What is digital transformation? PwC Chief Digital Officer Explains. (CXOTalk #362)

#DigitalTransformation #PwC

What is digital transformation? Here is everything you need to know. In this conversation, the Chief Digital Officer of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Joe Atkinson, explains digital transformation. PwC is one of the largest professional services organizations in the world, with almost 300,000 employees and over $42 billion in revenue.

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In this interview on digital transformation, you will learn:
-- What is Digital Transformation?
-- What is Digital Business Transformation?
-- Myths about Digital Transformation
-- What is the Connection Between Digital Transformation, Culture, and Technology?
-- What is PwC’s Digital Transformation Strategy?
-- How Important are Storytelling, Visualization, and Communication with Data?
-- How Does PwC Capture and Re-Use Knowledge Across Client Engagements?
-- Measurements, Metrics, and KPIs for Digital Transformation
-- Digital Transformation Advice for Business Leaders

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From the conversation:

What is the Connection Between Digital Transformation, Culture, and Technology?

Michael Krigsman: Why does digital transformation rest on culture and people as opposed to technology?

Joe Atkinson: If you think about this idea of, I'm going to upskill everybody and help them have a wider lens on the application of technology, first, I have to help them understand what the technologies are. Second, I have to make the investment in training them in the application of those technologies.

I can't just say, "Hey, here are the tech. You should know them." That's acumen and awareness. It's important, but I have to immerse them in the technology.

For us, that was all about data because much of our work, when we're working with clients, we're exchanging large amounts of data. We're conducting analysis on financial transactions. We're conducting analysis on capital deployments. We're conducting analysis on operational performance, supply chains, and customers.

We're dealing with massive amounts of data from massive global companies. We knew we needed people to be better with data, so we invested a lot of time, effort, and money in skilling our people in the use of data skills. But we also said, these are the data skills that we're looking for, so we gave them a frame around what we were asking so that they could direct their energies in the right place.

Then we applied what I affectionately call our accelerators, our kind of catalyst to the mix. We took 2,000 of our people. By the end of this year, it'll be 2,000 of our people. We asked them to deeply immerse themselves in the tech to really go after it. We put them on essentially two-year tours, we protected some of their time so they have learning, and we charge them with going out, engage with the teams, help them apply the new skills that they have, and help them be the catalyst that everybody wants to be to change the way work gets done.

Here's the example. In that environment, I didn't, frankly, know exactly what our people would do. We call it Citizen Led Development. It's this innovation that our teams innovate around.

One of the most successful innovations that we started with, we've had a ton since, but one of the ones that got a lot of attention early on is, we had a senior associate who was a few years into his or her career, a senior associate that actually went into our time reporting system.

We're a time managed system. We do time reporting to make sure we're being transparent and accountable with clients and with our own time. None of our people like that process. It's not a fun process. Nobody gets excited about doing that and so they built a bot, a desktop bot that helped them scrape information from the systems that the team was using at that particular account and automatically populate the time reporting system of the firm.

There's no rocket science there, but it was a pain point for our team that, with new tools, they were able to look at and say, "I'm going to go after that. I'm going to fix it." We think that, on average, that's probably saving each of our people 10 or 15 minutes a week, 50,000 people at scale.

The more important lesson from my perspective as an executive was, if the team had sent me a note or put a sourcing request in for funding to say, "I want to streamline the time reporting system," I would have said, "We've had the same time reporting system forever. It works fine. That's not where I'm going to deploy limited capital to go change a system."

[WilsonMar]

This is one of the most innovative ideas I've heard, delivered in a humble way. Refreshing compared to the bureaucratic platitudes from others in a similar role at other consultancies.

[nicafaustinoVC]

Well spoken. Great insights and visualisation. Despite the never ending new buzz words, digital transformation has to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow where more is accomplished with less because new ways of working with or without technology. Digital transformation clearly is not about technology only. 👊✌️🙂

[ahchv]

Moderator questions were ON POINT. Speaker was confusing Digital with Business transformation I still didn’t feel like he clarified the differences. He references others using digital as “marketing” but felt that was precisely the way it was being described!

[charleschristy]

What a fantastic talk. Joe is a great leader and proud to work for him.

[felix_stowe]

Thanks so much for posting this.I watched it from start to end but it took me 80 mins due to the amount of content Joe gave. Great questions, well-structured and meaningful answers. Great insight into how PwC is using digital transformation to drive their business and that of their clients forward.

[thefincoach]

Great talk, Joe! Next CEO of PwC here.

[lunamorris]

Your videos are very useful and provide lots of information. I have received lots of help after watching this post, please continue to share this kind of information. Thank you.

[veerjy]

He explained all the five key points in digital transformation, identify, define, explore, implement and execute. Thank you bringing this. Great listening.

[evancebunde]

Content well explained, clarity of the digital transformation context, spot on....

[CollinBrown-ev]

I will need to finish this later. My phone is almost dead.

[Bsingh]

Thank you both for a great talk on Digital Transformation

[santoshdanapur]

Thank you so much for clear explanation of digital transformation

[neerajraje]

One of the best discussions On digital transformation. Thank you!

[BlurredFiction]

That was a value-add discussion. Thanks!!

[CollinBrown-ev]

I will take at least an hour to charge. I am signing off for a while.

[juliocesarriosnarbona]

Very well articulated message, thank you for sharing.

[TCMDevotional]

Awesome conversation and host nailed the right questions.

[AkshayDhande]

Theres Digitization and Digitlization, mind the difference. One is usual ways of busienss but with tech, the other is competititve advantages enabled by technolgy. Also kudos to hot for asking the right questions.:)

[TheGuidingVoice]

Great insights, wonderful questions and compelling anwers!!

[FunnyLol-ekuc]

Sir what is different between e-government, digital government, digitalization and digital transformation ??😊