The Solvers Challenge

Chow Town effectively educates players on key entrepreneurial skills needed to start a business, run it and scale it. The solution also shows that such an engagement can be done in a fun, social and entertaining way - paving the way for what is the future of education for future generations. Users reported a deeper understanding of key money management principles and a dutiful due diligence to running a new business. Almost any user of any age, any demographic can engage, have fun, build an empire and learn all at the same time. To date the experience has been played 131,000 times and has an average rating of 87% on Roblox.

Key contact: Riaan Singh (ZA)

Despite the presence of some existing major players in the SAM tool industry, a lot of clients, in our experience, are facing challenges owing to the lack of flexibility for customizations as per the client requirements, coupled with the fact that they have to spend separately on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) with licensing expertise in a wide range of software publishers and at the same time are adept in managing the SAM tool to generate cost saving opportunities. PwC addresses the key areas of the clients by bringing together a highly adaptable in-house developed Application Inventory Management tool which encompasses all the salient features of the leading SAM tools in the market along with a pool of specialists skilled in licence optimization for leading software publishers. Implementing a robust asset management solution is crucial for clients to overcome their IT asset management related challenges and improve operational efficiency. It simplifies and visualises all your inventory solutions through our interactive and dynamic dashboards. Our tool performs automatic compliance analysis for various software and hardware publishers which enables cost optimization, licence re-harvesting, risk remediation and cost-saving opportunities. 

Key contact: Sameer Kumar (IN)

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that humanity is facing. Current policies in place around the world are projected to result in about 2.7ºC warming above pre-industrial levels. Global temperature increase will influence weather patterns, causing rise in sea levels, increase of droughts, reduction of water availability and more severe storms. Agribusiness is very sensitive to weather and climate, and therefore, climate change will directly affect productivity of farms around the world with indirect impacts on soil quality, financial and economic results, and society well-being, due to the consequent rise in food prices. The objective of our solution is to measure the impact of climate change on Brazilian soybean productivity in the level of specific locations and considering different scenarios. The results also allow the determination of financial impacts for soybean producers and could also be expanded to other commodities in the future. 

Key contacts: Mauricio Colombari (BR) Isadora Faria (BR)

Whether annual reports, contracts, or presentations, the professional services world runs on paper. At every level, thousands of these kinds of documents are read and scrutinised every year. We make this easy by helping you to curate and search through this data, no matter the scale. Document Distillery helps teams curate and search through large volumes of documents, making it easy to find relevant information and extract insights. The platform offers a range of analysis options, including simple search, similarity search, generative AI-powered document summarization, and more. With Document Distillery, teams can quickly and easily find the information they need to make informed decisions, identify new opportunities, and improve operational efficiency. 

Key contact: Alaister Moull (UK)

It is critical for our clients to build and foster trust with their stakeholders. However, trust is a complex concept, and while most organizations understand this intuitively, they struggle to break it down into its elements, its impact on market value, and the thorough diagnostics required to understand and improve trust drivers.

The PwC approach focuses on Trust perception, breaking down 'Trust' into its fundamental drivers and analyzing a wide range of relevant stakeholder data. It also examines its impact on market value and helps companies navigate the broader issues related to the "Trust Agenda" in society. Key features include:

• Trust RADAR: A holistic outside-in trust assessment that evaluates a client's trust perception across 17 underlying trust dimensions. It also demonstrates the impact of trust on market value.
• Trust Diagnostics: In-depth diagnostics of trust drivers using analytics and AI, helping to reshape trust capabilities for business impact. This element of the approach can also include client vignettes to showcase its impact across various industries and company case studies.

Key contact: Qasim Naqvi (CA)

Navigating the compliance and regulatory landscape adds an additional layer of complexity for businesses. Our diverse industries are subject to a multitude of sector-specific regulations, further complicating the task of compliance officers. For example, financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors each have their unique set of compliance requirements, demanding a nuanced understanding of industry-specific regulations. Moreover, the introduction of new legislation and directives, continuously reshapes the compliance landscape. This constant evolution heightens the challenge for compliance officers to stay abreast of these changes and adapt their organizations' practices accordingly. As businesses increasingly operate in a digital and interconnected global environment, the demand for a sophisticated and automated compliance solution becomes paramount. Manual monitoring of regulations can no longer keep pace with the speed and complexity of regulatory changes. Our AI driven regulatory compliance tool quickly identifies and summarises an organisation's regulatory obligations and keeps clients updated on emerging changes. It matches internal policies and controls to regulations and seamlessly maintains these libraries to enable on demand reporting and provides recommendations aligned with regulatory requirements.

Key contact: Trenal Sewsanker (ZA)

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by May 2023, 110 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide, marking the largest single-year increase in UNHCR’s history. Settling into a new country poses numerous challenges for refugees, from navigating unfamiliar surroundings and culture to integrating into their new communities.The 1951 Refugee Convention establishes fundamental rights for refugees, encompassing the right to education and decent work. PwC Middle East’s Digital Heroes programme was designed to empower refugees and underprivileged individuals by providing them with the digital tools and knowledge essential in today’s job market. Guided by digitally enabled PwC mentors, students embark on the one-month journey, completing a customised learning pathway covering data

literacy, Alteryx, PowerBI and other top-rated software. Upon graduation, students attain internationally recognised certifications and a three year license to the digital learning platform, enabling them to sustain their educational journey. Past participants have gone on to pursue higher education, applied their new found skills to expand personal e-businesses and generously shared their knowledge within their communities. Digital Heroes is a cornerstone of PwC’s global initiative, "New world. New skills," advocating for universal access to a fulfilling digital life where participants have an opportunity to live, learn, work, and participate in the digital age.

PwC Global article: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/about/corporate-sustainability/our-stories/supporting-refugees-to-develop-skills.html

Key contact: Roland Hancock (MiddleEast)

As we head towards an era where human life expectancy is expected to reach 100 years, it is crucial that we curb increasing social security costs. Especially in Japan, where the population is aging, these problems are becoming more apparent ahead of the rest of the world. This solution contributes to that goal through the development of an algorithm that uses AI to make simple determinations of the potential for dementia, which was previously difficult to measure, based on biometric data, and by supporting partnerships with local governments and companies aimed at improving overall health by using brain health as a starting point.

Key contact: Yoshinori Yamakawa (JP)

We have developed an end-to-end global aftersales service solution that is targeted towards the new energy sector. Helps organisations to standardise service practice, as well as improves overall service efficiency and quality. Aftersales service in the new energy industry often faces challenges such as flawed business processes, lack of customer touchpoints, unorganised service partnerships as well as lack of digital solutions, and our solution is designed to address these issues. The solution contains a holistic service framework that consists of ten core capabilities and 200+ standardised processes which helps organisations build a standard service practice. With the established framework, the overall solution also provides an end-to-end tailored digital application built based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform which helps organisations to digitise their service processes. The digital solution helps to establish that our service framework is properly embedded and making it the single go-to platform for all aftersales service needs, in return, the solution significantly improved service productivity and quality for the organisation.

Key contact: lei.l.ha@cn.pwc.com

Project owners rarely leverage the potential of their data, resulting in decisions being driven by limited information, and human judgement that is highly susceptible to cognitive biases. As a result, capital programme leaders struggle to get meaningful and reliable management information and insight. This impedes their ability to make effective decisions, resulting in suboptimal programme outcomes. Programme Delivery Intelligence combines our subject matter experts, technology and data to help project owners and delivery teams to make better informed decisions with confidence. By harnessing a data driven approach to programme delivery, we mitigate risk and increase visibility, insight, performance and value by predicting programme outcomes, which then deliver programmes better, faster and for less money.

Key contact: Matt Saunders (UK)

What makes your business sustainable and ready for ESG challenges? We know the answer - employees that are genuinely committed to ESG and are aligned with company ESG strategy. As a leader, you must measure, develop and manage not only the team's commitment, but also the implementation of goals, including ESG goals. Thanks to the People Happiness Assessment Tool, you can understand the current situation, analyse comparable data and identify your priorities in managing your people. You receive a proven method and a tool that gives you management information ready for use in your team. Our solution can be used to support you though a one-time consulting project or implement the process along with our app. Our hAppy suite of tools enables organisations to:

• make your employees feel secure through analysis of satisfaction, engagement, employee loyalty (hAppy: Engagement & Satisfaction)
• hear the voice of employees working in a hybrid workplace (hAppy: Remote work) and,
• facilitate people buy-in towards your ESG strategy (hAppy: Environment).

Key contact: Mateusz Zych (PL)

As banks play catch-up on digital servicing, there is a growing demand for banks to be digital to be at the heart of their banking, and a universal need for increased flexibility when managing money on-the-go. Banks are working to keep up with this demand, utilising digitisation to empower their customers. To address these issues, PwC has partnered with Microsoft to develop Infinite, a digital banking platform, built on Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. Infinite is built upon ecosystem banking architecture principles, which leverages the power of Microsoft, a range of best-in-class FinTechs, and PwC's extensive banking experience. With Infinite, we aim to provide direct and measurable benefits to our clients. Infinite drives tangible results for businesses in the form of reduced OpEx and total cost of ownership, plus the agility to unlock revenue opportunities with customers. Typical projects will drive an accelerated set of commercial and strategic outcomes for our clients. Additionally, our digital banking asset showcases us as a global firm for our international clients. We have been enabled to develop a consistent approach for our clients across PwC network firms, collaborating across a single team - whilst applying localised knowledge. This process will continue to develop and thus further evolves our Infinite solution.

Key contact: Gaurav Pandey (UK)

Our Workday Extend application helps to close the gap between the future skills that are needed and the current skills within a workforce. The C-suite can enter the workforce strategy by answering a survey and uploading the relevant memo, after which A.I. will analyze the required skills for the future of the organization. This way the skills gap is identified, which can then be used during several moments in the HR lifecycle. For example, for a hiring manager it will identify candidates with key skills that are missing in the organisation, but will also suggest interview questions to determine if this candidate actually has those skills. For existing employees it will suggest goals that are in line with missing skills, and will suggest relevant training to build a future proof skillset.

Key contact: Rick Leunisse (NL)

Our Tax Connector platform grants clients access to PwC services “on demand”, when it suits them. The platform enables our clients to:

• Chat with PwC consultants;
• Browse a marketplace of tax products that are available for immediate use;
• View all news and important information at a glance - based on users preferences;
• Speak with other users / clients via online forums;
• Organise meetings with subject matter experts, based on published calendars;
• Access tax research though our virtual tax advisor;

All supported by AI, in one ecosystem, under one subscription model, applicable for a wide range of clients.

Key contact: Kamil Olczykowski (PL)

In the dynamic landscape of business, change is the only constant. Adapting to ever-shifting legal, business, and societal demands, along with challenges like pandemics, recessions, and political instability, has become increasingly crucial to maintain consistent business performance. To address these evolving challenges, the key lies in transparency and achieving rapid "insight time." Utilising PwC's Process Control Tower helps to establish that clients have a clear understanding of their end-to-end operations status, at any time. By harnessing readily available data to deliver accurate and current information to decision-makers at all levels of the organisation, our solution promotes more efficient and effective operations, while enhancing resilience and trust within the organisation. PwC's process control tower empowers the control, steering, and monitoring of operations throughout value chains, providing critical information to all relevant stakeholders at the right time.

Key contact: Peter Blank (CH)

One major government agency in the Middle East had around 1,600 government services available on its online service directory, each one accumulating daily its own useful stores of data. Inevitably, the old methods of accessing this information could be slow and inefficient. PwC Middle East was called in to find a way to cut through this vast thicket of information. To address this challenge, our team chose to leverage the power of generative AI. Deployed with precision, the generative AI application was able to process the data almost instantly, providing relevant information to users that would in the past have taken significant amounts of time and labour to locate. The solution delighted the client, its customers.

Key contact: Moussa Beidas (MiddleEast)