| Mick James talks to Ashley Unwin, PwC’s new head of the firm’s Performance Improvement Consulting practice, about his bullish plans for the business. |
| PwC plans to triple consulting business in five years |
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| | By Mick James
One of the most
encouraging bits of news
we’ve had recently was
the announcement by
PricewaterhouseCoopers
that it is planning to
treble the size of its
consultancy operation.
Leading the charge in
the UK is Ashley Unwin,
who was appointed head
of the firm’s
Performance Improvement
Consulting practice in
May. A former
consultant, he was lured
back into the fold after
a stint in private
equity and, latterly,
the music industry.
“I was tempted back
by the sort of vision
offered by our chairman,
Ian Powell,” he says.
“If you look at the size
of the market versus our
penetration, there’s a
significant opportunity
for growth.”
Summing up the new
approach as “we are a
professional services
firm and we need to act
like one”, Unwin
believes that PwC is
well placed to deliver
on a five-year plan to
triple revenue even
without any underlying
growth in the market.
However, this does not
mean a renewed “charge | |
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| | into technology” or even
an acquisition spree.
“We won’t necessarily
go into anything new,”
says Unwin. “But in many
areas there’s an
opportunity to provide a
fuller suite of service
than we currently do.
For example, in regional
and local government
we’re fairly mature, we
have a full suite of
offerings, but we don’t
have that in financial
services. We have high
levels of year-on-year
growth but we are still
consulting around a
fairly narrow position
in those areas.”
By integrating these
“discrete pockets of
consulting” and the
wider expertise of the
firm, Unwin believes PwC
can play to its
strengths.
“If we just operate
in point functions and
skillsets, then we allow
any niche consultancy to
compete against us,” he
says. “We need to ask,
can we provide a fuller
response by combining
skills in ways that
others can’t – for
example, putting
forensic, technical and
strategy skills
together.”
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Unwin acknowledges
that achieving this
means questioning older
consultancy models.
“If we are running a
portfolio business, then
we have to acknowledge
different skills will be
‘hot’ at different
times,” he says. “We
need to be able to
balance it, so we can
move the hot skills
around really quickly.
You can’t run a business
like that on the basis
that ‘I have these 30
people reporting to me
and I keep them busy’.”
A key part of Unwin’s
strategy is the
recruitment and
development programme
that kicked off in
October with the aim of
recruiting 200
graduates.
“The whole graduate
piece is coming back,”
he says. “We’re going to
have a proper training
programme that will give
them a set of core
consultancy skills that
will be highly relevant
regardless of the area
they work in.”
Continued on page 16
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