Profile

Brian is a Senior Director in PwC’s Managed Services business. He joined PwC Managed Services ten years ago and has played a key role in its growth from 150 to over 2,000 professionals, delivering complex managed services to clients across a range of regulated industries. These services focus on enhancing productivity and quality while reducing cost.
Prior to re-joining PwC, Brian spent eight years at Citibank. He served as Managing Director and Site Head of Citi’s Belfast service centre, leading its expansion from 600 to 1,500 staff over four years. He was subsequently appointed Citi’s EMEA Head of Productivity, where he led initiatives to improve productivity and reduce costs across European operations. In this role, he worked closely with the Belfast centre to support its continued growth to more than 4,000 staff.
Earlier in his career, Brian worked with PwC and Accenture, delivering consulting engagements globally focused on improving operational efficiency and reducing costs.

 
What is the biggest competitiveness challenge facing organisations right now?

The defining competitiveness challenge today is maintaining strategic focus amid growing complexity – balancing immediate performance pressures with the need to build long-term capability. AI brings this tension into sharp relief. While it is firmly on the executive agenda, PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey (2025) highlights that many organisations are not yet realising meaningful returns from their AI investments, exposing a clear gap between ambition and impact.

This gap is now a critical competitive dividing line. PwC’s AI Performance Study: Decoding ROI from AI (2026) shows that a small group of organisations is successfully scaling AI and capturing a disproportionate share of value, while many remain stuck in fragmented experimentation. The issue is no longer access to technology, but the ability to deploy it at pace, at scale, and in ways that materially improve performance. This requires a shift from incremental adoption to genuine business reinvention. At its core, this is an organisational challenge. Competitiveness increasingly depends on “AI fitness”- the ability to align strategy, data, technology and people to consistently translate AI into measurable business outcomes.

What are high-performing organisations doing differently?

High-performing organisations respond to this challenge with greater focus and execution discipline. They prioritise a small number of high-value use cases and embed them into core operations, rather than pursuing a broad portfolio of disconnected pilots. This allows them to scale impact quickly and avoid dilution of effort. They also take an enterprise-wide view, integrating AI into decision-making, workflows and customer journeys. Crucially, they look beyond efficiency and use AI to drive growth – developing new products, services and revenue streams. This combination of focus and ambition enables them to move faster from experimentation to value. Their advantage is reinforced by strong foundations and workforce alignment. They invest in data, governance and technology as enablers of scale, while simultaneously building skills and evolving operating models. In doing so, they convert AI from a technical capability into a consistent driver of enterprise performance.

Where should leaders focus over the next 12–24 months?

The priority now is to close the gap between experimentation and impact. Leaders should focus on scaling a targeted set of proven, high-impact use cases—particularly those linked to growth—and embedding them into the core business with clear accountability for outcomes. In parallel, organisations need to strengthen the enablers of scale: high-quality data, robust governance and modern technology platforms. AI should be integrated into broader transformation efforts, ensuring it supports business reinvention rather than operating as a standalone initiative. Finally, workforce readiness must accelerate. Addressing skills gaps, redesigning roles and building trust in AI will be critical to unlocking value. Organisations that align focus, foundations and people over the next 12–24 months will be best positioned to convert AI into sustained competitive advantage.