or going back to work, it can be tough decision to make. We offer many initiatives focussed on getting women to come back to work such as flexible working, and we support in the year they are not here so they don’t forget about us and feel uncomfortable about coming back.”

All this effort, Dobson stresses, is not just for the public face of firm. “It isn’t so that we can go ‘look we have 50 per cent women, or BAME employees on our board’,” she said.

“It is just because teams and the firm function better when there is a mix of people from different backgrounds. We are trying, through every means, to move our stats and it is changing. It is important to us that we are reflective of the type of business we are trying to work with.”