Project & Implementation Assurance

Maximize business, project and control outcomes:

• Do you have confidence that your projects will be completed on-time, on budget and to the required quality?
• Have you identified how you can enhance your internal control environment to more effectively and efficiently meet your operational, regulatory and financial reporting requirements?
• Are you confident that business benefits will be appropriately identified and realized?

Overview

Today’s business environment is continually changing. Markets are no longer constrained by geographic or legal boundaries, enabling companies to expand globally and to collaborate within and across organizations. In this new environment, agility has emerged as a key driver for enhancing shareholder value and ensuring sustainability. To achieve agility, organizations are engaged in complex initiatives that are expected to efficiently deliver strategic and tactical business benefits to multiple stakeholders without compromising the integrity of the existing environment or violating compliance requirements. These factors, along with the greater demand for accountability and transparency in the market have raised the stakes for project success. In addition to that, projects have typically become more complex. Successful delivery of strategic initiatives can significantly impact an organization’s efficiency, reputation and market value.

Defining project success

Delivery of a successful project requires that expectations and desired outcomes of all key stakeholders be, including:

• Project Outcomes: the project should be completed on time, on budget and should satisfy the stated requirements.
• Controls Outcomes: the design and implementation of controls should satisfy operational, regulatory and financial reporting requirements in an efficient and effective manner.
• Business Outcomes: the expected business benefits should be clearly defined, communicated and monitored.

Managing project risks

Organizations implementing projects face countless risks which could prevent the desired project outcomes from being achieved. These risks could include:

• Project Risks: insufficient resources, scope changes, poor communication
• Control Risks: Unfamiliar technology, misunderstood objectives, lack of end-to-end understanding, poor data quality, incompatible interfaces
• Benefit Risks: lack of accountability, poorly defined metrics, invalid business case assumptions

Delivering value through PIA

PwC can help you understand the key outcomes that will determine project success and can help you identify risks that may prevent these outcomes from being achieved. Our PIA approach provides tangible value to your project and organization, including:

• A clear view of the expectations of the various project stakeholders and opportunities to create efficiencies in the project, benefit and control activities based on alignment with stakeholder expectations.
• A unique and independent perspective on relevant risks at each phase in your project, presenting an understandable view of the road blocks that could potentially prevent you from achieving project success.
• Continuous feedback to project sponsors and project managers enabling them to proactively identify and address potential implementation risks before they significantly impact the company.
• Transfer of knowledge, enhancing your organization’s capabilities to successfully deliver future projects.

The methodology is summarised in the picture below:

PIA approach

Each implementation is unique. A key component of the PIA approach is the up-front assessment of the stakeholder’s expectations and the project’s unique risk profile. This risk profile is utilized to tailor the extent of independent procedures to be performed as part of the PIA assessment, allowing us to leverage work of the project team and focus our reviews on key risk areas. We recognize that risks evolve as the project progresses through its life-cycle. In PIA, relevant implementation risks are evaluated throughout the project life-cycle to provide management with a clear view of the most relevant risks at that point in the project life-cycle. As such, it provides continuous feedback to project sponsors and management, enabling them to proactively identify and address potential project risks before they impact
performance. The library of implementation risks and tools utilized in executing a PIA engagement are based on PwC’s cumulative experience in evaluating implementation related risks on projects. The globally proven methodology enables PwC engagement teams around the world to consistently identify, plan and execute reviews in the most efficient and effective manner.

The methodology is flexible and allows to focus on specific objectives or areas related to a project, e.g. controls & security in an ERP implementation or project outcomes of a reorganisation project