PwC named an ALM Vanguard leader in Portfolio & Capital Strategy Consulting 2019

PwC was announced as a Leader in ‘Portfolio & Capital Strategy 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, “The past year was a moment of reckoning for many companies. Consulting providers had anticipated that a maturing of digitisation and flush corporate balance sheets would spur significant portfolio moves. Companies instead pressed the pause button on their portfolio and capital strategies. Capital intensity continued to downshift and M&A activity moderated, while spending on share buybacks and dividends surged.”

Commenting on the leader status, ALM states that “With its “capabilities-driven strategy” perspective and tools, PwC stands apart for its ability to make transparent the differentiated combinations of people, processes, technology, and know-how that yield competitive advantage. This helps client teams get beyond the numbers and align on how investments actually get operationalized: a crucial insight as companies embark on digital transformations that entail new ways of working.”

PwC has been named ‘Best in Class’ for Client Capability Development. The report states that “In a still underserved area of portfolio and strategy consulting, the combination of PwC’s real-world “capabilities-driven strategy” approach with its workshop-based service delivery contributes to enduring client capabilities in terms of both hard skills and mindsets and behaviours.”

Commenting on PwC’s approach, Nathan Simon Senior Director, Management Consulting Research at ALM and author of the report states: “PwC’s consulting approach is fundamentally about putting in place a system for ongoing resource allocation decisions based on a strategic logic that is both fact-based and something on which everyone agrees. This logic, what the firm calls “capabilities-driven strategy,” holds that good resource allocation decisions depend on two factors. One is the relative integration of strategy with execution. 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. Creating what PwC calls “coherence,” that is alignment among these, is the essential determinant of the relative integration of strategy and execution. The other is knowledge of where the company is generating economic profit.”

He goes on to say: “The foundation of PwC’s service delivery is a change program designed to shift how a client measures performance, aligns around portfolio moves designed to improve that performance, and enlists the broader organization in delivering against those moves. PwC enlists its Business, Experience, Technology (BXT) workshop methodology for a more hands-on, outside-in alternative development process.”

Nick Hodson, Partner at PwC Strategy&, said of the accolade, “We are very pleased to be named a leader in the area of Portfolio and Capital Strategy Consulting. At Strategy&, we have found strong evidence that capabilities-driven deals — those that leverage the buyer’s key capabilities onto new products or help it acquire new capabilities that round off its capabilities system — produce significantly better results, on average, than deals with limited capabilities fit. The pay-off of a capabilities-driven view on portfolio and M&A strategy is immediately visible. We aim to help our clients become better everyday at what matters most to their customers, resulting in them having a competitive edge in the market that they are operating in.”

Notes

1. For more information about how PwC can help you, visit https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/cds/portfolio
2. To find out more about how PwC has been evaluated by leading business, technology and industry analysts visit pwc.com/analystviews