A view into PwC Ventures

At PwC, we’re constantly striving for innovation in delivering value to our clients. This pursuit often includes new technologies that we provide in conjunction with our services. Sometimes, we solve important problems with software and services, and sometimes with software instead of services – a purely digital relationship. These software solutions are being delivered from PwC Ventures. 

PwC Ventures is also a message:  we’re on offense.

We are striking at our own business model in pursuit of constant benefit to our clients and stakeholders alike. The world is brimming with dynamic and highly-capitalized startups that are laser-focused on innovating and unbundling services. No firm can assume that what brings success today will sustain success tomorrow. 

That’s why PwC Ventures has a mandate to innovate. To do so, PwC Ventures is:

• tapping the talent, ambition, and creativity of our staff, clients, and the tech ecosystem to source new ideas and opportunities to pursue;
• validating, developing, and deploying products in an end-to-end process with our clients

The technology and the forces at play

PwC Ventures captures our wide-ranging capabilities in code. This is done through several leading technologies and considering several factors or forces in the market, including: 

• New workflows:  As workforces change, the future of work takes hold, and the software stack needs to respond. We are constantly working on what we call the Workflow of the Future, which is a product response to the Workforce of the Future. What are the most efficient pathways to execute the job(s)-to-be-done? Expect PwC to lead here.
• Finance in the Cloud: The public cloud will become the dominant infrastructure model. This is true across functions and finance is no different. Cloud-enabled general ledgers (GLs) like Xero, Quickbooks Online, and Sage 50cloud Accounting are moving up-market from a focus on small business. The mid-market is starting to adopt and so too are big enterprises. Productizing PwC’s expertise in adding-value to financial data is core to our mission. PwC’s Cashflow Coach — in early-release to Canadian clients — is a preview of what’s possible. The AI and rules based engine predicts  a business’ cash position 6 weeks into the future using a live data feed from their connected cloud GL. 
• Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) & Blockchain: DLTs and Blockchain technologies are creating efficiencies, reducing operating costs, and in many cases represent the tip of the innovation spear within incumbent financial services organizations. Meanwhile, a whole crop of upstarts are deploying applications upon these new technology fabrics that unlock new methods of storing and exchanging value. This is creating new token-based business models – amongst other impacts that stand to challenge many incumbents. We’re focused on building a set of technologies that ensure we can play our part in this burgeoning new technology layer and deliver the accountable, trustworthy solutions and services we are known for. As a part of Halo, we recently released an audit and assurance tool that provides our professionals with software that enables services for clients that hold and transact in cryptocurrency. 
• Data – value extraction & trust:  Across virtually all industries, value creation from data is underway. In tight integration with our Data and Analytics practice, we are productizing through software that automates in-market interactions between our clients and their data, creating platforms where data trust is delivered, and ensuring that we provide our clients with the assistance they need to unlock value from their data assets. We are doing this through the automation of manual workflows with services and software that transform complex data into actionable levers while mitigating risk.

A look inside: The innovation pipeline

All Ventures products flow from the firm’s innovation pipeline – an internal process with teams dedicated to sourcing ideas that blend high-value PwC practices with advanced technology, bringing them to life, and putting them into clients’ hands. Each solution bears the credibility and trust that have been the hallmarks of PwC since the firm’s inception 112 years ago.

We run a rigorous end-to-end process that includes stages for sourcing ideas, gauging fit with market needs, developing products that solve identified problems, and plugging those products into PwC’s formidable engine to deliver client value. Ideas are sourced from the extraordinarily talented people in PwC’s global network. These professionals are experts in the challenges and opportunities that exist throughout industry. PwC Ventures gives full license for our people to imagine a better way of doing things, to consider the unconventional, and to present the ideas they conceive. 

With those ideas in-hand, PwC Ventures springs into action. Our team runs a lean process of discovery, time-based iterations, rapid development sprints, and refinements. Many assume that Clayton Christensen’s word on innovating within is the final word – it isn’t. When great, established businesses are determined to innovate, and the right teams structures and permissions are put in place – the result isn’t suppression of the pursuits but rather a euphony of results. We are running an agile process that ends with valuable, validated products that solve real problems and strengthen our client capabilities and businesses.

A final word

PwC Ventures represents the next evolution of value in professional services.  Our mission is to arm clients with PwC’s proficiency through product. In a world where the pressure to adopt new technologies quickly has to be balanced with security and compliance, PwC Ventures provides innovation imbued with PwC’s long-standing reputation for trust. In a firm which employs among the world’s smartest and most ambitious people, PwC Ventures also provides our staff with full permission to unleash their skills and creativity toward productizing the PwC promise.

PwC Ventures is internal creative destruction. Through this creative destruction, PwC Ventures will not only benefit clients, but also increase the firm’s robustness in a world of accelerating innovation.

@dingle