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Taking information technology from transaction to transformation
IT departments are often transactional and ticket-based, solving problems and making sure things work behind the scenes.
PwC Australia found that our tech people could do more — supporting organisational growth strategies and becoming a critical driver of digital upskilling for the whole business.
The final stage of the evolution revealed tech confidantes, a place people really want to work for, and previously unimagined revenue opportunities.
In 2017, when I became PwC’s first full-time Chief Digital Officer for the Australian firm I inherited an IT team that was great at what it did. Change was already happening, with the business moving to the cloud, embracing Google Suite and we’d just moved to new offices designed to let our people work differently. Momentum for change was building. It would, however, be fair to say that our IT department at the time was a pretty traditional one. And for many businesses, this is exactly what you want in an IT department.
But I couldn’t help thinking, what if it could do more?
Four years on, as I transition into my new role as PwC’s Asia Pacific Chief Digital Information Officer, I’ve been reflecting on that journey, from a company with a great IT department to a business where IT has been leveraged to digitally transform the entire organisation and support its growth agenda. Hopefully our story will inspire your businesses to do the same.
From technology to operate ...
I still vividly recall my first interactions with IT. They had a counter, with a big grey shutter that rolled down outside of their ‘available’ hours. They would fix problems quickly, quietly and efficiently, but the dialogue around that work was highly operational.
Tickets were resolved by incognito agents, IT ninja warriors seemingly coming out in the middle of the night to solve glitches and tech problems. Service notifications to inform non-techy colleagues were written in JavaScript and not easy to decipher. Underneath there was a fair bit of the dreaded ‘shadow-IT’ going on — when IT requirements weren’t in scope, employees would, as employees do, find another way.
For many businesses this is where IT sits. While often seen as an end point, it is really the beginning —ensuring the right infrastructure, hardware, software licences and business capabilities are in place.
First on my agenda was to bring IT from an operational matter to an executive one, by defining and implementing an operating model and organisational structure that would deliver and support technology. This was essential to changing the narrative and it allowed us to share the accountability for ‘digital’ across the business. At the same time, it brought IT closer to the business, (we rebranded IT to DigiTech - Digital Technology Service), allowing its prowess to be appreciated and recognised.
… to the bedrock of transaction
Once the foundations were in place, we set about building upon the internal tech delivery reputation to increase confidence and provide a human face to technology. Through change management and communication we got everyone excited about the future, and linked organisational, digital and people goals together.
For us, the second stage was where we started replacing legacy systems that were holding us back and began to optimise our tech footprint — our goal was to redirect cost savings to invest in tech that enabled digital innovation. We wanted to free up our IT capacity to focus on developing and implementing applications, systems and capabilities to support the transactional needs of our firm — payroll, finance, improving IT services and unit specific apps.
Interestingly, when we shut down legacy systems, our journey became visible to everyone. We harnessed the time that employees weren’t spending on fixing legacy issues by creating career pathways and opportunities for IT specialists and professionals to lead and influence senior people, further driving digital transformation within the firm. And what did we see? Our team’s employee engagement ratings increased, they felt more valued and more involved and this became a positive cycle.
Our new ‘tech lounges’ moved out into the open amongst the rest of PwC’s employees and allowed everyone to get to know our IT geniuses on a personal level. Gone were the days of the shuttered tech bolt-hole! It changed the entire way that the organisation viewed the IT department — our people went from mechanics to confidantes.
Digitising the business
This felt like a huge improvement on where we had been, but I knew we could do still more. To create competitive advantage we focused on maturing key differentiating capabilities to do more and do it faster.
We invested in tech that provided a unique and differentiated output and enabled digital innovation — data visualisation and insights, knowledge management systems, data science and analytics, cyber security. All with a medium lifecycle (one-to-three years) but reconfigurable so that it would flex as the landscape changed. The selected tools were ones that gave our people the opportunity to practice their new skills and apply them to their work, for example, software packages that could be used by non-programmers to work with data.
We also began our business-led initiative to digitally upskill the workforce. We created opportunities for our talented IT team to take their skills to other parts of the business, and learn new ones — such as going on ‘secondment’ with consulting teams and working with clients.
And then we went broader. Our Digital Academy course was created so that all employees across could learn to prepare, analyse and visualise data. We created an online library of software tools that could be shared around the firm for use internally or to assist with client work. And we grew digital champions who could drive grassroots change.
Becoming a market innovation champion
The final stage of our evolution (at least, for now) came as we invested in new apps and systems and built as needed pieces that addressed new business requirements and opportunities that in turn enabled new business models.
These were typically short life cycle projects (less than 12 months) using departmental or outside resources and consumer-focused technologies. For example, we instituted data analytics platforms so that our consultants could work with data for clients, and we held a partner conference focused on digital upskilling.
Such projects epitomise the old ‘experiment and fail fast’ approach. It’s not always easy, but digital transformation is about having the technology, data, process, and organisational change needed to move fast, with the agility to course correct along the way.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit we were already well down the path of digital transformation and so remote working was something we could scale up in a snappy two weeks. This meant we could focus on helping our clients navigate the challenges they faced in doing the same.
For me, this stage has been all about getting to the point where tech is driving the market. Around 80 percent of PwC Australia’s eligible partners and staff have now completed the Digital Academy. That innovation and digitisation gives us an opportunity to use technology to reimagine our work for clients and communities through the digital solutions we create — in practical terms we’re already saving our clients and teams thousands of hours.
We’re now running digital academies for some of our clients, upskilling their staff and helping enable them to transform their businesses. Internally, when consultants are working on digital engagements, IT is often included as experts on tech transformation. It’s a long way from time spent on forgotten passwords and wonky wifi connections.
A new journey begins
Our IT capabilities can now be used as a revenue function, we’re upskilling our employees and creating new opportunities for our clients — all driven from the IT department. This is no mean feat. As technology budgets increase for every business, being able to justify that spend by delivering value is critical. Turning your IT department from an internal service to one that is geared towards the market, facing outwards instead of just in, is a sure-fire way to do this.
Looking back, these four ‘stages’ of our evolution from IT dept to IT powerhouse, seem quite clear and straightforward. The truth is our path had the same bumps and setbacks that all organisations face when attempting a transformation. Nevertheless, our hindsight allows us to look at this process in a way that, I hope, will be useful to other organisations facing similar challenges and opportunities.
Earlier this year we were ranked #1 in the 2021 AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list for Professional Services.1 It was fantastic to see the commitment to digital upskilling and innovation considered as part of this firmwide recognition and is another, wonderful by-product of our IT journey.
My final thoughts therefore are not about me, or what the IT department has done, or even about PwC Australia, but about you. What could such a transformation do for your business? It’s a given that outdated technology models that silo the IT department are forever consigned to history. IT and business strategy must now be one and the same. But what that looks like can be very different for each business.
Indeed, with a ‘red-thread’ of digital upskilling, the right tools and the right approach, IT can be more than a group of tech geniuses who fix things, becoming a force to be reckoned with that allows your business to mature, its people to grow, and its technology to hum along, shining quietly in the background. I can’t wait to see what the next step is for PwC Australia’s DigiTech team, I am convinced it will continue to revolutionise.
And okay, our techs still do awesome ninja-ing. It’s in their bones.
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References
- https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/professional-services-pwc-rewires-the-notion-of-the-workplace-20210416-p57jyk
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