Unknown Speaker 0:00:05.8:

Thank you, everyone, for joining us for today's business and workforce transformation session. Allow me to welcome Neil and Sandra and Rakesh from PwC.

Neil Thomas 0:00:17.3: 

All right. Oh, thank you very… I had a small smattering of applause at the start. Oh, well, hold on, hold on. It may not be that good. Save… Well, these guys will be great, not me, as you saw earlier, if you were here. All right, so thank you very much to Sandra and Rakesh for spending time with us. We're going to just have a nice dialog, a nice chat. We will hopefully have time for questions at the end. If we don't, I'm sure the guys will hang around, and we're happy to answer any other questions after the event. I knew I was going to knock over my water, and I did. By way of introduction, as you know, I am the person in charge of our finance and workforce applications, and workforce is close to my heart. I'm delighted to spend some time with PwC today, so let's get started. Sandra, Rakesh, in order, just who are you? Why are you here? That kind of stuff. What do you do at PwC? That would be great to know. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:01:14.1:

All right, I'll kick us off. Hi everyone. Sandra Herron. I'm a program director at PwC in the Strategy and Transformation office. I've been with PwC about seven years. I'm going to go into the role and what initiated this amazing journey for the Canadian firm. Prior to that, I had about 25 plus years in global executive HR with a lot of workforce and business transformation as well. We kicked off the Future of the Workforce program some time ago. It's been quite the journey relative to - if we think of the competition or the market demands of today and our clients. The firm sat down strategically as a senior leadership team, and we ideated and kicked off a program where we would actually start building our foundation to become a skills-enabled organization, skills first, and to bring our business and people strategies together. I was the fortunate one to actually come on board a couple years ago into this program and take the lead, leading the team on it. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:02:25.6:

Thank you, Neil, and thank you, everybody for actually coming in. It's great to see everybody in person. Back in the days, just a few years ago, we were all virtual, and I know it's 3:00 in the afternoon, so I'll try to keep this one engaged. Rakesh Shetty, again. I lead our Finance Transformation practice nationally for PwC Canada. I started my career in, some of us remember, Y2K, where we all were beating the clock and trying to make finance a little bit more efficient from a technology perspective. Here we are, 25 years later, talking about finance and transformation. One of the things that I'll be sharing is about how do you actually drive and enable technology in transforming a business, more focused on three key factors, efficiency, effectiveness, and, more importantly, enabling our stakeholders and our people in mind. I'll be sharing some of my scars and stripes as we go through the journey. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:03:09.2:

Many of those. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:03:10.7:

Hopefully, not too many scars. All right, so let's get started with how does PwC Canada fit in overall, because you guys are always organized in a very weird way, and independent but not, so just set the scene for the company, if you like, that we're covering here first: PwC Canada. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:03:26.2:

Sure. I think Sandra and I will not do justice to our company as a person because we are almost 150 years old, also among the big four, as you know, with the - starting off with an accounting arm. We do our distinct line of businesses across tax, assurance, everything about audit, and, more important, in today's world, consulting, which is much more an enabler of driving an end-to-end experience for our clients. That's how we are structured here in Canada. We are global in nature, but each of our countries are much more member-firm-driven, so we get to the part of getting a little bit more creative and entrepreneurial in the way we actually manage our stakeholders here in Canada. More important, our clients are also getting global, so that allows us to tap into the member firms across the globe to make sure a unified experience to our clients. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:04:11.9:

A little company within a big company. Well, a big company within a bigger company. That's probably better. All right, so, before Anaplan, so take us a bit back, a couple of years maybe to… You talked a little bit about setting a vision etc., so, before Anaplan, what were the challenges that you faced? You talked about skills first, but can you just expand on that a little bit for us? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:04:34.6:

Absolutely. When I think about before Anaplan, PwC Canada actually went onto Anaplan, oh my gosh, about seven years ago,  

 

Neil Thomas 0:04:42.1:

2018/2019. Yes. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:04:43.7:

Yes, so it's been some time since we've been on Anaplan, but Anaplan, as of today, not the future, we just have siloed independent modules that were kicked off and launched across the firm. When we think about the challenges, and I'll just ask everyone here to nod because I'm probably going to touch on things that probably every firm or organization experiences today when we talk about our business and workforce planning… A couple of years ago, we brought in a new CPO, and they've been doing these roadshows. We've been hearing a lot from our people, relative to - from a business-planning - and what they aspire to. It's just based on my availability. That's how I get deployed in that. We don't have line of sight of all our people in the skills and availability from a business perspective, and dispersed systems, etc.  

 

Sandra Herron 0:05:35.9:

You don't have full access on a live platform of the data, so our business leaders are saying it's very reactive, and then you've really got to search, and the effort to actually get access to this data, and then it's the inconsistent processes in that. I'm not saying they're all inconsistent, but there is nuances when you've got five different lines of service across the firm as well. It's the consistency of your planning from a business perspective, and also from a workforce perspective, in that you've got to go to multiple different places. As we're shifting, as many firms are today, to a complementary of onshore/offshore workforce, not even touching on those digital workers, where AI and everything comes into place as well, so multiple challenges have been discussed for a number of years, right now. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:06:24.6:

Then, of course, you have the challenge and the business needs. Rakesh, how do you go about planning a project like this, aligning what the workforce and themselves need as well as what the business needs? Tell us a little bit about that. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:06:37.2:

Yes, so let me just double-click on business needs. At the end of the day, we're still a professional services firm, and we obviously have a partner structure here across our different lines of service. From a finance transformation standpoint, we believe in the three principles, which is: people, process, and performance. It's the reason I want to double-click on the people and performance part of it. The challenge has always been there's an isolated view of the expertise and the skill set, and I'll give you a couple of examples. The simplest ones could be tax. We have a very ingrained tax service across corporate tax, indirect tax, and so on, but those body of [sic] effort and the principles is always about selling tax to our clients. Some of them are repetitive clients. In today's world, our clients are expecting an end-to-end experience, which is embedding tax into transformation, whether it's on the operations side, whether it's about our clients increasing their portfolio of adding new products into their services. What does that mean? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:07:37.6:

As finance professionals, we always believe, at the end of the day, we are an accounting firm, so we do believe our people are, at the number one, empowered to do this work. Hence, our challenge is about how do we make sure we drive, not a capacity-driven workforce planning exactly as Sandra mentioned, but drive towards a capability, which is integrated to our ecosystem, so we can get the best of the best across the board. It's not been an easy journey. I will echo this, and some of us will recognize this. It needs to come top down. Our CEO, starting with - is very, very bullish about making sure they have that one-firm experience across our clients. That actually sets the stage for this program, and, obviously, everything else continues into the day-to-day operations as well. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:08:26.5:

Gotcha, gotcha. Yes, that's a lot of work. Okay. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:08:31.2:

A lot, it is. Yes. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:08:32.4:

As you went through the requirements and the business needs, obviously fairly experienced with Anaplan. Why use Anaplan as the technology enabler? What was the key decision criteria there? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:08:44.3:

I can start. I can finish. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:08:45.6:

Yes, I think the starting point is Anaplan was already proven and we were using it as a platform, and of course, do your due diligence as any organization would, do your RFP, and search the markets based on availability. We heard from one of our vendors, what we have built is somewhat cutting the edge of how we actually built this platform, because Rakesh has touched on some of it, but it is a fully integrated live platform, so we - the - our leadership team has this vision relative to… We need to future-ready our firm and our people. We need to actually have full visibility of the market demand, so we start with our sales planning module, and those [sic] intelligence out in the market and how we bring that into our platform. Then, from a workforce perspective, it's to ensure that we have all the right data on all our people to ensure that we've got the right skills available at the right time to be able to deploy at the right place as well.  

 

Sandra Herron 0:09:45.7:

In order to do this analysis, and you all may have heard of this, it's how do we actually bring in our demand and our supply into a live platform, so we can actually do those gap analyses? We can pull multiple levers and make multiple assumptions in your - [?over the years 0:09:59.9] to plan for today and to plan for tomorrow. On the market, Anaplan was proven an alternate route because there was not a fully integrated platform out there that would serve the purpose of what we were looking to build within PwC, so we've partnered with Anaplan. We've built this full end-to-end business planning and workforce planning platform that actually then ultimately is - feeds into our annual budgeting process as well, so we've connected everything from end to end on Anaplan. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:10:34.8:

When you say, 'end to end,' can you just…? Like, this bit connects to this bit, connects… Can you walk us through that? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:10:40.0:

Yes. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:10:41.6:

It's a huge thing. It's exciting what you've been able to do, so it'd be great to get into the detail a little bit more. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:10:46.9:

Yes, so we have multiple sources of data. We talked about that when we first kicked off on the challenges. We've got a lot of different disparate systems relative to our sales, our finance, our people, etc., so it's bringing these sources in and starting with our sales planning process. We do an annual sales process. We do a mid-year sales process, when we actually convert it down into quarterly sales. That's one workspace per se. Then what it does is it actually converts into what we call our rolling business plan. Another goal and aspiration of our CEO and our CFO is PWC is - we are shifting into a 12-month rolling business planning reforecast on a quarterly basis. Every quarter, we're going to actually be doing a reforecast if the impact of it is material and we need to make some changes. The demand and supply gap analysis is going to show us where we're sitting from a demand perspective and a supply perspective, and those gap insights will actually give you, and determine as to what actions need to be made across all lines of service, right from a line BU all the way down to your OU level.  

 

Sandra Herron 0:11:53.5:

Feeding into that comes our people data. There's another module that sets out - that gives us all our known workforce details, that feeds into the supply side. When the business is going to be doing their quarterly reforecast on a quarterly basis and there is a material change, they need to pull some levers and assumptions. If the change is very material, we've actually created another complementary workspace where they can do scenario planning. They can do a what-if analysis, because if I want to do maybe a moderate or an aggressive reforecast on the market before I actually went into my live platform and actually make these changes and lock it in… When they lock it in, then it feeds into our financial cost planning module as well. 

Neil Thomas 0:12:36.6:

All right, so the full gambit. You said, rolling 12 months. Do you do any longer than that? Or is it, right now, it's just the 12 months rolling that you're aiming for? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:12:46.0:

As everyone can appreciate, this is a very large, complex transformation for any firm going from siloed systems, disparate processes, data sources, data hygiene, data governance. Increased transparency on data is critical as well. From some lines of service, the expectation, because we're in a full transition year, is to actually do the quarter and to align to our mid-year sales plan to get ready to do our next fiscal year planning and budget process. I say that, however, with a caveat. My colleague Karen and I were just in Vancouver on Tuesday with our Global Strategic Workforce Planning team, and we took our leadership team from the assurance line of service. We did a five-year strategic planning session, which Karen did the demo, and we're building their five-year plan, also, on the system. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:13:38.6:

Yes, I didn't ask you this earlier when we were chatting about questions, but how did you plan for digital people? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:13:46.1:

I can speak. In our digital FTE, you'll hear more and more of these coming in. Five years ago, maybe RP had thought that it'll solve world hunger. The reality now with AI is as an enabling tool. I go back to the concept of digital FTEs, which has become part and parcel of our processes. What we are actually doing now is measuring capability of the assets that we are building, right, so that we can actually measure the ROI that we get, whether it's a nine-month/18-month, on two fronts. One is revenue-generating assets were actually going to be part of our capability stack, which is people and digital FTEs. The second part to it, also, the cost to deliver. Right? If we just think about our audit business, our assurance, and, of course, I can speak all day about the consulting business, we are looking at a way - actually, how do you actually reduce the cost to deliver about repeatability and making sure that you have nimbleness in the concept? There are three key things I want to take away, and that's one of the reasons why we love Anaplan. Not only it's a cloud-based solution, not only is enterprise its nature, it's able to integrate to the ecosystem with some of the enterprise vendors.  

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:14:55.1:

Like, if you think about Salesforce, Workday, and everything, you will have this API technique, but more important, standardization, more important, simplicity, because at the end of the day, it's the user experience. We are able to drive out this integrated planning platform not only at the partner level, including to our directors, our senior managers, so they can drive this sense of entrepreneurship in it. More important is scale. We have significantly grown in the last five years, especially the consulting business. We knew just with old legacy systems, having an isolated view is not enough. We need to get into an integrated platform. One of the things that Sandra and I talk every Sunday night when we have - over TV, I think, is about, soon, there will be a point in time… I'm pretty sure some of our leadership is asking us today, 'Can we get down to a weekly P&O? Can we start looking at things on a monthly…?' because the market's driving that. The volatility in the market right now is what you plan a year ahead might change, be significantly different in 9 or 12 weeks, so this quarterly forecast may not be enough, but that's just the beginning. 

Neil Thomas 0:15:58.4:

Yes, absolutely. It's only going to get faster and more detailed, etc.  

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:16:01.6:

Yes. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:16:03.0:

As you projected out the project, were there any key milestones where we know we're on track; these are success points? How did you eat the elephant of the project? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:16:14.5:

That is such a great question.  

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:16:15.5:

Go. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:16:16.3:

As I mentioned, I've been with PwC a little over seven years. When I first joined, there was a global program that was launching, and it touched on the people side, which included the workforce planning. There's been a number of attempts, I would - per se on transformation, and we all know transformation can be especially complex. Transformation can be very challenging. We asked the question to the senior leadership, 'Okay, in order for us to be successful, what are we going to do differently?' It starts from the top, as Rakesh said, and it's getting that executive buy-in. They have very large growth ambitions. As Rakesh said, it's grown significantly over five years, so it's really important. For myself, like as a program lead, if I'm going to lead this, I need to know what will we do different to ensure success? Ultimately, number one, it's business-led, so that was important. We had to onboard and identify key representatives from all our lines of service. Then, really, it's not if… Everyone in this room, you may appreciate it, it's we're not going to start, 'Like what are your pain points?' because if we don't know their pain points today, we would not be kicking off such a very large program in that. It's really speaking with our leaders on the program and defining the art of the possible. 'What does your ideal state look like? What is your wish list?  

 

Sandra Herron 0:17:35.7:

If we're going to embark on this journey, what does it look like at the end when we roll it out?' Actually, the team invested like almost three months to get to the art of the possible, and we presented it back to our executive team, and they were completely bought in, and then it was really starting… It's the process re-engineering, starting from the bottom up and working through this, ensuring we get the right partners on the product side to be able to - building the team to support such a complex build because this was new. There is a lot that we were building, new, and we were already partnered with some other experts in the field as well. I think the caveat to that, when we talk about key milestones, is really bringing them back to the why. Bringing them back to the why, but also, it's like, 'This is your platform. As a business leader, this is what you've shared. This is your art of the possible. We're here to enable, support, and facilitate this to deliver to you this integrated platform that is going to be such powerful insights for you to manage your business and to grow your business.' I think the key milestone is we always bring them back to the why, and it's, 'Yes, we get this.' Then we move on to the next checkpoint. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:18:56.4:

You were taking steps through to say, 'You've got to the why. Now, on to the next why,' kind of thing, for each area. Gotcha. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:19:04.3:

Yes. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:19:04.6:

Just to add to the 'why', I think Sandra's being… She's got - the most difficult job is rallying all our partners. We all have our own ways of doing things, I can tell you, in a professional service. The key with the 'why' is also measurable KPIs, right? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:19:17.1:

Yes. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:19:17.6:

How are we measuring success based on not just qualitative benefits of a better employee experience or a better leadership experience? It's also the quantitative experience. For example, as she mentioned about demand and supply, we have very strict thresholds about where that variance needs to be and what action we need to take with the variant. That's going to be key. Sometimes, we can always noodle into data as we all talk about it. For me, it's much more information. Information doesn't just come in rows and columns. It'll come in many different things. Sometimes, it's all driven with external benchmarks as well. I know some of our folks here, we actually compete with them in the market, but here we are a community, and we all appreciate the access of information that we have today in the street. How do you actually take that information and bake it into your thinking and your decision-making? That's that KPI for the 'why', and we're constantly - a way of looking at improving that quarter over quarter. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:20:11.9:

Did you ever have those moments when you're charging along, and it goes over here, and you have to bring things back in line?  

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:20:17.0:

Of course. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:20:17.7:

Any good stories that you want to share, or should we just move on? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:20:20.7:

Do you want to bring up…? Or you are okay? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:20:22.9:

Well, I'll just say one word: agility. Like, you can have any well-baked plan. We all know things shift. You shared a very great article last night, but I actually, was watching this transformation series on LinkedIn, too, where one of the global chief transformation officers does this series, and they were with the chief transformation officer of E-Comm 9-1-1. They were talking about complex transformation, and they talked about the agility and the ability to be able to pivot, but also, when we talk about complex transformation, it's about keeping it simple. They used two words. It's sense-making, so always being - making sense of what you're doing, because in a program, you can live and breathe it on a daily basis, but your business is running a business; they're not with you 24/7 as well. The keeping it simple from those pivots, because we've had - there's a number of curves in the road, but back to the 'why'. Keep it simple. Refresh. They bought in at the beginning, and it's like a level set for them, and then they're just right back on track again. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:21:40.4:

Gotcha, and did any of the material - why are we doing this move? You started this far along, back in time. The world has moved dramatically in the last 12 to 24 months. Did anything change, or is it, no, those are true North stars and everything? Although we meandered a little bit, the end-game didn't move that much. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:21:59.8:

I don't believe the overall principles have changed, but the ask from the leadership team is to build a platform that can be scalable based on… Again, I go back to fluidity, for example, and some of us will appreciate this. While we're building this platform, we go through operating model changes, so how does the solution actually have that dynamicity to include these operating model changes at a much more faster pace is going to be key. Through that, there could be a pivot where something that was important, say, last year, may not be important today because we are changing our business. Maybe that's an offering that did not yield the right revenue they were expecting, so that's a capability thing that we're thinking, but we come back to the principles. Day one of this go-live, and then we're still - a lot of work ahead for us, is about showcasing transparency. That is key. We need to showcase and demonstrate, transparently, that this is what is really going on versus perceptions and my gut feeling and so on. Gone are the days where you do a plan, think about the area, you add a little inflation to it, and that becomes the plan. This is purely you can see, week over week, month over week, where you're trending, so that you can pivot. The ability to do that gives the leadership the comfort that our core principle has not changed, we still believe in it, but this platform will allow us to… 

 

Sandra Herron 0:23:24.3:

Yes. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:23:26.3:

That makes perfect sense. There you go. All right, and then… We talked about the users, so from the highest-level partners down to… What's the lowest level of user, or in between? 

Rakesh Shetty 0:23:36.9:

At the moment, we are at least at the directors and senior manager levels, because I think, as a professional services firm, we want to drive that sense of entrepreneurship down to the individual so they feel empowered to be part of this firm. They feel that they can contribute to it. This is not a job, it's a career, in order for you to feel - have a meaningful experience. That's how we're looking at it. Eventually, at some point, with that degree of transparency, we'll get down to much more lower levels as well. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:24:06.6:

Gotcha. Size-wise, that's 10 people, 50 people, 100 people, today? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:24:12.3:

Well, consulting alone, I think we're about almost… 

 

Neil Thomas 0:24:14.9:

I suppose, touching the tool and interacting with the tool today. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:24:18.8:

Number of users? 

 

Neil Thomas 0:24:19.8:

Rough guess. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:24:20.3:

I think we're going to go more 500, but we're going to start small, in small cohorts, because for us, change adoption, change management is key. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:24:27.8:

Yes, yes, as for a lot of people. Yes. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:24:28.8:

This is where the scenario planning workspace… That's why we build additional space, because again, we are on a live integrated platform, so the change management and the training on a live integrated platform is very significant. Right? We're in a transition year to do our mid-year sales, build the first annual budget, and everything on it as well, in addition to the business doing their quarterly reforecast and doing actions on the demand and supply side. They've got another workspace which will allow more end users, too, but it is the live data feeds into that workspace. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:25:02.4:

When you talk about live data feeds, what source systems are we integrating with, and how do we integrate with them? For your actuals, your latest snapshots from the real world, ahead of the planning process. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:25:15.2:

Obviously, as an enterprise firm, we do have all the tools, right, the enterprise tools, so we have a very significant, large undertaking as we speak on our financial application. We are training to adopt enterprise or global principles so that we have, for example, Oracle, in the beginning. Potentially, we might move to SAP. We have state-of-the-art HR and recruitment modules in the form of Workday and other components that come with it. I think everybody has heard of Salesforce. Now, that has become almost commodity play. Now you can't think of sales without thinking about CRM and Salesforce. The key here was, remember, these are enterprise applications coming with their own data models. Right? How do you unify this as one integrated view so the terminology, the acronym that you'd use in one system, it actually seamlessly flows through? As Sandra mentioned, this is a live platform. We are leveraging Anaplan's built-in capabilities when you think about API integrations. I wouldn't say we're there near real time, but potentially, we might be going to near real time.  

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:26:24.2:

That will allow us to get to forecast better. It has not been easy. One of the challenges we had to do early in the process, and some of us were experiencing… Whether this is Anaplan or any other planning tools, organizations think, by buying this tool, it'll solve the data problem. I always come back, 'It will not solve the data problem, but it'll give you a view about how bad your data is.' Right? 'That allows you to take a step back for a second and build that logical finance information model. What is that you need to see?' More important, we're going to be moving away from plugs about, 'Let me put a driver in here. Let me just think about it. Somebody's going to send me an email.' Seamlessly, use these operational data as drivers so that you can, at any given point, come to this dashboard, which is centralized, to see how your business is operating. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:27:15.1:

We laughed at the data one. We've all been there. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:27:18.1:

We still are. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:27:20.4:

Okay, so we've got through the journey. We're launching. We're showing other teams. We're thinking about strategic workforce planning. Any tangible benefits immediately that you could share, whether they're emotional, some soft benefits, or some hard benefits where you've really seen change in behavior, or financial benefit to the business? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:27:41.8:

We all know, since January, there were some political decisions made that had a very big impact on the market, and a lot of organizations have experienced or felt the pressures from it. Immediate benefit: over the summer months, we created a sandbox for key partners to go in and have an experience. Our data setup was probably our most challenging effort and validation exercise, but we made through it. Through that, also identifying which [sic] we call 'opportunities'. It's increased transparency opportunities, and we've got some pretty key actions in play right now, addressing some of these opportunities that we identified. I think the caveat here is, because we just went through a full dry run, we're completing on our first dress rehearsal, we call, which is a reforecast, so giving the right insights to the hands of our partners for their business. It's the learnings and it's the 'ah-ha' moments. It's that validation. It's like, oh. Right? They're in a place where now, like, as - and we're just early on, and they're using it, experiencing it, and saying, 'Yes, this is amazing.'  

 

Sandra Herron 0:28:58.6:

Like, the power of insights and the power of data, we've actually been able to get that feedback and experience it from our stakeholder group, which is our business, just over the last six weeks or so, so I think that's - from a tangible - yes. Like, we can sit up here and talk about all the market research, and you do strategic workforce planning. You could have a 10 per cent increase in your revenue. We talk about, from our employees, we're doing a thoughtful planning relative to skills enabled, getting their aspirations, and looking at what do they aspire - what type of work they want to do, and research on the market. You can be a 15/20 per cent increase in your employee engagement, which has a true impact on lowering your cost as well, so there's a lot of research out there. As Rakesh said, we have identified a number of KPIs of how we're measuring the key - the insights, the actions taken, and we'll historically build this, where we can actually equate, tangibly, here's the dollar value, what it equates to, because on this platform…  

 

Sandra Herron 0:30:05.7:

Rakesh talked about digital workers, but I'm going to build in. My growth aspiration has changed. I'm going to pick up more process optimizations, so my efficiency gains. Even on from a utilization, the insights that they've got, and Karen, who's sitting in here too, that I work very closely with… These gap insights that we've just recently provided, where they actually get to see between their demand and supply where they're over or under, a year and a half ago, in order to get that information, it took a number of weeks, pulling, and I mentioned this earlier. On a utilization, the longer you take, it equates - and depending on what the percentage, this could equal millions of dollars in revenue. Just them actually seeing this now on a live platform, this is what they're thinking. It's like, oh my gosh, there's my utilization. Right? They can go in and adjust their levers as to what it should be in real time; see the impact on their business plan from a demand and supply perspective. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:31:05.3:

I just had one thing, Neil. I don't know if you were going to ask me the question after. What does this mean to PwC global? PwC Canada is an integral part - we are part of the top five, I would say, across the different member firms. By allowing this integrated view, it's actually helped us to tap into the investments that PwC global is making about on certain capabilities. They can really clearly see where we are with our plan and where it's actually leading at a higher revenue yield, so they know where the investments need to be. That has allowed us to be - selfishly, tap into that investment and be part of that growth platform. The other last part to it, our clients are also global, right, so if we have ten deals across one client, which is providing different services, and that client so happens to have an operations out in London, UK, we're quickly able to tap into our member firm to say, 'This is how we have actually organized ourselves.' That'll help us to have a better experience with our clients. It's a client-first organization, right, so that allows us to - through that demand part to it. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:32:11.8:

Yes, literally, service the customers better/quicker with our resources. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:32:14.2:

That's it. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:32:16.1:

Speaking of resources, everybody asks about AI, so I'll ask you as well. Back to my digital people. Have you seen the mix change as you've started getting into the data now, and you're planning out next year and beginning to think about this? How's the mix moving offshore, Canadians? Any thoughts on that? 

 

Sandra Herron 0:32:34.3:

Well, on our platform, and as I mentioned earlier, like PwC, they've got their delivery mix targets, and they're even looking at them even more deeply as of right now, so they can actually plan. We've got our delivery mixes built on the platform where you can look at all your employees, where you can segregate it out from onshore/offshore. The digital worker will get set up there as well because that's just been a new recent request. We do have it set up under our efficiency gains when we talk about AI process or automation, whatever it may be. Is there a shift? I think, with the era of AI right now, there are strategic conversations because we have our mandate and our targets for onshore/offshore, but now, how do we layer in the AI, right, the era of AI, and how fast it's moving in the market, and what does this look like in the next five years? That's actually just a session we attended on Tuesday. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:33:38.1:

Yes, and we feel the same thing as well at Anaplan. Alongside planning for AI and the impact, what are the roadmap items that are…? It never stops, so what's next? What's coming soon? We've rolled this out to users. What's the next things we're going to work on, as well as the AI planning? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:33:55.6:

I think from an AI… Let's just double-click a little bit more because I know it's hot and near for all of us, at least with my clients specifically over the last two years. I just want to bust that myth about AI is going to take away our jobs. It's not there yet. It's not there yet. It is still a thing that… 

 

Neil Thomas 0:34:12.3:

Give it another 12 months, maybe. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:34:15.6:

It is still a productivity play, and if we just think about finance, especially for us selfish finance folks, we still live in a controlled environment, right, so we have to prove, whatever the output of this model comes through, it has a meaningful sense, so we have this concept of human in the loop. Now, where AI comes really, really fascinatingly fast is on the productivity side when it's efficiency-driven, especially for our engagement. Something that used to take us, say, 60 hours to complete, now, we can do that in four hours. The question is not about taking away that resource. It's about what other value we can add to that client now we've got 40 more hours, and that's how we are trying to see the real value of AI. About taking that productivity out and converting something to meaningful, and the client, of course, we're hoping there's profitability related to it as well. Now, other than that, I would say what's ahead of us is obviously it's just the beginning of the journey. If everybody has gone through a transformation project on day one, has it actually started, the transformation? We're still in that journey, and there's a lot more to come. We do believe that there is more change adoption coming in. Transparency is key. I think I mentioned about different pricing structures where our tax folks are now going to be talking to our consulting a lot more, and that will actually create more and more offerings coming through, and we've got to bake that into our platform. Yes, Sandra, anything else I missed? That's our… 

 

Sandra Herron 0:35:42.2:

I touched on it earlier. I think the only other one is we - and you and I were chatting about it, is the shifting to the skills enabled, because globally, over the last year, we have a new skills repository that has been rolled out, as well as a new learning growth center as well, where it's the… As our people, you own your own development. You put in your training, but what do you aspire to be? It's about… We've kicked off just in the last six weeks, the conversations with our executive sponsors that are coming on board to lead the skills piece of it, so we'll be looking at kicking off in January of, actually, how do we embed skills on the platform in a planning process - through the planning process? 

 

Neil Thomas 0:36:24.6:

Yes, and the aspirations, because we liked that very much. It was, I might have three people with the same skills, but one is aspiring to do more of this type of work, where the other two aren't, so that's optimal towards that person on the project.  

 

Sandra Herron 0:36:34.1:

Yes, yes. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:36:36.2:

Yes, all that stuff's going to be fantastic. Okay, so we're looking forward, and now let's look back. Any lessons learned/things to avoid, don't do this, don't even start, no, not an option, for the team here who's attending, that you would say, 'Now that I've gone through this journey and we're on to the next stage, things to watch out for or recommendations to talk about'? Executive sponsors are obviously a big one, but anything else? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:37:05.6:

For me, it's data and process. Appreciate where the gaps are early, areas, and be respectful of that. We're not here to change every single thing, right, because if you just think about finance, usually it's a downstream play. We're receivers of information, and then we've got to make sense of it. We are moving away from what has happened or why it has happened, now, to say what may happen. Right? In order to get that information and data is going to be key. The second part is processes. I don't know how much to say that even a perfect process has room for improvement, and sometimes, just because it's a perfect process, that does not mean it's right for today's market. It was good five years ago. That's where the change adoption, and that's where Karen spends most of her time, is making sure that people understand this is why it's happening, so that they embrace. Those are the three things that I can think of, and I'm sure there's more on the lessons learned. It's not easy. It's not been an easy - at all. 

 

Sandra Herron 0:38:07.9:

No, it's not easy, and that's why I talked about the sense-checking, keeping it simple, and I think it's… You touched on the data and the process because our program has become the face of the opportunities of data and process now. As I mentioned, it's increased transparency, but it's also, too… It's been quite the journey, and I think I've learned along the journey quite a bit myself. Don't underestimate the relationship with your stakeholders and building that trust because for complex transformation and change, you just need to - they need to have the faith and the trust in you as to what you're driving and delivering for the firm. We continue. We always reflect and talk to the team, 'What can we do differently? How did that go? Would we do anything different like and learn from it along the way?' Especially when you're on such a long journey of big transformation. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:39:05.4:

I think for me, just to double-click on that, it's involve and ingrain your stakeholders early in the process as part of the design, so they feel inclusive. They're actually participating as a true product owner versus I'm going to build something, three months, and then I'm going to come back and say, 'How are you going to do it?' Then that reciprocity is just not there. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:39:24.7:

A bit more dynamic. Right? 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:39:25.5:

Exactly. Right?  

 

Sandra Herron 0:39:26.0:

Yes. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:39:27.2:

Just keep it agile, and it's okay. Think big, act fast, fail fast, and that's what - Anaplan's, of course, helped us with that. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:39:35.1:

My boss says, 'Fail fast' a lot, so I [over speaking 0:39:38.1] him down. 

 

Rakesh Shetty 0:39:37.1:

I used to say, 'learn fast.' That's it. For me, I used to say, 'learn fast,' but now the reality is, if we fail fast, we learn pretty fast, too. 

 

Neil Thomas 0:39:44.6:

Yes, that's me. All right, well, thank you very much. 

 

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