KPMG’s Property & Demographic Advisory group practice is a centre of excellence in demographics as it relates to the business sector. There is a real need for business to better understand the demographic of consumer markets and of the workforce. The Property & Demographic Advisory group addresses these issues. The group sits within the Audit & Risk Advisory Services division of KPMG Australia.
Headed by Partner Bernard Salt the group operates across most industry sectors providing advice to businesses in the property, finance, health, education, mining, tourism and retirement sectors.
Generally the work involves accessing Census and publicly-available data sets to determine relevant trends.
Advisory clients are mostly drawn from the private sectors although the public sector is also interested in the strategic thinking that flows from our work. Clients use demographic advisory reports to improve the efficiency of resource allocation.
The services offered by the Property & Demographic Advisory group are as follows:
Demographic analysis
This involves canvassing census and other data to determine lifestyle trends which can then be identified as development or investment opportunities for clients. Such an analysis might identify for example certain regional mining towns as ‘growth’ opportunities for housing and other services.
Market assessment
Some clients want an overall assessment of a market opportunity. This can mean scoping the market for a new retailer, for example, who will want to know what is the size of the market; how many shops could be developed; and where should they be located?
Masterplanning communities
Other clients are interested in the masterplanning of new residential communities. In these cases the client will want to know how many dwellings should be provisioned in a new estate. What is the best mix between separate and attached dwellings based on trends in household composition? How might the socio-economic mix of the community change over time and what might that mean by way of price points?
Workforce planning
Over recent years there has been great interest in workforce planning. This is especially relevant to the mining industry. How many miners are there in Australia? (The answer is: 24,000 at the last census.) And how many people have the right skills but are engaged in other parts of the workforce?
You would be surprised how often business needs to make decisions based on an assessment of demographic trends.
To see examples of publicly released advisory reports completed by Bernard Salt and his team see the Reports page. For more information on KPMG please visit www.kpmg.com.au or Property & Demographics Advisory.