Our business areas

We support CEOs, CFOs, controllers and treasurers to optimise the structure of their finance functions and improve their contribution to the business. Our clients are looking for solutions around compliance and control, efficiency and flexibility.

Our clients are also looking for insight. Control and efficiency are still important, but finance and accounting functions are now being asked to support business decision-making. This is new territory for many, and we can help you to deliver effective support.

Balancing these competing demands isn’t easy. It means keeping a careful eye on the details as well as the big picture. We can help through a variety of solutions:

• Finance process improvement
• Strategic planning, value driver analysis and performance management and reporting
• Finance organisation reviews and process improvement
• Performance management and reporting
• Financial management solutions
• Supply chain management
• Operations management
• Enterprise-wide cost management

Whatever the complexity or urgency of the situation your organisation faces, PwC’s investigations practice can provide seasoned support and solutions. We combine forensic accounting and investigative skills to help you make intelligent, informed decisions.

Supported by our state-of-the-art forensic technology, we can provide a clear evaluation of the problem or opportunity, options for approaching them and action plans to achieve the optimal outcome. We understand the importance of reacting quickly and confidentially to a crisis situation. We appreciate the need to stop irregular activity, safeguard your company’s assets and reputation, prevent recurrences and arrive at a solution with as little disruption as possible to the regular flow of business.

Our forensic experts identify financial irregularities, recover stolen assets and introduce controls to mitigate the future risk of fraud. We have also developed and pioneered new technology specialising in the capture, management and analysis of data to support investigations and dispute resolution.

Whether reacting to an incident or offering proactive solutions, our network of forensic services practices combines a global reach with dedicated local teams to support your business.

We can help you with:

• Independent evaluations of loss and damage arising from a breach of contract
• Investigation and analysis of a claim in a country using local knowledge of business/accounting practice
• Addressing fraud or asset misappropriation
• Respond to bribery and/or corruption claims or the suspicion of accounting manipulation or inappropriate/ inadequate disclosure
• Ensuring that you are in compliance with anti-money laundering and other financial crime regulations
• Concerns about the effectiveness of anti-fraud programmes, controls over financial reporting

Organisational change is complex because of the interdependence between stakeholders, the organisation, and its people and supporting technologies; any change in one aspect is likely to affect one or more of the others. The softer aspects of business change, such as changing behaviours, gaining buying from staff, managing transfers into and out of organisations, and providing training at the right time, are critical to achieving the desired outcomes.

Services we provide include:

• Executive selection and search (recruitment)
• Salary and benefits consulting
• Institutional development & capacity building
• Organisational reviews including restructuring
• Human resources due diligence
• Change management
• Change readiness

Getting the best from people at every level when there is constant change is the key to sustainable competitive advantage. Solid strategies, processes and technology alone do not deliver results. It takes people to accept, adopt, drive and sustain the change to realise tangible impact. Success in business hinges on strategic agility and the ability to execute.

People, we frequently hear, are at the top or near the top of the agenda for every CEO. Why are people issues so important? Because:

• Once thought of primarily in terms of cost, people are now being valued as rich sources of talent, skill and diversity, which are critical for success. Yet, 70% of CEOs surveyed in our annual CEO Survey indicated they lacked the right talent in their business to be able to execute their plans.
• People can create value, but they can also destroy value. People behaviour has been the major contributing factor in most of the organisational collapses we’ve seen over the last decade. It is people who deliver strategy and change, not systems or processes.
• Today people—at up to 70% of overall costs—are often the biggest expense for the organisation. Yet by and large organisations do a much better job at measuring and ensuring the effectiveness of their physical assets than they do measuring the impact of people on business results.

We can help through a variety of solutions:

• You want to structure your organisation with the right capabilities and leadership to execute the business strategy
• You want managers to understand, manage and own people issues
• You need to get the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time
• You want to ensure successful change by involving the people impacted and enabling them to drive and sustain the business change
• You want the organisation’s culture to be a competitive advantage
• You are seeking benchmarks for the efficiency and effectiveness of HR
• You have to establish the control and coordination required to manage projects and programs successfully, achieving the right business results
• You are seeking effective strategies for people development and growth
• You need to engage and motivate a diverse workforce to focus on the right things and strive for excellence

We help companies achieve strategic and operational excellence through sustainable improvements and more efficient processes that lower costs, increase cash flows and enhance customer satisfaction.

We help our clients to develop or appraise strategic business plans through a rigorous analysis of their market environment, competitive landscape and internal capabilities. We can help you to determine the right strategic priorities for profitable growth and we offer support and practical solutions for achieving these growth objectives.

We bring our capabilities in management and process improvement to help companies optimise their entire value chain, finding the best ways to reduce waste, lower costs and increase value using an approach that delivers sustainable benefits.

Our clients need their value chain functions to drive business growth for the organisation and we work with them to achieve this, transforming their capabilities to become agile and responsive to constantly changing conditions.

We can help through a variety of solutions:

• Develop an efficient and sustainable business model that is responsive and competitive
• Reduce operating costs and minimise waste to enhance profitability.
• Eliminate activities that do not add value to your business
• Develop and effective supply chain that supports the efficient flow of goods from suppliers through to customers
• Reduce costs and improve service through the use of shared service centres and outsourcing (including moving activities offshore)
• Improve procurement processes, organisational redesign and working capital reduction

We sit alongside our clients and act as business integrators, combining technology skills, industry knowledge and capabilities in People, Finance, Risk, Operations and Strategy to deliver what is needed and make sure the changes are practical and sustainable.

• We are independent. We are not a technology vendor selling a particular solution or trying to sell a pyramid of people to do implementation work.
• We have a range of skills in People and Change, Finance, Risk, Operations, Strategy as well as Technology.
• We can partner. If a client wants an adviser to partner with a technology vendor or systems integrator to make the implementation work, we can do so.
• Additional technology expertise. We now offer a greater level of industry specific process and technology expertise through our 600-person strong Global Delivery Centres in India and China and through the team joining us from Diamond Technoology and Management Consultants.

Our position as a business integrator is sustainable and differentiated in this market. We will continue building our technology and other capabilities to make us even stronger in implementation. But we are not going to imitate the pure systems integrators.

We can help through a variety of solutions:

• Optimise the value from technology spend
• Align information technology projects and IT organisational structure to business strategy
• Align maintenance, security and support activities to operational needs
• Access to independent experts who can provide an objective view of your IT issues

Our transaction services help companies make acquisitions, divestitures and strategic alliances, and to access the global capital markets. In each case we have the same overriding objective: to ensure clients maximise the return on their deal.

Our dedicated industry specialists across multiple disciplines deliver unparalleled knowledge to our clients as we navigate the deal process with them.

We have all the component capabilities to help clients throughout the entire deal continuum, working with them earlier to help them make the right strategic choices, and staying with them longer to help capture the value of the deal post-merger. This unique market offering requires taking a ‘one firm’ approach assembling multi-disciplinary teams and aggressively pursuing opportunities together, regardless of business unit or line of service.

We can help through a variety of solutions:

• Buy-side due diligence
• Vendor assistance and vendor due diligence
• Commercial and market due diligence
• Delivering deal value
• Valuations
• Bid support and defence Transaction modelling
• Sale and purchase
• Structuring