In the early days of the nationwide shutdowns, members of the Accenture Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) Forum saw the storm brewing, compelling them to think creatively. With swift action and support from CEOs, HR leaders from Accenture, Lincoln Financial Group, ServiceNow and Verizon mobilized their efforts and capabilities and developed a solution that facilitates continued employment. Accenture stood up People + Work Connect, an analytics-enabled platform, with the goal of helping enterprises sustain business continuity by allowing human resources to move to meet demand.

What it is and what it is not

TBR had a chance to discuss the nuances of the People + Work Connect platform with two of the architects behind it, Accenture Talent & Organization/Human Potential Lead Eva Sage-Gavin and Work & Workforce Lead Nicholas Whittall, to understand their motivations for and expectations of the platform.

With Accenture acting as the technology provider, rather than the mediator between organizations’ supply and demand workforce needs, the company’s role is largely centered on assembling and managing the collation and design, and building and running the platform. A team from Accenture Liquid Studio built a business-to-business, fit-for-purpose platform to help companies match available workers to open jobs based on select criteria including location, experience and number of openings. The platform is currently available for free, and Accenture leaders have said the company “won’t ever charge.”

While TBR recognizes the noble approach Accenture and its partners have taken to develop, manage and offer the platform free of charge, in the long run we believe the company is gaining value from the effort (discussed below). With design principles including “progress over perfection,” Accenture developed the platform in 14 days from pilot to launch, reaching its goal of a “Minimally Loveable Product,” rather than an all-encompassing solution. TBR sees Accenture’s approach here as another example of COVID-19 accelerating change across IT environments and, more broadly, business policies and practices.

At the same time, both Sage-Gavin and Whittall reinforced that the platform’s simplicity and scale appealed to businesses looking for immediate solutions to massive problems. We see the simplicity of the data request — Accenture stayed away from using personally identifiable information when developing the platform — as critical to the platform’s uptake and success, such as when two call center companies — one laying off workers and one looking for experienced call center staff — can use the platform to ensure a minimal number of jobs are lost in particular locations. Additionally, features such as a depository for ideas, questions and advice, called a “Knowledge Exchange” on the platform, can provide insights into best practices on benefits and evolving HR practices.

We see such insights impacting not only the HR role but also the broader organization. As COVID-19 abates, revised HR policies and the lessons learned through using the platform to address challenges during the pandemic will likely influence future staffing and IT needs, thus affecting organizations’ planning and financial cycles. As Accenture maintains an arm’s length distance from how companies handle the recruiting and onboarding processes once the match is made, the company is able to provide data concierge services, identifying which data is most important to future refinements of existing ERP systems and HR platforms.

Early earnings indicators reveal ICT vendor ‘new normal’

The reality of COVID-19’s impact potential is clear. You do not have to be an analyst by trade to understand the pandemic will create new normals in our personal and professional lives, disrupting entire business sectors, including ICT, in the process. What remains unclear in many respects, however, is the quantification of that impact.

As of the publication of this report, approximately half of the vendors that TBR authors dedicated quarterly or semiannual reports on have released their 1Q20 earnings results. While earnings announcements and presentations are still rife with uncertainty, these releases, plus TBR’s ongoing vendor-centric financial modeling, provide some indicators of how to quantify the impacts yet to come.

Beginning with this report and continuing through this quarter’s earnings and benchmarking cycle, we will be aggregating some of our financial modeling data across our upcoming reports to assess the current state impact of COVID-19 on vendor performance and to predict next quarter and full-year outcomes.

TBR’s advice to vendors: Get predictive about benchmarking

These early results suggest the industry will be split on how to best set business performance expectations in the current environment but will increasingly err on the side of caution in terms of predicting the future. Stalwarts yet to release, such as Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE), have already announced that they, too, will suspend financial guidance. Now more than ever, understanding the trajectory of the ICT vendor peer ecosystem and aligning on industry best practices to navigate the effects of COVID-19 is critical for ICT players. Building, maintaining and updating line-of-business financial models on competitors enables vendors to better benchmark performance, predict quarterly and annual outcomes, and deploy tactics to optimize performance. Vendors should look at the context of peers’ earnings announcements for clues — while many are “going dark” in terms of providing revenue guidance, rich discussions are occurring in earnings calls regarding resource utilization, portfolio management, sales and go-to-market alignment that can be tapped for vendor insight to infuse into practices

In addition to this report, we are writing and reporting in depth on the COVID-19 impact in a dedicated special report series, webinars and our regular published analysis as vendors release earnings. Our published content is regularly updated on TBR’s website and can also be accessed through our client portals.

“Us disrupting ourselves” — PwC Digital’s journey to 2020

“In contrast to peers such as EY, which held an entire analyst conference focused on, and organized around, its technology consulting capabilities, PwC structured each of its client stories around the central business challenge, with the technology solution presented as only part of the successful outcome. PwC placed considerably more emphasis on how it worked with clients’ C-Suite and line employees to identify and resolve key pain points and organizational issues, rather than leading with silver-bullet technology solutions that addressed clients’ specific RFPs.” TBR analysis, October 2018

While PwC Products fully coalesced into being over the last 12 to 18 months, the firm’s technology evolution started at least 10 years ago, with the Hallandale Experience Center perhaps the most critical catalyst in changing the firm’s overall approach to embedding technology into every engagement. Importantly, embedding technology did not mean, as noted above, focusing first on technology, even as the firm developed fully formed solutions. As PwC leaders reminded TBR, the firm developed the DoubleJump Health platform more than three years ago, building experience with a subscription-based software business model. In the last year, PwC enhanced collaboration among the eight digital factories and labs across the firm and took careful stock of the assets the firm had already developed and deployed with clients.

While previously PwC developed bespoke solutions within an industry or service line, with little collaboration across the firm, the recent shift included consolidation of the independent assets that had potential and a scrubbing of these old assets through a digital process pipeline. By putting the solutions through a rigorous vetting process with the goal, as explained by PwC, of determining which assets would meet consistency and quality standards as well as “make an impact,” the firm created a model for product innovation that could be implemented across all of PwC. As one PwC leader noted, “The assets were there. PwC Digital’s job was to put them together.” In addition to process, the firm also needed creativity and a willingness to disrupt itself, something TBR commented on in April 2019: “A PwC leader once challenged TBR to explain why the consulting business model seemed immune to the disruptions changing every other industry. The answer, and the disruption, are within his own building, and consultancies and IT services vendors not seeing it risk falling substantially behind.”

PwC Products: The $500M business built on BXT

“Is PwC now a software company or a technology-enabled consultancy with a global distribution channel for assets and managed services? We’re watching and waiting to see.” TBR analysis, October 2018

We have our answer. PwC is a business solution provider, and some of those solutions include products — tangible, defined assets that allow the firm to be, as the PwC leaders noted, “better, faster, and cheaper for clients.” Some of those assets will remain within the firm, scalable but deployed only to increase speed or efficiency in certain engagements. Some assets will remain with the client, paid for in full, through licensing or by subscription.

Taking AI further

EY’s “six habits” study provides detailed information and assessments of digital transformation leaders’ best practices as well as “actions for the boardroom,” such as “create a culture of continuous learning” and “embed innovation with corporate governance.” In previewing the study, TBR noted that the recommendations for boards to consider when accelerating AI — “assess the current state,” “integrate AI into core” and “measure AI benefits” — perfectly mirror EY’s own consulting offerings around AI. In discussing AI further, Higgins and Little explained that the firm has been applying AI when making its own financial forecasting and HR management decisions, providing additional insights into how different solutions could be rolled out to clients. Little made explicit that the firm would “build AI into every solution we have,” laying down a clear marker of the firm’s bet on emerging technologies. The firm has been trying to move away from the historical consulting and systems integration approach of putting many people on projects and would instead be adopting more agile sprint methodologies, automation and AI. A concerted effort to embed AI both internally and in every solution built for clients echoes TBR’s November 2019 Digital Transformation Insights Report: Emerging Technology, which noted that, “to capitalize on the cost savings generated by AI, vendors must shift their value proposition toward navigating clients’ technical and business change management obstacles to implement solutions, a strategy requiring continued investment in consulting expertise.”

Building better ecosystems

In discussing changes to the partnering ecosystem for all consultancies and IT services vendors, TBR has emphasized the need for re-evaluation and constant management of alliances, particularly as the technology vendors themselves change their own partnering models and go-to-market approaches. EY has stepped ahead of this change, recognizing the firm needed to evolve its traditional partner program into strategic ecosystem management.

In February EY released a new study on the “six habits of digital transformation leaders,” based on a survey of global CEOs and board members. TBR spoke with Jim Little, EY’s global Microsoft Alliance lead and EY Americas Technology Strategy lead, and Dan Higgins, EY’s global Technology Consulting leader, to gain additional insights and comments on the study, as well as to understand how the firm has shifted its internal operations and strategy around technology. TBR has attended multiple EY events in the last few years, including those geared specifically toward highlighting the firm’s technology practice. Based on those events and the March 2020 discussions with Little and Higgins, TBR believes EY has substantially changed its approach to technology consulting, from enabled to embedded and scalable, which will increasingly expand the firm’s opportunities with global clients, potentially at the expense of traditionally more technology-centric competitors, such as Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Deloitte. Little and Higgins explained that EY fully intended to embrace a new strategy around technology, with solutions designed for reach and scale, a brand seeking to move beyond trust, and an ecosystem managed to “create real outcomes” for clients.