MCA Awards 2024

Impact Accelerator Programme (3 charities including Jersey Employment Trust)
Best Use of Thought Leadership

Think local, act for impact

When PwC started to support three local charities, it discovered a significant gap in the knowledge base around evaluating impacts in the third sector. Although well-established in the private and public sectors, charities and similar organisations often lack robust metrics to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work.

With government and philanthropic funders increasingly making decisions based on quantified performance, the absence of a common language can create obstacles to raising funds, influencing policy and, fundamentally, demonstrating that charities are effective at doing what they exist to do.
PwC Channel Islands worked with three Jersey charities to develop an Impact Accelerator programme that helps third-sector organisations articulate their purpose, monitor and report their quantified impacts, and sustain their focus through ongoing changes.

To ensure the work’s effectiveness, the firm focused on addressing three common obstacles that each organisation faced – knowing the nature of its impact, to focus its priorities and activities on a clear vision and effective outcomes; having a reputation that tells a clear and credible story to supporters and policymakers; and sustaining income, by reporting in a way that demonstrates outcomes clearly.

The firm wanted to focus on building the charities’ own capabilities, and equip each organisation to fully own its impact assessment process. Over six months, PwC worked hand in hand with the charities to help them clarify their thinking and produce analyses and materials in their own branding.

PwC’s team drew on its wide range of skills, to conduct high-quality research and develop a rigorous approach, which led to a four-phase programme that was tailored to each charity. Theory of Change workshops helped participants agree on a shared vision, explore the charity’s desired long-term impacts, and identify the specific outcomes that would achieve them. A Baseline Assessment enabled each charity to quantify its social, economic and environmental value, source the relevant data and visualise it with Power BI, then benchmark the results against comparable organisations.

From that position, Impact Monitoring & Reporting Guidance then equipped each charity to use the ongoing insights to inform its decision-making and external reporting. Finally, an Impact Framework was co-developed with each organisation, giving it a mechanism for assessing and monitoring the impact of its changes, both internally and externally.

PwC’s work established a new and distinctive approach to assessing impacts, and empowered the three charities to translate their good deeds into great outcomes. By bringing together strategy, monitoring, evaluation and impacts, the programme has enabled the organisations to demonstrate their social, economic and environmental benefits in monetary terms that speak effectively to a wide range of funders, donors and other stakeholders.

This good work has not gone unnoticed and, although not actively promoted, word of its effectiveness has spread throughout the wider third sector. As a result, it could profoundly change how the sector improves its impact, establishes its credentials, and demonstrates its value for society as a whole.

Frictionless Futures (Internal)
Best Use of Thought Leadership

The role of frictionless technology within the retail sector is evolving at pace. PwC recognised a key gap in the market for the latest perspectives on the opportunity at hand, within the context of broader technology trends, vendors, customer perception and the ‘so what’ for retailers.

A survey of consumers, combined with insights from PwC’s technology, market and business specialists, led to its 2022 report: The Future of Shopping. It revealed that 43% of shoppers would pay more for convenience, and that 75% of those under 45 would actively switch to a frictionless shopping technology.

The report’s successful reception with clients, and requests for more in-depth conversations, resulted in PwC taking the work a step further. It needed to create an immersive client demonstration, which brought the thought leadership to life and showcased the potential for retail of technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Computer Vision Artificial Intelligence (CV AI), and the data they generate.

The result was Frictionless Futures – a physical experience centre created by PwC’s multidisciplinary team in just two months. At the centre, in PwC’s Manchester office, clients can explore frictionless technology and its many applications for themselves, through a tour that provides three different perspectives.

Frictionless Convenience shows how ‘tap in’ RFID and CV AI purchase tracking can make convenience shopping quicker and smoother. Frictionless Retail reveals how the associated ‘big data’ can be analysed to understand shopping behaviours and enhance operations. Lastly, the Frictionless Venue demonstrates how tech-powered bars and kiosks can increase throughput and revenue. The first-hand stimulus of the tour is coupled with strategic workshop-based discussions on topics ranging from enhancing customer data, to managing cyber security.

PwC initially developed the experience to showcase the retail possibilities of frictionless technology, but it was soon stimulating interest among colleagues and clients in other parts of PwC’s global network, and they were keen to identify applications of the technology for industries beyond retail. This led PwC UK to adapt the experience to showcase the potential business benefit across multiple sectors and, to date, it has hosted more than 175 visitors from over 70 clients.

As a result of Frictionless Futures, PwC has been invited to progress several opportunities further, including a visit to Poland with a major multiple grocer to explore autonomous stores, and a demonstration at the National Retail Federation’s trade exhibition in New York. So far, the experience has yielded a strong pipeline of opportunity, and PwC continues to make future bookings for the Frictionless Futures tour.

Moreover, the experience has transformed PwC’s reputation among clients, established the firm as a leading thinker in the arena of technology and data, and positioned it as a trusted advisor that can harness and apply innovation across many sectors.

The programme’s multidisciplinary nature has brought the whole firm together, and demonstrated how working across sectors, territories and advisory capabilities can broaden and deepen its relationships with alliance partners and clients.

Tropicana Products UK Ltd
Change and Transformation in the Private Sector

Carving out a juicy market in Europe

Tropicana Brands Group (TBG) needed to separate from its former parent company, PepsiCo, and become a standalone business, specialising in juices and chilled brands. As well as establishing standalone systems and processes, it aimed to launch as a lean business that used the latest enterprise technology to create a platform for growth.

TBG’s newly-appointed Europe board had previously experienced a challenging post-deal go-live, and needed a team to bring the leadership and expertise that would ensure the programme’s success. PwC was therefore appointed and, with just 12 months in which to achieve the transformation, quickly built on established relationships with the client team.

Although SAP technology would be central to the transformation, PwC adopted a ‘business integration’ perspective, to deliver real commercial benefits. The firm developed a level of trust and challenge that enabled it to work pragmatically and rapidly. It drew on its wide experience of carve-outs and business processes, including user stories that accelerated the design process and presented new ways of working as an opportunity to improve on established practices.

While the firm’s core UK team focused on the business transformation, its European teams addressed programme-specific needs such as testing, training, data migration and cutover. The Europe teams also liaised with systems integration partners and TBG’s global leadership, to keep the European transformation in sync with the global client’s parallel transformation in North America.

PwC took an innovative approach to programme governance, and brought senior leaders together every week, in steering meetings that focused on eight critical business processes. This unusual, but highly-effective, mix of seniority and frequency helped sustain the client’s commitment to rapid progress at the highest level.

Meanwhile, the programme’s great scale, complexity and pace meant the work was intensive, and PwC took care to maintain its team’s wellbeing. Heatmaps identified that some individuals were operating at 150% capacity, which enabled the firm to raise additional contractor requirements and – by using Generative AI – minimise the extra HR effort of creating new job profiles.

The strength of PwC’s client relationship and the dedication of its teams enabled the firm to manage a major, mission-critical issue when one key software vendor was delayed by several months. By gaining high-level support for a revised plan, using dedicated teams to target critical areas, the firm not only addressed the issue effectively, but also achieved separation three months ahead of schedule.

As a result, the client saved €1.5m in TSA fees, the programme has dramatically reduced TBG’s variety of software applications, and SG&A costs have been cut by 33.3%. Production operations were quickly ramped up, the first month-end close for the new business was completed in just one week, and the business experienced negligible disruption.

By combining highly effective working relationships with extensive carve-out experience, PwC surpassed the programme’s objectives in the face of major obstacles, and delivered ahead of an already-ambitious timescale, while TBG’s customers have enjoyed a near-seamless transition to dealing with the new business.

NHS England
Change and Transformation in the Public Sector

Supporting the NHS to transform the whole organisation’s digital capability

The drive to deliver safe and high-quality care in the health sector can no longer rely on paper-based systems. With its £2bn Frontline Digitisation programme, NHS England aims to raise 170 NHS hospitals up to a baseline level of digital capability using electronic patient records (EPR). Although such records will be an essential building block for creating a more digital NHS, the move away from paper-based systems at such a scale is huge and complex.

PwC was engaged, in leading a consortium, to establish a centre of expertise that would support the Frontline Digitisation transformation nationwide. Whereas earlier initiatives had adopted highly centralised or autonomous local approaches, the Frontline Digitisation programme would be built around distributed, but co-ordinated, activities.

The Frontline Digitisation Support Offer (FDSO) would therefore provide a centre of expertise for the whole programme, to maximise the collective knowledge, expertise and capability within the NHS. As a pool of knowledge from the NHS and beyond, the FDSO would promote good practice for implementing EPR, help the NHS to learn from its own experience and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, and put in place a future-proof digital estate that can embrace emerging technologies.

PwC worked with NHS England to design the FDSO, which brought together 12 teams from across NHS organisations. Conscious to avoid being seen as “another consulting firm taking over”, the firm made it a priority to work in partnership, harness specialists from the consortium, and listen closely to understand and support the work of NHS colleagues. Together, the centre’s 45-strong team co-created, developed and communicated models of good practice that drew on experience from the NHS and globally.

A primary aim of the centre’s approach was to shift perceptions of the programme, and position it as a transformation of how care was delivered, rather than purely a technology initiative. Central to that shift was a reimagining of how the centre engaged with NHS organisations, by ‘taking the content to the users’ and recognising the reality of their needs. Rather than simply putting guidance documents on a website, the FDSO adopted a multi-channel approach, with face-to-face Learning Labs, in-person events, and peer networks that brought together colleagues from different NHS bodies to work on common problems.

Throughout the programme, the FDSO’s design enabled it to remain agile and use Playbooks to respond quickly to urgent commissions that needed expert advice in priority areas, such as data and analytics for financial reporting, systems optimisation, or training and change management.

The FDSO model is the first of its kind, and the programme’s approach genuinely surprised many of the NHS team, with over 83% of participants reporting improved readiness for delivery and a greater sense of NHS ‘togetherness’. As a result, the FDSO has equipped its 760-strong NHS community of practice to take the transformation forward together at scale.

“Impeccable. Responsive. Always on point. It is an absolute pleasure working with the PwC team.”
Senior NHS Leader

Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council
Change and Transformation in the Public Sector

Giving the people of Walsall Council services they can be proud of

Walsall’s population was growing and ageing, with high levels of deprivation and changing service expectations. Walsall Council needed to support the increasing demand for its services against a backdrop of national and global uncertainty. Service delivery was below that of its local government peers, and it had to save nearly £60m-£80m – more than 10% of its annual gross budget.

The council knew it had to transform how it delivered its services, and made three ‘Proud Promises’, to improve customer experience, employee engagement, and efficiency. However, recruitment and retention issues meant its capability was limited and its capacity was already stretched. PwC was therefore engaged as a strategic partner, to help it honour its three promises by establishing customer-focused and digitally-enabled ways of working.

PwC’s core concept was to bring about a fundamental change in how the council used technology, which was realised by designing and implementing a more effective operating model. The model established a way of exploiting technology to deliver better customer experiences and staff engagement, while also creating large financial savings.

The programme focused on the council’s front-line Administration, Business Intelligence, Commercial & Procurement, and Adult Social Care functions, and its back-office Enabling & Support Services. PwC worked in seven workstreams, ranging from culture and behavioural change through to income generation and enabling technology, to ensure that the organisational and technology transformations worked as one.

Over the programme’s five-year lifetime, PwC drew on a breadth of expertise that included operations, performance, technology and data. The firm’s people worked alongside the council in its offices, making it easier to develop a ‘one team’ mindset and share knowledge. Co-location also built strong relationships that made it possible to challenge the status quo and identify new, ‘product-led’ opportunities for simplification and standardisation.

Walsall Council needed to sustain the benefits being delivered, so PwC invested time in developing its leadership capabilities, through activities such as shared Lunch & Learn sessions and a structured coaching programme to improve performance, while developing an in-house team to continue coaching internally. The firm established programme governance, facilitated knowledge transfer to third-party suppliers, and supported a smooth handover of the Programme Management Office. By the end of the programme, the client had become self-sufficient, and was equipped to manage, track and sustain the improvements being achieved.

In PwC’s role as a strategic partner, the firm not only helped its client to achieve specific objectives, but also supported it through unexpected challenges. Notably, some elements of the programme that had been contracted out to third-party suppliers went awry. Nonetheless, PwC remained the council’s trusted partner, so was on hand to step in and bring the contracts back on course and ensure that the overall programme succeeded.
As a result, the council is now delivering on all its Proud Promises. It has achieved its ambitious cost savings, and is delivering significantly better experiences and efficiency for the people of Walsall.

BAE Systems Plc
Commercial Impact

Building ship-shape cost-cutting capabilities in the defence sector

With a £4.2bn contract at stake, the MoD needed BAE Systems (BAES) to reduce costs before it proceeded to contract five more Type 26 frigates for the Royal Navy. Not only did the company face the challenge of making savings on its current contract for building three frigates, which was well under way, but its supply chain function had a relatively high turnover and many new staff, so it had limited capability for making such savings in the future.

PwC had achieved previous successes for BAES, so was asked to help identify and realise cost savings of over £110m, and to deliver sustainable improvements to its supply chain capability.

An initial assessment of the BAES approach to markets and procurement confirmed that it was broadly sound, but found that more work was needed to achieve the required costs savings in the face of unexpected supply chain disruptions such as Brexit and COVID-19. Furthermore, with long lead times for many supplies, early procurement was essential to prevent cost savings causing delays.

In a two-year programme, PwC’s 25-strong team adopted a ‘no stone unturned’ approach to identify potential savings across 50 contract packages, while robust data and visualisations helped to forecast savings and prioritise actions in an agile manner. To ensure that each action would result in real savings, the firm assessed all the available levers and identified the eight most effective, including aggregation, supplier negotiation and joint process improvement.

PwC then applied a relentless and rigorous approach to realising the savings, working closely with the client. This achieved the dual goals of making cost savings and, in the process, developing the BAES Supply Chain capability, in areas such as commodity markets, analysing suppliers and value engineering.

The ‘side-by-side’ learning was supplemented with organised capability sessions and quarterly away days, to provide an engaging and fun way to build both skills and relationships. Such relationships made it possible to encourage a cross-functional mindset and new ways of working for the Supply Chain team, most notably its collaboration with Engineering and Operations functions to specify requirements in ways that delivered value as well as functionality.

A rigorous governance process, using ‘stage gates’, verified and tracked the savings being made, not least because the firm’s fees were contingent on them. Each of the savings opportunities identified could be realised only if it justified the resourcing required, achieved a supplier offer, and was signed off as satisfying the project’s strict savings criteria and procedures.

Despite massive, unforeseen disruption to the supply chain, PwC achieved cost reductions of over £140m, exceeding its primary objective by 20% and representing an ROI of 800%.

The client now has greater confidence, a strong customer relationship, new capabilities, and a culture of cross-functional working that no longer focuses on processes, but seeks instead to promote ownership and deliver real value. Moreover, the programme’s legacy is that its governance model is now being adopted as best practice for other client initiatives.

SSEN Plc
Performance Improvement in the Private Sector

Giving power to the people, to make a better, greener future

SSEN’s electricity network plays a crucial role in the UK’s transition to Net Zero. As the country moves away from fossil fuels, the surge in demand for electricity can only be met through a more resilient and flexible energy network, and rapid improvement by SSEN would be rewarded by the regulator. A significant transformation was required, to deliver increased volumes more efficiently than ever before, but previous attempts had not yielded substantial or sustainable benefits.

Against this backdrop, SSEN sought PwC’s help to make immediate and lasting improvements to its capability, sustainability and performance, including a 15% productivity increase in some areas.

Given the need for rapid improvement, the firm focused on embedding behavioural change throughout the business, by combining top-down and bottom-up initiatives. A survey of 4,000 people across the organisation was conducted to understand its cultural strengths and challenges, from which the PwC team and SSEN’s management prioritised a “critical few” key behaviours. The survey also allowed the reticence and concerns of some staff to be heard, which provided especially valuable inputs to the process.

PwC then developed and piloted an operational excellence programme which, in several 12-week waves, empowered a pilot group of front-line team leaders, using a “see one, do one, lead one” coaching approach. They were equipped with the insight, confidence and momentum to embed new behaviours in their teams and, even in the pilot of 300 people, real performance improvements were seen in just three months.

The programme’s subsequent scaling expanded its reach to a further 700 staff over six months. Half the delivery was conducted by the SSEN team leaders who had been through the pilot stage and, as a result, the client became self-sufficient in making further performance improvements itself, without external support. Meanwhile, PwC collaborated with the client’s HR function to integrate the key behaviours into its people management process.

To ensure that the performance improvements were measurable and motivational, PwC drew on its data expertise to create a through-line from SSEN’s top line “golden metrics” down to team-level KPIs. Thanks to improved data tools and dashboards, teams are now equipped to stay focused on effective actions, while accountability has been improved across the organisation.

The programme’s results exceeded its initial objectives and expectations, and even surpassed the stretch goals within the business, by delivering a productivity improvement of 30%. SSEN’s customers now enjoy faster quotes and network connections, and the measurable performance gains have led to a regulatory reward of £3.4m. Meanwhile, operational improvements mean that field teams can work more efficiently to increase the network’s resilience, and now have greater capacity to make longer-term network improvements.
By taking a people-centred approach, PwC has empowered SSEN to adopt a “change-fit” culture that can keep delivering change and power a sustainable future.

“I feel my team has come alive, and we have people doing things now they would have never done previously”
SSEN Manager

Network Rail
Performance Improvement in the Public Sector

Getting data moving, to drive a more reliable and efficient service

Without Network Rail, the country’s trains would grind to a halt. Without accurate and timely data, Network Rail can’t reassure the country that its rail infrastructure is safe and reliable. With labour intensive, manual processes for both collecting data and compiling reports, the organisation’s reporting processes were time-consuming and error prone.

PwC were commissioned to deliver a modern and scalable cloud reporting platform which would remove manual data manipulation, standardise and simplify reports and be a trusted source for multiple stakeholders.

Given the huge scale and complexity of rail domain data, the integrated AIS/PwC project team worked closely with data owners and report users, to build a deep understanding of their existing processes and define the organisation’s requirements for the ‘to-be’ state of its reporting platform. Monthly customer forums gave stakeholders regular opportunities to ask questions, understand the project’s progress and give feedback, which subsequently ensured a smooth transition as the new reports were implemented.

To make the best use of public money, the client was keen to maximise the value from its existing licence fees for Microsoft data tools, so the Power BI product was adopted as the foundation of a scalable, cloud-based reporting platform. PwC specialists then provided the expertise to integrate and automate the collection of data from several disparate data sources, and deliver timely, reliable and flexible reporting.

From a single project manager for the initial engagement, the PwC team grew to 20 over six months, including specialists in Consulting and Managed Services, and the firm’s Kolkata delivery centre. The team’s agile, Scrum-based approach included daily check-ins, integration of automation and reporting activities, and regular communication across the organisation. Working in three-week sprint cycles, the team facilitated ‘show and tell’ sessions at the end of each sprint, to showcase development and solicit feedback.

PwC’s approach enabled each new report to be prototyped, iterated and released in seven weeks, resulting in clear, sophisticated and customisable visualisations of Network Rail’s assets and operations. In total, the team implemented 60 such reports, automated all the underlying data collection processes, and established robust data quality disciplines. The firm supported users with training, certification and documentation, to deliver a smooth rollout with sustainable benefits.

The project has saved significant manual effort, and restored its confidence that it has the information needed to manage its assets. PwC’s implementation engagement has now transitioned into a managed service, which allows the firm to support continuous improvement of the client’s insights, as a trusted technology partner.

Health and Care Professions Council
People and Leadership

Improving the flow of healthcare workers by unburdening their regulator

The Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC) registers 350,000 healthcare professionals across 15 professions, and ensures they are fit to practice, keeping the public safe in receiving healthcare.

HCPC had significant backlogs for registering international practitioners ready to work in the UK, and for its Fitness to Practice service, which it was under pressure to improve. Meanwhile, COVID-19 was increasing demand for healthcare professionals, and legislative changes were imminent, but the organisation’s resources were too stretched to make effective improvements.

HCPC and PwC embarked on a three-year strategic partnership, spanning 15 programmes, to transform the organisation’s culture and operations, speed up its services and reduce its backlogs. Improved HCPC throughput would enable the NHS to deploy the right people at the right time, and meet the ever-changing demand for care.

The consulting team brought together a wide range of specialisms, ranging from solutions architects to operational excellence coaches. As well as creating the right skills mix for the engagement and client, the firm was also careful to blend personality types, based on Myers-Briggs tests taken by both PwC and HCPC members.

The firm worked closely with the client to transform its culture, including daily one-to-one coaching for all levels and functions, to promote a shared mindset of collaboration and continuous improvement. The high level of trust created by this hands-on approach led to the firm actively facilitating some particularly challenging regular meetings, which could previously become confrontational.

By encouraging all HCPC staff to take ownership of the organisation’s transformation, PwC embedded a human-centred approach to adopting suitable technologies and exploiting their potential to deliver improvements. An example is the Champions Network, an HCPC team that drives ongoing in-house improvements, which was created and upskilled during the engagement and continues to be supported through PwC’s annual innovation days.

In the firm’s broad role as a strategic partner, it supported HCPC across a wide variety of activities, such as designing its services and target operating model, reimaging how it used external expertise, and designing its future technology. The firm kickstarted a collaboration with the People Directorate of NHS England (another PwC client), enabling both organisations to develop a market-leading application of digital credentials technology. As a result, the NHS can respond to rapidly-changing demand by deploying its workforce quickly and flexibly, and reduce its spending on agency staff.

PwC applied its Run & Transform approach to achieve rapid improvements to the client’s Registration service. The firm’s Execution Managed Service took care of immediate processing issues and backlogs, while a parallel programme team worked with the client to explore and co-design improved services for the future.

The firm’s work achieved an impressive list of results that includes reducing a 2½-year backlog to same-day processing, and clearing 6,500 professionals to augment the NHS workforce. Most importantly, the client’s culture is totally different, and HCPC’s impressive new capabilities are now enabling it to deliver in-house improvements that surpass even those of the original engagement.

GPA Global UK Limited
People and Leadership

Shaping the right skills mix to transform the Civil Service

To support its ten-year strategy and remain competitive in the UK property industry, the Government Property Agency (GPA) needed to know it had the right skills.

The GPA is responsible for providing and managing the UK government’s office portfolio. Keeping pace with the property industry depended on an investment in upskilling and reskilling its people across the agency. And the GPA understood that a refreshed core skills framework would provide an accurate reflection of capabilities required for the future, serving as a guide for recruitment and internal development efforts.

PwC was engaged to review and redesign the GPA’s existing skills framework, including benchmarking against property industry best practices, and delivering a Skills Builder tool that would help the GPA identify and resolve its skills gaps.

The engagement required an understanding of the priorities and culture of government and the public sector, experience of the property business, and the ability to recognise the nuances of the client’s strategic skills requirements. The PwC team therefore brought together diverse backgrounds and perspectives, a multidisciplinary mix of specialisms, and experience of innovating for government and public sector clients.

A rapid, comprehensive review was conducted, to assess the GPA’s skills framework by examining the current skills and proficiency requirements for each role in the organisation’s nine specialisms. These results were then benchmarked against the skills being sought for comparable roles across the property industry, to develop a new framework, highlight the skills in greatest demand and provide a focus for upskilling activities.

By working closely with the GPA’s teams, the firm co-created an innovative approach that would suit the client’s requirements, culture and employee needs. PwC’s tailored skills taxonomy provided a unified skills language for the whole GPA, enabling it to identify the leadership capabilities needed to achieve a successful transformation. Meanwhile, the firm developed the Skills Builder tool, to assess skill levels against the framework, identify gaps, and help the GPA leadership plan its development activities.

With the framework and tool in place, the Skills and Specialisms programme then brought them to life by promoting a ‘skills first’ culture. The programme encouraged employees not only to assess their own skills with the Skills Builder tool, but also to see upskilling in a positive light. As a result, the GPA was able to demonstrate its commitment to developing its employees’ capabilities, reassure employees that career progression reflected skills and proficiencies, and encourage them to own their own learning and development journeys.

PwC delivered far more than the client’s original requirements, not only with a refreshed and industry-standard skills framework, innovative assessment tool and engagement plan, but also by enhancing a culture in which employees understand that skills are valued and recognised. Meanwhile, the GPA’s leadership now has an organisation-wide perspective, enabling it to identify and fill immediate skills gaps, and to support its talent development for the future.

Progress Together
Social Value

Progress Together: building social value across an entire industry

The Financial Services sector displays a notable lack of diversity at senior levels. Its leadership continues to be dominated by those from professional family backgrounds, and far more so than other sectors. Outreach and access initiatives have helped expand the talent poor for recruitment, but this has shown results only at junior level, while homogeneity persists amongst senior roles. With evidence showing that more diverse leadership teams make better decisions, this is a social challenge where the solution also has real business value.

Progress Together is a membership organisation, comprising financial services and associated businesses that share a commitment to socio-economic diversity in the sector. Its mission is to improve that diversity at senior levels by enabling the best talent to progress, regardless of background. PwC, as a founding member, was engaged to help it achieve two key important objectives. Firstly, to help the client advocate for mandatory data collection on socio-economic background, by drafting a response to FCC and PRA consultation papers on diversity and inclusion. Without such data, effective monitoring would be impossible, so the response needed to both make the case and gain support from Progress Together’s member organisations.

Secondly, the firm was asked to design and develop the pilot for an ambitious, industry-wide secondment scheme, to develop talent from less-privileged backgrounds. Career progression into leadership roles is enabled most effectively by mentoring, sponsorship, coaching or structured leadership programmes, so Progress Together was keen to facilitate exposure to the firms, roles and contacts that might otherwise be elusive.

Over the course of a three-month engagement, PwC’s small team worked with Progress Together’s member businesses and other organisations in the sector, including The Bridge Group, Financial Services Skills Commission, legal firms and professional accreditation bodies.

The team created the right environment for agile and collaborative working across the sector, and brought ethnic, gender and class diversity into the room, with new perspectives and the tenacity to challenge established practices and mindsets. For example, the financial services sector has traditionally been very competitive, so a secondment from one firm to another presented many cultural, contractual and practical obstacles. Nonetheless, by uniting the industry’s senior leaders around a common goal with important benefits, PwC facilitated workshops that focused discussion on what was possible, and how to make it happen.

For a sector-wide secondment programme to work, it would have to satisfy the needs of all its participating organisations, whatever their size or sub-sector. The firm’s workshops therefore created space for a broad variety of participants to shape the programme’s design, selection process, learning and development schedules, and success criteria.

Both the consultation response and the pilot programme gained unanimous support from the Progress Together Board, with five member organisations committing to participate in the pilot. As PwC disengages, it looks forward to seeing the secondment pilot launch and, based on the design’s success metrics, demonstrate its benefits for the financial services industry.

PEXA Group Limited
Strategy

Solving customer detriment provides a springboard for growth

PEXA’s global ambitions, and share price, relied on it making a big splash in the UK market. Its platform offers end-to-end support for property transactions, and it hoped to replicate its Australian success overseas. Its UK business had already started in earnest, but the somewhat idiosyncratic and fragmented UK property industry was not what PEXA’s strategy had anticipated, so an intervention was needed.

PwC was initially engaged to conduct M&A due diligence on Optima, the UK’s second-largest conveyancing firm, under PEXA’s original UK strategy. The quality of the firm’s work led the client to seek its further support, to understand the nuances of the UK property industry, reset its strategy and help with executing the revised strategy.

The foundation for PwC’s work was wide-ranging research, to develop a rich understanding across the many facets of the UK property market. The firm conducted three strands of research: a survey of more than 11,000 recent home-buyers and remortgagers; interviews with more than 50 professionals, including estate agents, mortgage brokers and conveyancers; and working sessions with mortgage business heads from six of the UK’s largest banks.

From that research, the firm built a consolidated knowledge base that documented the full breadth of the fragmented UK property industry, to obtain clearer insights. More than simply a national overview, PwC’s analysis enabled the client to understand how the UK’s market differed from Australia’s, revise some of the assumptions behind its original strategy, and develop a fresh approach to entering the UK market. As a result, one key aspect of the new strategy became to target parts of the value chain where the research had identified high demand for a technology solution, and low barriers to its adoption.

A priority of the engagement was to identify opportunities around customer detriment, as a central element of PEXA’s proposition. PwC therefore used the knowledge base to identify specific areas in which customers were not being well-served, and helped the client create a roadmap for developing suitable technology and identifying investment or exit opportunities.

At the policy level, the firm’s research identified how the regulatory framework of the UK property industry presented both opportunities and obstacles. Under the FCA’s new Consumer Duty regulations, for instance, PEXA’s offering would equip banks with a platform that enabled them to demonstrate good customer outcomes. Conversely, where regulations perpetuated the UK industry’s idiosyncratic practices, PwC helped the client explore different approaches for lobbying government.

Entering a highly-fragmented market was fraught with challenges and, to accelerate and de-risk the client’s new strategy, PwC Economics developed and tested an econometric model to forecast transaction volumes, and conducted Monte Carlo simulations to develop a robust business case.

By combining several approaches, PwC successfully helped PEXA’s UK business gain Board support and investment for its new entry strategy, and provided execution support on due diligence, deal completion and post-deal integration. As a result, PEXA gained access to more than 30% of the market, and PwC is now its sole UK consulting partner.

National Highways
Strategy

Paving the way for delivering on a social value plan

National Highways needed to demonstrate the broad range of value it was delivering, in order to retain both its statutory and societal permissions. Ultimately, such recognition of the organisation’s social value helps to shore up its role as the government’s provider of strategic road infrastructure and secure ongoing investment to operate, maintain and improve this network.

Although the concept of social value was widely recognised within the organisation, the variety of perspectives was equally wide, so it could not readily tell a coherent story of the social value created by its work. PwC was therefore engaged to help develop a cohesive social value plan that could be clearly understood and communicated across the organisation and beyond. In addition, the firm was asked to streamline how the client measured and reported its social impact, through both quantitative metrics and qualitative stories, to improve strategic decision-making and stakeholder communication.

Preliminary investigations revealed more than 100 disparate KPIs, which reflected differing ideas of social value that often focused on distinct activities, such as procurement, value for money or one-off community events. Equally, in areas where the client was creating excellent social value, the lack of a holistic context made it difficult to associate that value with the organisation’s overall purpose.

To develop the social value plan, PwC’s multidisciplinary team drew on the World Economic Forum’s social value guidance and the strategic vision of the Social Value 2032 Roadmap, which provides a framework for embedding social value in public sector procurement, to stimulate the creation of social value by private sector suppliers.

The firm conducted interviews with the entire workforce, to understand the full breadth of perspectives and achieve widespread buy-in. Faced with such a high volume and rich variety of information, PwC developed a ‘categorisation machine’ to codify the knowledge in terms of its importance to the client, its stakeholders and its communities, and in relation to what good looks like across both public and private sectors.

By building a coherent consensus throughout the organisation, PwC then had a sound basis for rationalising and baselining clear indicators of its social impact, and developed a Social Value Tool that allows National Highways to see, and tell, its social impact through quarterly metrics and stories. The organisation now has its first published social value plan, and a set of just 18 top-level metrics that summarise its overall social value, including economic prosperity, environment, community wellbeing, and diversity and inclusion.

By embracing the diversity of thought in the organisation, drawing on best practice guidance, and developing an innovative methodology, PwC helped the client clearly understand and articulate its social value. The firm created a unified and commonly-understood vision for National Highways, developed a social value strategy, agreed baseline metrics and built a reporting tool that now delivers quantitative and qualitative insights, allowing the client’s social value to be counted and its stories to be told.

GreenHouse Toolkit
Sustainability (SDGs 11 & 13)

Rebuilding emissions modelling from the ground up

Housing generates a large portion of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, from both its construction and operation. In fact, 23% of the country’s total emissions arise from the energy used just to heat and power its current buildings. Meanwhile, 340,000 new homes must be built each year to house the country’s growing population, but even the most energy-efficient houses will increase emissions from their construction and operation. If were are to solve the climate crisis, those emissions must therefore be balanced by reducing the energy consumption of existing homes on an unprecedented scale.

However, a major obstacle is the difficulty of evaluating energy-saving measures accurately. Policies and initiatives that promote energy-efficient homes fail to reflect the diverse nature of the country’s housing stock, so homogenised approximations over- or under-estimate the true costs and benefits of carbon-reduction measures, such as retrofitting insulation, double glazing or heat pumps.

PwC’s government and real estate clients often seek the firm’s help on such matters, and the firm realised that the existing tools weren’t up to the job. Its experts reasoned that the true implications of retrofitting measures could only be assessed from the ground up, by evaluating their impact on every single house in the UK.

It was an audacious proposition, but PwC had the expertise, technology and data skills to make it happen. The firm developed a GreenHouse Toolkit that uses machine learning and building physics to model the country’s 29 million houses according to more than 120 physical characteristics, and evaluate the impact of more than 40 retrofit measures.

By combining the model with a database of the costs and benefits for each retrofit option, the GreenHouse Toolkit can quantify and optimise the investment required, savings on energy bills and carbon reduction from different retrofit combinations. Furthermore, and uniquely in the market, it can monetise the value of broader socio-economic benefits such as warmer homes, clear air, reduced climate risk and job creation.

The GreenHouse Toolkit is already helping the UK take more effective action to achieve many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and contributes directly to SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, and SDG 13, Climate Action.

The tool has supported many PwC government and broader public sector engagements, and is helping several local authorities to scope their retrofit programmes. The UK’s Climate Change Committee is using the GreenHouse Toolkit, to base its Seventh Carbon Budget on a more precise analysis of low-carbon interventions. The tool is also helping the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund to understand how its investments can make the greatest impact.

In the private sector, the tool is helping Grainger to gauge the effectiveness of its decarbonisation measures, and fine-tune the balance between its climate and commercial responsibilities. The UK Green Building Council is also using the tool to assess how retrofit policies can boost the UK economy by increasing employment and gross value added.

The GreenHouse Toolkit represents a great example of how innovation can help to make a better world.

Yorkshire Water Limited
Technology Transformation

Setting the standard to yield rapid and cost-effective maintenance transformation

Yorkshire Water Services (YWS) had to be capable of responding to the demands of a growing population, and to the impact on its assets of unpredictable weather events. However, its rigid IT system could no longer handle current maintenance demands, so employees often adopted workarounds that were inefficient, costly and provided little feedback, which left managers without the right data for making operational and strategic decisions.

PwC was engaged to modernise the organisation’s asset maintenance operations and enable the business to become more responsive, use its assets and resources effectively, and equip field staff to be more productive. Furthermore, the technology itself had to be cost-effective and deliver value rapidly.

The firm proposed a technology transformation that would exploit the potential of cutting-edge SAP technology, and adopt a phased rollout to maintain continuity of service while ultimately helping the client make a 30-year leap forward in its technology and working practices.

The transformation began with the co-creation of a strategic roadmap that would guide the modernisation of the YWS work scheduling and asset management processes, for both its reactive and planned maintenance activities.

From the outset, a ‘one delivery team’ approach combined the specialisms of YWS, PwC and SAP. In order to harness the first-hand knowledge of the client’s work planners, schedulers and field technicians, the programme team conducted regular ‘show and tell’ sessions, to demonstrate progress and features, and understand the stakeholders’ evolving needs.

The firm deployed an SAP S/4HANA solution that integrated the latest, proven modules on SAP’s cloud-based platform. Notably, the project was the first (pre-release) deployment of SAP Dynamic Forms, which enabled the firm to solve a crucial problem of outdated, rigid and often irrelevant forms. A guiding principle of the programme was to use standard SAP functionality, even where that meant changing some working practices, which would minimise customisation, allow faster implementation and reduce ownership costs.

PwC’s solution was piloted to 20 users within eight months, then rolled out in phases according to business area, functionality and geography. The firm’s ‘fail fast’ / ‘minimum viable product’ approach enabled it to incorporate the latest technology and deliver effective change quickly.

The client’s legacy forms had often led to poor, or missing, data, so it was important to assess, cleanse and update the client’s data hierarchy and asset data in line with industry best practices. In particular, field technicians now have technology that enables them to raise data quality issues, and help keep YWS’ data, as well as its physical assets, in good condition.

The programme has won PwC the 2023 SAP Innovations Award, and will be rolled out to 7,000 sites by the end of its four years. Even at its current stage, YWS is realising the benefits of sending the right people to do the right work in the right place, and return the right data. Better data helps the organisation prioritise, schedule and track its operations more effectively, making maintenance more efficient, and creating the capacity to be more responsive.