Case Studies

PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting Global Team

Jeff Vedders worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Consulting (now IBM) in July 2000 to develop a tool that ranks or prioritizes companies based upon their statistical likelihood to outsource major business components. The sales cycle for winning an account was so lengthy that in order to maximize valuable sales and marketing resources, it was imperative that PwC focus their efforts on only those companies most likely to make a positive decision to outsource one or more major business components. Using a control group consisting of companies that previously outsourced major business functions, Mr. Vedders and PwC Consulting identified twenty correlated variables. Based on these variables, a process was created to monitor 2,000 companies worldwide for events and circumstance changes that impacted any of the variables. We also created a measurement instrument that effectively ranked the 2,000 U.S. and international companies by their statistical likelihood to outsource in the future. This ranking allowed the intelligent prioritization of sales and marketing efforts. The Predictive Modeling system became a vital component of PwC Consulting's sales process until the IBM acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.