PwC Positions AI, Industry Depth and Microsoft Partnership as Catalysts for Asia Pacific Momentum

Singapore event highlights PwC’s regional momentum, client impact and focus on AI-driven transformation

In early August PwC hosted clients, analysts and technology partners in Singapore for an in-person update on the firm’s activities in the Asia Pacific region, with a focus on PwC’s partnership with Microsoft. Among the PwC leaders who spoke were Charles Loh, partner, Singapore Consulting leader, Microsoft Alliance leader, and Digital, Cloud, Data Practice leader, PwC South East Asia Consulting; Winston Nesfield, partner, Insurance and Wealth leader, and AI Advisory leader, PwC South East Asia Consulting; Tracey Kennair (TK), partner and Asia Pacific Microsoft Alliance leader, PwC Australia; Richard Chong, managing director, Microsoft Alliance driver, PwC South East Asia Consulting; Terence Gomes, partner, Cybersecurity, PwC India; and Louise Co, senior manager, Digital Transformation, PwC South East Asia Consulting.

The event included client testimonials, partners’ technology demonstrations, and presentations by the PwC partners listed above, touching on macroeconomic issues, technology (especially AI), and expectations for the firm’s growth in the region. TBR noted that the client stories were exceptionally compelling, in part due to the clients all emphasizing what PwC did for them, the specific value the firm brought and the business problems they solved. Overall, the event included both a large number of sessions spanning a range of business challenges, technologies and PwC engagements, and plenty of time for questions for the PwC partners and their clients. TBR also noted a general optimistic outlook around the current macroeconomic environment in the region, prospects for growth, and PwC’s clients’ embrace of business model reinvention. As TK said, “Businesses need to reinvent, and that includes PwC!”

Investments in acceleration centers and Microsoft alliance strengthen PwC’s APAC digital transformation play

In his opening comments, Loh said digital transformation is accelerating, rather than slowing down, in the Asia Pacific region, despite challenges around geopolitics, supply chains and overall uncertainty in the global macro economy. PwC expects more consulting growth, and the firm has been investing in acceleration centers in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. In Loh’s view, enterprises in the region need to engage in business model reinvention (BMR) and PwC’s AI-enabled approach to BMR will help companies survive and thrive. In TBR’s view, PwC’s bullish outlook on the APAC region’s demand for consulting reflects sentiments across a wide range of businesses and countries, as evident through PwC’s peers’ investments in the region and TBR’s ongoing discussions with regional enterprises and their consultancies. Further, AI-enabled BMR neatly marries two dominant market trends: incorporating AI into everything and refocusing on growth, not simply cost-cutting.

Extending Loh’s comments around digital transformation, PwC’s TK said that the firm’s clients increasingly expect technology to provide faster returns on investments, leading some clients to narrow the scope of their consulting engagements and take smaller steps toward digital transformation. TK added that PwC’s combination of strategy consulting, business innovation experience and AI-enabled solutions creates a compelling story in the boardroom, particularly when Microsoft accompanies the firm as a technology partner. In TK’s words, PwC and Microsoft are “better together” when they cosell and coinvent. With more than 7,000 PwC professionals in the region trained and certified on Microsoft’s technologies, TK said PwC has a credible and strengthening market position. In addition, TK noted PwC is doubling down on industry expertise, particularly around financial services, consumer markets and manufacturing, the public sector, and healthcare, and has a compelling “customer zero” story around change and risk management. Building on TK’s comments, Kevin Wo, Microsoft ASEAN Chief Partner Officer, added that PwC brings capabilities to move from strategy to execution and an ability to rethink business models, leading to “remarkable momentum” with PwC in the region. He noted that PwC is “investing in their own infrastructure” and helping “customers looking for tangible outcomes.”

Kevin Wo further explained his company’s deepening relationship with PwC by describing a shared commitment to execute on a joint go-to-market plan, including holding CXO roundtables, cobuilding assets and accelerators, and meeting with clients together and early in the engagement and digital transformation process. PwC’s uniqueness, according to Wo, came through the firm’s ability to help every organization become a frontier organization by leveraging AI to reinvest in the customer experience, reshape business processes, bring AI into everything, and bend the curve on innovation. He also praised PwC’s “big investment” in Microsoft and the resonance he sees from PwC’s customer zero use case. On agentic AI, Wo said Microsoft looked to PwC to lead with Agentic-led innovations to reimagine business models and accelerate enterprises’ AI transformation from proof of concepts to full scale organization adoption and customer impact. A final comment from Wo struck TBR as a not-so-subtle warning to Microsoft’s other consulting partners (who were obviously not in the room): being a distribution channel for Microsoft’s products will earn flat or falling revenues going forward, a prediction that echoes TBR’s ecosystem analysis.

TK wrapped up the day’s opening session on a more positive note, observing that while enterprises in the region have been struggling to translate AI into real outcomes, consulting partners (read: PwC) can deliver on strategy, governance and change management, making AI’s impact and business model reinvention within an organization more tangible. TK added that as enterprises increasingly seek a partner that can accelerate AI-enabled transformations, business line leaders, not CIOs, have taken the lead. She noted that PwC has “fantastic deep relationships” with the firm’s clients, well beyond the C-Suite, and can help business line leaders articulate the business advantages of AI-enabled solutions.

Client case studies underscore PwC’s Microsoft partnership

PwC clients featured prominently at the Singapore event, with participants from multiple industries and all sharing details about their engagements with both PwC and Microsoft. A financial services client noted that the PwC-Microsoft team beat out a Deloitte-Amazon Web Services team, in part because the winning team brought “heavy customization” to ensure they met every client need. Critically, PwC and Microsoft also built “four use cases and four apps” (in 12 weeks) together with the client, accelerating adoption and avoiding solutions ill-suited for the client’s IT environment and business processes. Notably, PwC directly spoke to clients’ professionals’ fears about losing their jobs to AI agents, getting ahead of disruptions and jump-starting change management. In TBR’s view, taking on fears head-on accelerates the journey to a trusted partner relationship.

A senior executive with an Indian conglomerate explained that his company selected PwC for a Microsoft Sentinel cybersecurity engagement because of PwC’s close alliance with Microsoft and applicable use cases, especially around IT and OT cybersecurity convergence, as well as the firm’s reliability, strategy consulting capabilities and scale. Notably, the Indian conglomerate is building cybersecurity experience centers specifically for OT environments utilizing PwC consulting and Microsoft solutions. In TBR’s view, this use case, especially given the client’s high profile in India and the growing relevance of IT and OT convergence, could be a marquee showcase for the firm’s capabilities. Critical to the success story is the client’s positive view of PwC’s alliance with Microsoft: every consultancy partners with Microsoft, but this client believes PwC has something unique, which makes for a compelling story for other potential clients.


In sharp contrast to the Indian conglomerate, at least in scale and client size, the CTO of an Australian civil engineering and heavy metals reseller described PwC’s AI-enabled supply chain solution, which brought mispricing mistakes down from an average of 35% to 0% across all contracts. It gets better. The AI-enabled solution allowed the company to apply its “Tier 1 service to Tier 2 clients” and “gave back two days of work a week for a four-person team.” Notably, the company did not reduce its headcount but instead shifted professionals’ time and responsibilities to doing more for customers. When asked what made PwC’s efforts special, beyond the clearly remarkable outcomes, the CTO said PwC delivered on time and on budget because of “lots of prework,” setting realistic goals, and staying within the scope. He added, “PwC enforced discipline.” For TBR, the success speaks for itself, but the more surprising aspect of this use case was the client’s size: at 300 people, this engineering firm is far smaller than the typical PwC client. In TK’s assessment, because of AI, PwC’s “client set is changing!” Indeed.

Conclusion

At a 2017 PwC analyst event in Singapore, TBR noted that PwC let its clients tell their success stories. In 2025 PwC expanded to technology partners, most prominently Microsoft, demonstrating the firm has evolved its alliances strategy to leverage one of the most critical means for gaining and retaining clients: have your technology partners tell your story, let Microsoft explain why PwC is special, abandon being agnostic, and embrace the value that closer relationships bring to every player in the ecosystem, including the client. TBR will be watching closely to see how PwC continues to evolve its alliance strategies and how a growing relationship with Microsoft leads to increased market presence and growth across the region.