Business, consumers and society face a technology paradox. Technology has never been more powerful yet pervasive. It has never offered greater potential to drive positive change, while presenting risks that could erode trust. And it has never been more accessible, while heightening fears of exclusion and division.

In our report “Upskilling the Isle of Man’s workforce for a digital world”, issued in September 2020, we highlighted the potential impact on Isle of Man jobs due to technology disruption and how, with the right skills, agility and readiness to embrace change, the Isle of Man can create thousands of new jobs to make up for the ones that will be lost.

To unleash the power of technology it is vital to have the skills and understanding to harness its potential while mitigating risks. To do so means embracing all the things which make us human - difference, judgement, care, empathy and understanding.

Yet a final piece of this apparent technology paradox is that while human intervention and insight is more critical than ever, there is a scarcity of available people with the sufficient skills and understanding of technology.

The New Equation

At PwC we recently launched The New Equation, our global strategy to address the breadth and complexity of challenges facing businesses and society. We’re combining everything we offer in new, creative ways to build trust, deliver sustained outcomes and help clients solve their most important problems.

At the heart of our strategy is an investment in human-led technology. But what does this mean and how does it benefit our clients and our people?

Society needs a greater technology skills base and the existing routes are not going to produce enough talent. All employers have a choice - join the war for tech talent or invest in increasing the talent pool and making technology careers a possibility for many more people in society. At PwC we believe it is our job to find and nurture talent and potential and we are committed to training our people and building our technology capabilities.

For clients, the benefits will be significant, especially where they see gaps in their own technology skills and capabilities. More than ever, clients need to combine business understanding with technology skills. That sits at the heart of how we operate, bringing years of experience across every aspect of business, and combining it with the skills, understanding and imagination to see where the right technology can deliver real results.

Human-led

We are committed to training our people and building our tech capabilities, to ensure our people, our clients and our communities can embrace the full power of technology in a way that is guided by human understanding and a diversity of thought and experience to deliver faster, better and more intelligent outcomes while building trust. 

In 2020 we delivered Digital Academies, investing  more than 2,000 hours in digitally upskilling all of our people in tools such as Alteryx (data analytics) and Power BI (data visualisation). In 2021 we implemented the PwC Digital Lab, which allows the sharing of digital tools developed by our people across the PwC network, and started our journey towards robotic process automation using UiPath. Digital Accelerators, who sit within the business, work with our teams to ensure that they get the most out of the technology and deliver the best outcomes to our clients.

This is just the start - we will continue to invest as part of our strategy, with £1.5 million budgeted over the next 5 years. This will include making our people even more digitally astute, growing their competency with the firm’s digital assets and tools to deliver greater efficiency, deeper insight and high-value services to clients.

Tech-powered

Our audit services are a prime example of where PwC has invested significantly in transforming the way we work to meet the changing needs of our clients. “Tomorrow’s audit, today” is about delivering exceptional quality to our clients whilst giving deeper insight. Our audit suite of technology, each with its own fully integrated suite of tools, includes:

• Extract - how we get the data

• Halo - our revolutionary data-auditing tool, a former winner of the prestigious International Accounting Bulletin’s ‘Audit Innovation of the Year’

• Aura - where we document everything and perform key audit procedures, and

• Connect - how we collaborate and stay connected with our clients and each other.

PwC globally has also made a significant investment in pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) for the audit, demonstrating the commitment of PwC to investing in technologies that are relevant for the future. GL.ai and Cash.ai, winners of the Audit Innovation of the Year in 2017 and 2019 respectively, use machine learning to ‘x-ray’ a business, analysing billions of data points in milliseconds, seeing what humans can’t, and applying judgement to detect anomalies.

By being human-led and tech-powered, we can exploit the potential of artificial intelligence, while understanding the critical role people must play to avoid bias and build trust. We can help clients unlock the value within data, in a way that is consistent with their purpose and ethical commitments. We can ensure automation delivers productivity gains, while upskilling people to avoid digital disenfranchisement within society.

Ensuring teams have the right understanding to see both the potential and the pitfalls in technology, requires ongoing investment in skills and capabilities, to overcome the headline shortage of talent and ensure diversity.

Combining skills and technology to solve business challenges

Today’s world isn’t simple and the challenges facing business and society are complex. Those challenges need to be looked at from a new angle. They require human ingenuity, passion and experience to be combined with the latest technology. They demand something more than the expected.

At PwC Isle of Man we are a passionate community of solvers coming together in unexpected ways, creating new solutions for a new day. Our human-led and tech-powered approach means our clients will get things faster, better and more accurately. They'll gain unexpected insights and discover creative solutions to some of their biggest challenges. That's the power of technology and data, but only when combined with understanding and context and experience to ensure it answers genuine needs and solves genuine problems.