A US airline drew upon lessons from the pitstops of Formula I racing to implement a strategy of turning around its aircraft faster, saving millions of dollars in the process. A hospital looked at practices followed in hotels to provide better comfort to its patients. Likewise petroleum products companies have been looking at distribution models of consumer goods companies to work out their own strategies.
These are some examples of how the Global Best Practices (GBP) unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) helps its clients benchmark themselves against the best in the world and learn and emulate from the same. Lessons can be drawn from anywhere in the world and from any industry, and are now documented in a knowledge base by the firm. This service has now been launched in the country by PwC.
PwC India’s executive director Joydeep Datta Gupta told FE that “Indian companies are beginning to realise they can go global, and would be up against the world’s best not only in overseas markets, but also within the country where the open economy has allowed foreign companies to operate here. There is thus a need to redefine what competition is and live up to the expectations of various stakeholders. We not only provide knowledge, but work with the clients to implement the process and cultural changes.”
GBP’s global integration leader David J Johnson, visiting the country on the occasion of this launch, told FE that “we have created a knowledge base that has for the first time been thrown open to anyone for a moderate fee. The service was launched globally in September last year. The 20,000 page GBP knowledge base comprises over 1,000 in-depth best practices, 300 detailed company profiles, 5,000 company vignettes, 1,100 qualitative benchmarking tools and 25 quantitative tools. This database is constantly being updated, and each practice reviewed every two years.”
“Furthermore, self-assessment tools and questions enable companies to save time and money by doing the lower level of assessment themselves, and we come in when the need is for higher level, specialist inputs,” he added.
“While 60 per cent of our clients for GBP are from the west, the balance has been shifting more in favour of Asia-Pacific (Apac) countries in the last 2-3 months. Furthermore, while the database is currently more about western companies due to such information better documented, we would be generating more such information from countries like India to cater to our global client base,” added Mr Jonhson.
Mr Gupta said “that chambers like the CII have expressed interest in collaborating to help Indian MNCs perform well in overseas markets. With GBP in place, we can take this conversation forward now.”
The business transformation service group at PwC India would take the lead in offering GBP services, but would draw upon the expertise of the 4,000 staffers of the firm in the country for the implementation, according to Mr Gupta.
