PwC Switzerland: Increasing business value while staying compliant using the Microsoft Cloud

“When we started our cloud transformation program, we said: ‘If we are going to do this, we are going all in'. Because to capture the biggest opportunities in the cloud, you don’t just move your data center. You have to go cloud-native.”

Henrico Dolfing, CIO at PwC Switzerland, is describing the strategy his team applied when moving their infrastructure to the cloud – and the challenges they had to overcome to make that strategy a reality.

“Shifting to the cloud is a complex task for any company, but particularly for professional services providers like us,” says Dolfing. “We work for some of the most traditional and demanding clients in the world who are very protective of their data and trade secrets. On top of that, we also operate within strict Swiss legal and compliance regulations.” 

But these challenges haven’t deterred PwC. The establishment of two Microsoft data centers in Switzerland, coupled with a compelling business case put forward by Dolfing and his team, has led to PwC Switzerland making huge progress towards their goal – and has established the firm as a pioneer for cloud adoption in its sector. 

“Our move to the cloud is not really a move, it's a transformation,” says Daniel Molka, CTO, Technology and Transformation at PwC Switzerland. “We want to transform our application landscape to get the best out of the cloud, to have solutions that are built according to the SaaS and PaaS principles of our strategy, and achieve the maximum benefit for us as a business.”

Using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform, PwC Switzerland has achieved that.

Navigating regulatory restrictions and client reservations

As one of the ‘Big 4’, PwC is a company that needs little introduction – providing auditing, tax and consulting services to some of the biggest and most widely recognized companies in the world. 

While PwC operates globally, each firm is a legally independent member of the PwC network, with its own boards and decision-making processes. 

“PwC is a network company with presence in over 150 countries,” explains Dolfing, who was CIO between 2020 and 2022. “That means that efficient collaboration is key to the way we work. For PwC Switzerland, collaboration is more difficult because we have strong restrictions on how we can share data – and especially where data is stored due to data privacy and professional secrecy regulations.”

For a long time, this prevented the Swiss firm from seriously thinking about moving to the cloud, and the team watched on as other firms in the network made advances that left PwC Switzerland somewhat behind. “The game changer was the availability of Microsoft data centers in Switzerland,” recalls Dolfing. “And not just one, but two, so we could realize high availability clusters and backups in Switzerland as well.”

But while the data centers enabled the firm to work within the Swiss legal framework, PwC Switzerland still had to tackle client sensitivities. 

“It’s not only important where your data is, but also how well your data is protected,” continues Dolfing. “And Microsoft invests a lot in data and information security each year – much more than we ever could – because technology is Microsoft’s core business. That was an argument that landed well with our clients.”

A business-first approach to cloud migration

Having been given the green light, the team began the cloud transformation program in earnest. “Our guiding principle was that this wasn’t about technology; it was about realizing business value,” says Dolfing. 

“So when it came to cleaning up our application portfolio, we started by identifying the things that were costing us the most and moving those applications to Azure first. Then we used the savings from that to offset the cost of other projects under our cloud transformation program.

“For example, we moved our core audit application to Azure, changing its operational model so it was maintained by our global technology team instead of our local team,” he says. “This resulted in significantly fewer local efforts, increased availability times, and – since it was built on PaaS components – scalability when needed. And has in turn led to long-term positive impacts on our technology costs.”

“And that's just one example,” says Molka. “When you multiply this with everything else, the databases, storage, and so on, that's really when you start getting the best out of this approach. But to achieve this, you need to transform. You cannot just move.”

With that mindset, the team embarked on the next phase of the transformation: Microsoft 365.

Achieving seamless collaboration with Microsoft 365

According to Heidi Fässler, Change Manager for Technology and Transformation, the move to Microsoft 365 had a number of motivators. 

“First of all, was user experience,” she says. “We used to have lots of different systems running concurrently, that weren’t integrated. That adds a lot of small frictions. And while they might be small, when you scale them across the 3,500 people working here, if each one loses 15 minutes each day then the impact on the business quickly becomes colossal.

“If I can give 15 minutes back to everybody in the company every day, then that is already a big win.”

The ubiquity of Microsoft 365 across industries was also a key benefit of the move. “The vast majority of our clients also use Microsoft technology,” says Fässler. “So collaboration is much easier when we are all operating within the same landscape, especially with large consulting projects where the co-creation and co-development of solutions is so important.

“Having that common ground has made a massive difference to how we can deliver value for our clients.”

With Microsoft 365 live, the team next moved official document repositories to SharePoint Online. “With this, you pretty much have all data that is relevant for the business processes in one environment,” says Dolfing. 

“So the next logical step is to start automating processes based on that data – and that means Power Platform.”

Driving efficiency with Microsoft Power Platform

The aims of employing Power Platform were twofold: to empower citizen development of smaller, focused apps across the organization and to enable Molka’s team to develop larger-scale, business-wide innovations.

Both ambitions have been achieved, with Molka’s team developing numerous apps to benefit the firm since starting to work with Power Platform, and citizen developers keen on the uptake too.

The Know Your Customer (KYC) app was one of the first business-wide projects to launch. “Similar to banks, we have to validate if we’re allowed to do business with a client before we engage with them,” Molka explains. “This involves gathering a lot of information about potential clients, which used to be done manually. With the KYC app, that information gathering is almost fully automated, meaning that all we have to do is analyze that information and make a decision on it.

“It saves a substantial amount of time for the individual.”

The team has also developed the Partner Voting app, which as the name suggests, facilitates the ability of PwC Switzerland’s 180 partners to vote on decisions that require partnership consent. “We can share the relevant documentation with each partner securely through the app, so they can review it all and then vote through the app too,” explains Dolfing. 

“It’s a great way of demonstrating the success of the cloud transformation program to our main stakeholders, because when they ask ‘What’s Power Platform?’, we can say: ‘You know the Partner Voting app – well, that is Power Platform in action.”

A future of secure innovation

Reflecting on the project so far, the team at PwC Switzerland is keen to stress the critical importance of governance in facilitating progress.

“You can’t implement tomorrow’s technology with yesterday’s policies,” emphasizes Fässler. “Our legal counsel, our compliance team, our information security team were all crucial to the success of this cloud transformation program. And that collaboration has really benefited us as a firm, because we have built that trust, and helped less technical colleagues understand in more detail how the cloud works.”

Looking to the future, the team plans to capitalize on both the security and innovation possibilities of the Microsoft Cloud. 

“What’s next?,” muses Dolfing. “Well, Azure Information Protection, for sure. Because as soon as we are able to protect our documents and objects outside their containers, I don't need so many business rules for my users. That will allow them to do more, to innovate more, and to be more creative – all while being compliant and keeping our and our clients’ data secure”.

“And we are also excited about the new innovations coming out of Microsoft,” he adds. “Daniel is a big AI fan and is experimenting a lot with stuff in that space already. 

“When you have all these services, and all your data is already on a Microsoft platform, you can leverage your data with just a few clicks. That's where things really become powerful. That’s the big benefit of what Microsoft offers us as a business.”