Operations

How are you balancing local execution with global capabilities?

Being able to execute on a local growth strategy requires developing local capabilities across functions like manufacturing, R&D, and distribution, while maintaining the advantages of scale and consistency in operations around the world. Half of US CEOs wish they could devote more time to developing their overseas operations.

Those successfully balancing their global capabilities with local opportunities are showing a distinct shift in mindset and approach. Consider recent US-China cross-border deals: they combine US experience and expertise with attributes only local Chinese partners can offer, such as relationships to secure government support and distribution networks that penetrate inland regions.

 

Featured operations insights

 

10Minutes on conflict minerals

10Minutes on conflict minerals provides insight into the strategic benefits and risks companies will want to focus on as they comply with the SEC's conflict minerals rule. The rule is effective for 2013 calendar year operations, so regardless of whether companies view conflict minerals as a supply chain opportunity, risk to their brand or another regulatory to-do, they should act now to prepare.

 

10Minutes on harnessing customer demand to drive growth

Consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies, retailers, and their business partners often tout the ways they put customers at the center of their strategies. But while many companies do a good job of understanding their customers, perhaps not as many create demand by coordinating across marketing, sales, and innovation—functions and activities that now encompass the demand chain. This 10Minutes explores ways companies can capitalize on knowing their customer with demand functions pulling in the same direction.

 

CIO leadership in post-transaction relationships: IT’s role in customer engagement

By evolving IT to focus on the end customer, CIOs have the opportunity to be key partners in helping their businesses break new ground.

 

Internet of Things: Evolving transactions into relationships

This issue of the Technology Forecast examines the impact of Internet of Things trends on businesses and the IT organization. It analyzes how businesses now have the ability to continue the relationship with customers after the sales transaction by helping them achieve the goals for which they buy the products.

 

Digitizing product use

Jim Ingrassia of Konica-Minolta shares how digitizing the use of its products was a source of competitive advantage.

 

Aligning customer and enterprise goals

Fred Cripe shares how Internet of things will shift the insurance business from loss compensation to loss control by helping customers achieve their goals.

 

Using technology to help customers achieve their goals

Businesses that embed capabilities to understand usage in their products in service of customers’ goals stand to reap unparalleled value.

 

10Minutes on building the customer-centered organization

What does a customer-centered organization look like? What investments are needed to take you there, and what might that journey look like? This 10Minutes discusses these questions and how companies who focus on creating a customer-centered organization may reap real dividends.

 

10Minutes on supply chain flexibility

Volatility has become a fact of life in today’s business landscape. Yet, after years of global expansion, many companies’ supply chains are brittle, unable to respond to frequent fluctuations in demand and supply. This 10Minutes explores strategies companies can deploy to make their supply chains more agile and adaptable.

 

10Minutes on creating value from Global Business Services

In 2013, company leaders are looking for value creation from their operations. To achieve this goal, organizations are moving beyond shared services and outsourcing to a Global Business Services (GBS) model. GBS helps provide those intangibles by focusing on customer needs and business strategy first and foremost.

 

Washington National Tax Services Insight: IRS examines whether manufacture of packaging qualifies for section 199 deduction

Section 199 domestic manufacturing deduction does not apply to a taxpayer that repackages and labels pills that it did not manufacture

 

Washington National Tax Services Insight: Tax issues and opportunities in technology litigation judgements and settlements

An increasing number of lawsuits are being filed by technology companies surrounding patent infringement, unfair competition, fraud, and breach of contract.

 

Next generation supply chains: Efficient, fast, and tailored

Our Global supply chain survey shows how supply chain leaders are moving ahead of the pack. Read the report and see how PwC can help you compete more effectively.

 

APEC 2012 CEO Summit survey report: Addressing challenges. Expanding possibilities.

PwC's report, building on a survey of more than 370 business leaders and interviews from across the region, confirms the necessity of regional cooperation for our companies' futures.

 

APEC 2012 CEO Summit: Improving supply chain integration to make them more reliable

One of the challenges for the continued economic growth of the APEC territories, are integrated supply chains that are reliable. Removing key trade bottle necks will facilitate faster, less expensive, and more secure intra-APEC trade.

 

Behind the Numbers, 2013

This PwC Health Research Institute (HRI) report looks at the projected increase in the cost of medical services for 2013. Read how medical cost trends affect your business.

 

10Minutes on business continuity management

The best disaster survival manual may be obsolete if it doesn’t anticipate major disruptions to the supply chain or at outsourced operations. As a result, business continuity management programs are being designed to continually assess— as well as counter—risks stemming from the interdependencies integral to running a business.

 

Expanding business in Asia Pacific

As Asia Pacific economies continue their rapid growth and become more deeply integrated, multinational companies are changing how they're expanding in the region for the long-haul--from setting up regional hubs and distribution networks, to developing local talent, to building brand loyalty amongst the region's rapidly growing number of middle class consumers.

 

Elevating tax function productivity with an "efficiency dividend"

PwC's latest thinking about how companies can leverage technology already embedded in the broader finance organization to transform a high-pressure environment into an integrated ecosystem that drives improvements in productivity, quality and risk.

 

Combating cybercrime: The general counsel’s role

Cyberattacks aren’t just an information technology matter. Legal obligations, damages to the organization, and business relations with customers all come into play. Often the last to know, it is imperative that general counsel be the first on the cybercrime scene. They can play a pivotal role in protecting an organization if they act promptly when a company’s systems have become compromised.

 

How credible is your sustainable reporting?

CEOs and boards know the benefits of corporate responsibility reporting included increasing profitability, reducing supply chain risks and costs, and garnering sustainability ratings and recognitions. Overall, companies need this information to drive operational efficiencies and facilitate innovation. Ultimately though, to win stakeholders’ trust, companies need to be credible with respect to sustainability. How do they achieve it?

 

Interview with Niall Ferguson

In this interview, author and commentator Niall Ferguson brings this unique perspective to the major issues of the day—financial, economic, and political. As a student of empire, he also offers his views on why civilizations rise, fall, and, possibly, rise again.

 

Defining a new CEO agenda

As shown by the results of our 14th Annual Global CEO Survey,¹ about half of all CEOs are confident about revenue growth going forward. But how will they achieve it? Here PwC's Tom Craren outlines eight key strategies for seizing the opportunities at hand.

 

Rebooting Your IT Strategy: Using IT to Accelerate Your Business

A review of IT organizations in financial services and discussions with bank CIOs reveal that firms benefit when their IT organizations innovate and are aligned with their business groups.

 

Doing business in a changing China

As the fastest-growing major economy in the world, China continues to offer global companies attractive investment and business opportunities, but doing business there also means navigating the complexities that arise from China’s unique historical, political, and cultural contexts. Despite the challenges, what are leading US companies doing to succeed in China? For one, they're developing collaborative relationships with Chinese stakeholders and demonstrating the agility to continuously adapt their strategies to the country’s dynamic environment. What other steps are they taking?

 

Cloud computing gets strategic: Reducing technology costs is just the starting point

Most organizations today are no longer deciding whether they’ll use cloud computing - rather, they're deciding how they'll use it. But will they use software-as-a-service to provide CRM for their sales team instead of managing the application in-house? Should they take advantage of inexpensive, virtualized storage to meet mushrooming data needs? Will a private cloud enable them to better leverage technology investments among different business units? These are now the questions being asked and here, we take a look at the answers.

 

Interview: Capitalism reset

While some views hold that capitalism is on its way out, reality tells a different story.Through crisis after crisis, through boom cycles and busts, capitalism manages to reinvent itself and prevail. In this interview, economist and journalist Anatole Kaletsky shares his unique perspective on the resilience of capitalism and on the current state of our economy and its prospects for the future.

 

Customizing healthcare: How a new approach to diagnosis, care, and cure could transform employer benefits in a postreform world

Healthcare reform in the US will change funding, insurance coverage, and regulation will affect virtually everyone—including large employers, the majority of which are self-insured. What are proactive companies doing already to consider how reform will change plan eligibility, plan design, underwriting rules, tax deductions, and more and how are they reevaluating their benefits strategies accordingly?

 

Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act

Touted as a bill that will completely overhaul the financial regulatory system, the Dodd-Frank Act creates new regulators, regulates new markets, brings new firms into the regulatory arena, and provides new rule-making and enforcement powers for existing agencies. It will have enormous impact on both financial and non-financial services firms. Here we examine the Act in detail, offering you key guidance to better understand its reach and impact.

 

The rise of the public-private partnership

The benefits of PPPs can be compelling. Public-private partnerships don’t simply provide much-needed capital for projects; they can also serve as models of efficiency and reliability and be champions of high levels of accountability and transparency. In addition, PPPs can be cost-effective and time efficient. But are PPPs applicable to all capital projects? We break down the issues in greater deal in this edition of View.