Saying goodbye to legacy programs
With offices in 156 countries and more than 295,000 people, PwC is among the leading professional services networks in the world. They help organizations and individuals create the value they are looking for by delivering quality in Assurance, Tax and Advisory services.
Among their portfolio of services, PwC provides mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and financial advisory services to clients including corporate businesses, family-owned companies and private equity funds across all industry sectors. Additionally, the firm provides commercial due diligence advice to clients via its Deals Strategy team, which primarily relates to private equity deals.
While PwC has historically had access to the information required to advise their clients, compiling that information with the use of legacy solutions was time and resource-intensive. The use of several and disparate sources of information meant that analysts were unable to easily access and cross check the data and were required to spend significant amounts of time drawing the right conclusions from the data.
With so much time being lost to manually sourcing and analyzing data, Wouter Giard, Director Corporate Finance – M&A at PwC, wanted to find a smarter, more efficient way of working to bring them to the forefront of modernization and digitization.
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Opting for Gain.pro
Having heard about Gain.pro, the category redefining SaaS platform, from clients and others in the industry, PwC believed that the solution would help to overcome many of the challenges they had been experiencing. In particular, Gain.pro’s ability to provide unparalleled insight into private markets and instantly accessible information including company financials, competitors and market trends stood out. PwC was also aware that growing numbers of their own clients were adopting the tool themselves, meaning that the business didn’t want to find itself in the position of knowing less than its customers.
Furthermore, PwC realized that the Gain.pro solution could enable M&A and due diligence services to be carried out in a centralized, faster and more efficient way, while still upholding the same level of quality provided by its in-house team.
“This was the first time I had encountered a solution that felt like it could improve the way we work, enhance efficiency and digitize our operations, all at the same time. It was also immediately apparent how intuitive the platform is and that we’d be able to use it for any number of tasks, whether that’s for market assessments, providing commercial due diligence to clients or advising on acquisitions.”
Wouter Giard
With the Gain.pro solution in place for their team across the Netherlands and Belgium, PwC has been able to make improvements in areas beyond just the digitization of operations. The tool is a time saver, allowing the analyst team to focus on next level analysis and use cases. For example, the previous method of manually searching for information on specific companies such as high-level financials, competitors, and market trends could be a lengthy process.
Now, this is all instantly available from Gain.pro, with every company profile put together by experienced researchers thus saving those first ten hours of work. PwC teams are able to filter relevant results in minutes and draw the right conclusions instantly. Not only does this free PwC employees up to focus on where they add the most value, such as next level analysis, but it also empowers them to deliver the information to their customers much more quickly.
Gain.pro also helps PwC to maintain their high standards of quality thanks to our “six eyes” approach which validates every company profile and market report by at least three analysts to confirm its accuracy. This service has proved to be significantly more valuable to PwC when compared to previous outsourcing efforts, which failed to match their quality expectations.
Advantages to PwC
PwC has witnessed tangible benefits from utilizing the Gain.pro solution, including:
Access to in-depth company profiles in minutes
Historically, this would have taken up to two days for an intern or associate to build, saving time for the broader team and its clients
Clear visibility of competitors and direct insight into ownership, structures and financials
Enabling efficient commercial due diligence
Completeness of information
Alerting the team to a share or asset acquisition opportunity for example, allowing them to advise clients
Team output increased
Due to the ability to complete more work with the same number of people
“Ready to go” company profiles with market study data
In a format ready to use as presentation materials
Ongoing support and future plans
With the Gain.pro solution firmly entrenched in PwC’s operations, the organization has also benefited from ongoing support and Gain.pro’s ambition to continuously improve its service.
“It’s not just how quickly we are able to access the information that makes Gain.pro so useful, it is also the completeness of the information. As well as data such as financials, it also provides insights into the ownership structure of a company and relevant peers, for example, and gives an indication of when a company might be likely to come up for sale based on all those insights. It is this unparalleled level of efficiency, quality and completeness that has made Gain.pro a vital tool for our business.”
Wouter Giard
The strength of the ongoing relationship between the two organizations means that Gain.pro is also in discussions with additional PwC teams in other countries who are considering implementing the technology in those regions.
With Gain.pro powering insights for the M&A and Deals Strategy teams, PwC can continue to provide clients with the high-quality advice and guidance they require to move their businesses forward.
