OREANDA-NEWS. April 1, 2016. ALM Intelligence*, the leading consulting research and advisory firm, rates PwC as a Vanguard Leader in their new report ‘Business-Facing Service Operations Consulting.’

According to ALM:

  • Business-facing service operations are the back-office functions that support the front-office and through which the corporate center directs the business. These are among the most influential contributors to overall business performance both as a driver of costs and enabler of growth.
  • Across sectors, companies are taking a hard look at their business-facing service operations as they respond to ongoing weakness and volatility in the economic environment.  This demands more operating flexibility at lower costs and the use of emerging digital technologies that afford opportunities to reconceive service operations from the ground up.

The report highlights that “PwC delivers business-facing service operations through its strategy & operations consulting practice and functional competency groups, including Finance, HR, and IT.  The firm orients its approach to the competency area around helping clients overcome three challenges that constrain their abilities to sustainably manage General and Administrative (G&A) costs and service effectiveness: a focus on across-the-board cost cuts, a tendency not to address the fundamental drivers of underperformance, and a lack of mechanisms to embed G&A management capabilities.”

It goes on to say “Central to how PwC translates its approach into its service delivery is the application of a services version of its “Fit for Growth*” cost management methodology, which seeks to align a company’s operational capabilities and cost allocation to the unique capabilities system required to deliver its strategy. The goal for PwC is to get away from a pure best-in-class model for each G&A function and help clients make the difficult tradeoffs between what they need to either stop doing or dramatically scale back and what they need to invest in G&A to drive strategic differentiation.  The firm gears its consulting process around enterprise-wide transformations guided by the “Fit for Growth” methodology that simultaneously addresses functional cost and effectiveness and the corporate operating model, including shared services, outsourcing, and organisation design.”

Juan Pujadas, Global Advisory Chairman, said "We are proud to have been recognised as a ALM Intelligence Vanguard leader.  It is vital for our clients to effectively manage their back office functions in order to remain competitive and effective in challenging market environments. Our focus is on helping and supporting them in all areas of their business, helping them to stay ahead of their competition.”

*ALM Intelligence, formerly Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory. 

* Fit for Growth is a registered service mark of PwC Strategy& LLC in the United States.