PwC pivots to Asia

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.