PwC named an ALM Vanguard leader in Business Strategy & Planning Consulting 2019

PwC’s BXT+Works service combines workshopping to identify big bet strategic moves and prototyping to test them.

PwC was announced as a Leader in ‘Business Strategy & Planning Consulting 2019’ by ALM Intelligence, a company that assesses consulting firms in defined markets on the basis of their breadth and depth of service capabilities and ability to deploy those across highly-complex client requirements.

According to the report, “Strategy faces a crisis of relevance. The age-old critique that it takes too long, consumes too many resources, and produces too few results persists. Business strategy & planning consultants have long sought to rectify these deficiencies, but despite their efforts the critique resonates more than ever as the speed and unpredictability of digitization overwhelms carefully charted strategies. Companies invested a lot during recent years in internal strategy teams and external consultants to improve their strategy capabilities, but faced with costs that exceed the benefits, they are starting to act like rational consumers by cutting back their consumption of strategy (and strategy consulting along with it).”

Commenting on the leader status, ALM states that “Inspired by its “capabilities-driven strategy” perspective and associated tools, PwC is particularly effective at helping clients connect market-back where-to-play with capability-forward how-to-win choices. The firm is making strides to embed this strategy framework into a more dynamic process model.”

Commenting on PwC’s approach, Nathan Simon Senior Director, Management Consulting Research at ALM and author of the report states: “The bedrock of PwC’s consulting approach, “capabilities-driven strategy,” starts from the premise that good strategy is more about the way it is integrated with execution than market selection. For this, PwC believes companies need clarity on their distinctive value proposition, the short list of capabilities critical for delivering it, and which products and services best fit with it.”

He goes on to say: “The core of PwC’s service delivery continues to revolve around understanding the differentiating capabilities that are essential for delivering a client’s value proposition and their fit with product and services. But the firm is recasting its delivery model to account for two impacts of heightened market uncertainty. One is the challenge of engaging in comprehensive evidence-based strategy discussions. For this, the firm uses its Aperture tool (an outgrowth of its strategy profiler for soliciting broad stakeholder input to assess strategic alignment) and a crowdsourcing platform for sourcing divergent inputs from across the PwC network. The other impact is the lack of focus that can bedevil clients as they chase too many ideas. For this, PwC uses a two-part offering. The first is the firm’s dynamic strategy service that combines automated market sensing with simulation modeling to rapidly react to uncertainties. The second is the firm’s six-to-eight week BXT+Works service that combines workshopping to identify big bet strategic moves and prototyping to test them.”

Mohamed Kande, PwC’s US and Global Advisory Leader said: “We are very pleased to be named a leader by ALM Intelligence.  We help our clients to bring the know-how, technology, and scale to think and deliver big on their company’s greatest strengths.  We also aim to help them improve performance and position themselves for success by assessing how internal and external changes will affect progress towards their strategic goals.”

Contact us