IT incumbents beware: Startup disruption has only just begun

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The Collision conference highlighted the dynamic world of startups, particularly those chasing growth opportunities around disruptive technologies — similar to the business strategies established IT players such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) are moving toward. Though unequipped for enterprisewide, consulting-led digital transformation engagements, startups will likely increasingly challenge traditional systems integrators (SIs) for discrete digital projects by offering lower pricing, deep niche expertise, more agile delivery, and emphasis on solving clients’ business needs instead of upselling additional services. Startups also threaten larger vendors in the digital talent war by creating cultures that attract highly coveted design, technology and development talent with flexible work arrangements and accelerated career paths. We expect the trend of large SIs acquiring digital startups to continue for the foreseeable future. However, as the very best startups increasingly gain visibility through successful projects with high-profile brands, we believe SIs will need to work harder (and pay more) to persuade startups to become part of larger, legacy IT services organizations.

 

 

Collision was created in 2014 as part of a series of international events hosted by the founders of Web Summit, the Dublin-based event promoted as an alternative to large-scale technology conferences such as the International Consumer Electronics Showcase and the SXSW Interactive Festival. The conference acts as a forum for startup founders, executives of leading large corporations, investors and influencers to connect and network. In its second year being held at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the conference welcomed more than 19,000 attendees from 119 countries. The 605 companies exhibiting products, services and technology solutions across three days included 480 “Alphas,” or very early stage startups; 88 “Betas,” or startups that have raised more than $1 million in funding; and 26 “Starts,” or growth-stage startups that have raised more than $3 million in funding. Interspersed with the exhibition booths were four stages hosting nine tracks of sessions with 357 speakers and moderators across a variety of topics, including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, big data, SaaS, design, the future of computing, marketing, sustainability, music, sports and startup best practices (termed “Startup University”). TBR also interacted one-on-one with several startup founders and speakers

PwC pivots to Asia

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In presentations and conversations with PwC partners, PwC detailed significant investments geared toward expanding with the APAC market, including a Growth Markets Centre and Cybersecurity Centre in Singapore as well as new Experience Centres in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney and Melbourne, which add to a growing array of such centers across their global network. With the Growth Markets Centre, PwC set up a clearinghouse for information and analysis on maturing markets, addressing the need for unique and comprehensive local knowledge. The Growth Markets Centre provides analysis for clients and partners, supplemented by PwC professionals with direct experience in previous engagements. The firm assists clients with regional, country and city-level market analysis and, when possible, information from and the views of PwC partners who have worked in the selected cities with clients in the same or similar industries.

Building on lessons from the Miami Experience Center (see previous TBR reporting on PwC’s expansion in cybersecurity and the firm’s investment in client-centric co-innovation centers) and applying local experience, particularly around staffing and talent management, PwC described its new Experience Centers in Hong Kong and Shanghai as geared specifically for the local markets. According to the firm, the experience centers were designed, in part, to, “change what clients go to consultants for.” PwC anticipates clients, after visiting the centers, will see its broad, rich consulting skills and ability to provide more than just audit assurance and tax services to solve client’s most complex challenges. PwC executives explained to TBR that the firm believed in “agile consulting,” what they described as creating multidisciplinary teams as well as a leadership and culture around teamwork. PwC invested heavily in bringing Strategy&, digital marketing creatives, analytics geeks and industry subject matter experts together and building “agile” and efficient teams. Repeating comments made last year in Miami about the potential to use Experience Centers to cut across verticals, PwC executives added that the “richest form of conversation comes in talking about an adjacent industry” and discussing what other companies are doing to “be disruptive to their own market.” Overall, PwC made a compelling case it had successfully translated into the APAC region those elements that made the Experience Centers work elsewhere, even while still battling brand recognition hurdles or misunderstandings based on the firm’s legacy services.

Like we have seen at other PwC analyst events, PwC is walking the walk. Instead of sessions with PwC leaders telling us what they do with endless slide decks, 11 clients from China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Australia spoke about the projects they are working on with PwC. The projects demonstrated the broad set of challenges PwC is helping clients address, with engagements focused on corporate strategy, block-chain implementation, digital transformation, cyber and RPA, deals strategy, and more.

 

 

PwC Analysts Day 2017: PwC hosted more than 50 analysts and clients for a day-long session highlighting the firm’s recent investments in and commitment to APAC. Between client testimonials and panel sessions on PwC’s offerings, TBR met with partners and client executives, hearing firsthand accounts of PwC’s recent growth across the region, including specific examples from China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and Australia.

Google alliance strengthens PwC’s strategy-through-execution promise

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On Oct. 27 and 28, PwC and Google executives described a new global joint business relationship combining PwC’s industry expertise and global reach with Google’s widely used technology, particularly Google for Work and Google Cloud. PwC partners said the relationship was predicated on the trust PwC clients put in the audit, tax and consulting firm, and the trust PwC has in Google Cloud. Beyond PwC’s initial adoption of Google for Work, both companies expect to leverage each other’s strengths in helping clients adapt to disruptive market forces and innovate for growth. While the Google-PwC alliance potentially provides additional motivation for enterprise clients to move to Google for Work and Google Cloud, PwC’s two-day-long analyst conference highlighted PwC’s more immediate focuses: the emergence of PwC Digital, PwC’s consulting approach coalescing around Strategy& and a commitment to improved talent management. These elements will shape how well PwC competes in the near term with peers such as Deloitte and competitors such as Accenture and McKinsey.

Event overview

PwC hosted more than 50 industry analysts for a two-day-long review of the firm’s financial performance to date and its strategy for 2015. The event coincided with PwC’s partnership announcement with Google. In one-on-one meetings with TBR, PwC leaders detailed the firm’s expectations, concerns and plans for tackling a substantial transformation of PwC’s U.S. — and eventually global — partnership.

Impact and opportunities

PwC and Google: Trust and scale

Through the new joint business relationship, Google benefits from customers’ inherent trust in PwC’s brand, global reach, deep industry knowledge, and history of tax, audit and consulting engagements. In return, PwC gets Google’s scale and access to Google’s leading-edge technology. Although the relationship is still in the framework-and-strategy phase, PwC executives promised the firm would join with Google to build industry-specific solutions and apps, with Google bringing platform and IT expertise and PwC providing industry expertise and access to enterprise-level clients. PwC executives stressed that a long-term goal is to help clients become more comfortable with cloud. PwC’s decision to move the U.S. and Australia practices to Google for Work is testimony to PwC’s confidence in Google’s security and capabilities — and recognition that these platforms are substantially mature and adequately secure. PwC will tell clients the firm went to Google Cloud and clients should also migrate to the more secure, more reliable and more efficient platform.

PwC partners told TBR use of Google for Work and the joint business relationship mark huge bets for the firm — but the firm expects to know quickly if it was the right bet. While the industry-centric solutions development aspect echoes SAP’s and Accenture’s similar plans announced in March, the larger commitment to the cloud and PwC’s expanded relationship with Google raises market awareness of the increasing ease of leveraging cloud, mobile, analytic and other technologies in the face of disruption to current business models.