Business model reinvention

A leading global technology company faced a low stock market valuation and growing customer dissatisfaction with the buyer journey and ownership experience, fueled in part by the sheer complexity of a vast array of highly technical products.

PwC US collaborated with the company’s leadership team to reinvent both the way it engaged with customers, the subscription-based offering structures and the associated operating model. Most critically, PwC US worked with the company to introduce XaaS offerings with subscription-based pricing into the market. This enabled customers to buy hardware and software products through a digital customer experience with a lower cost of entry, thereby simplifying the buying process and reducing their capex requirements.

This reinvention of the business has produced a significant improvement in measurable commercial outcomes, including significant year on year revenue growth, an increase in average deal size and a doubling of annual recurring revenue over a two-year period. As a result, there has been a significant upwards revaluation of the company by investors, along with an increase in sales velocity and digital customer engagement.

PwC Australia and PwC South East Asia Consulting were brought in to help a maritime company which had encountered challenges after introducing new technology to the business. The company was set up in 2001 as a joint venture to vet maritime vessels before they headed out to sea and help establish rigorous standards for the maritime industry to mitigate against the risk of harm to seafarers, the environment, local communities, ships, or their cargoes.

The maritime firm initially achieved this primarily through the manual vetting of vessels by in-house maritime experts. However, it later pivoted to an analytics-led approach, which replaced humans with technology. This new approach led to new challenges, including lack of transparency, lack of explainability, and high volatility in recommendations. This resulted in a lack of trust between the firm and its customers as well as the maritime industry.

PwC Australia and PwC South East Asia Consulting worked with the client to develop a five year strategy for the business. The team advised on the design, delivery and replatforming of the core products and services, leveraging human-centred design, cloud architecture data and analytics and a first-principles strategy. The business has returned to double-digit top-line growth every year since its reinvention, thereby protecting both the core business and key customers.