Alumnus leads PwC vision to break barriers in modern workplaces

Business leaders are told we live in an era of disruption. Companies are told if they’re not embracing technology, they’re missing out. This unprecedented rate of innovation is impacting how business is conducted.

Yet, why do so many digital transformations in organizations continue to fail?

“Major transformations have a reputation for going over budget or being complete failures,” says Tom Puthiyamadam ’97, global digital leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “We considered how to better position ourselves to help our clients achieve transformational results and disrupt their industries. We quickly realized that in order to do this, we needed to disrupt ourselves.”

The School of Management alumnus is leading the firm’s digital services and, ultimately, changing how we work. In his role at PwC, Puthiyamadam oversees its worldwide digital enterprise. He has helped PwC reinvent its consulting strategy — the Business, Experience and Technology (BXT) method — which employs multi-disciplinary approaches, teams and networks to foster change and innovation.

“The BXT method is now the official way PwC leads transformational change for our clients,” he says. “We noticed the change companies were implementing were not being embraced by their employees — people are the biggest challenge when it comes to introducing new technology to the workplace, not the technology itself.”

New technology at work often becomes a “people problem” when companies don’t invest enough in the buy-in of their employees to ensure across-the-board adoption, Puthiyamadam says. The BXT method offers integrated services to clients who want to introduce new digital tactics to advance their business goals and bolster customer and employee engagement.

PwC Digital has completed a range of projects using the BXT method, including creating a streamlined digital platform for a pharmaceutical company to educate its clinical, sales and operations teams about a new drug to treat diabetes prior to its market launch.

“We brought business consulting to the pharmacy industry and built an efficient, connected platform,” he says. “You wouldn’t expect that a professional services firm could impact how people take medicine. This mirrors the idea of how the BXT method challenges people to re-think their perspectives.”

Another crucial step to unveiling the digital strategy was removing internal silos.

“The culture of PwC Digital embraces diverse perspectives and the understanding that not all people work — or think — the same way,” he says. “As a team, you can still share a common language, bring your specialties together and recognize the importance of sharing common ground.”

“It’s the real-world business equivalent of creating teams of School of Management, Harpur and Watson students,” he added.

Puthiyamadam says future talent differentiation is also key to in order to keep the BXT method sustainable.

“Re-imagining how PwC recruits our talent is an important component of BXT,” says Puthiyamadam, who oversees more than 30 offices across the globe and nearly 5,000 business, creative and tech industry experts.

“PwC Digital is looking for people across all majors, schools and backgrounds to join our team,” he says.

Puthiyamadam, who graduated with a bachelor’s in business administration and concentrations in finance and management information systems, says his education and training influenced him to “see the world and problem-solving through numbers” when he joined PwC 20 years ago and launched his consulting career.

He soon realized that accelerating true innovation requires a combination of business, creative and technological minds: “The future of business and consulting will include professionals from business, creative and technology fields on all projects.”

Puthiyamadam advises students and new graduates to learn how to be “tri-lingual” in the workplace: “You have to be able to work cross-functionally. It’s no longer enough to be really good at one thing on the job.”

Puthiyamadam says all employees and companies should embody certain characteristics to achieve better results — regardless of their job title, education or training.

“You should always take risks, challenge perspectives and embrace diversity in the workplace in order to truly innovate and make great things happen,” he says.