Roger Gagnon appointed as PwC's first Chief Experience Officer
Professional services firm PwC has announced the appointment of Roger Gagnon as Chief Experience Officer. The newly created role in PwC’s consulting practice will see Gagnon work to expand the firm’s business transformation consulting offering for clients.
PwC has hired former Cognizant and Capco staffer Roger Gagnon to the newly created role of Chief Experience Officer (CXO) in its consulting practice. The move comes as PwC looks to evolve its approach to business transformation by bringing in experience strategy, design, and user experience (UX) capabilities.
Gagnon was selected for the position, in no small part, thanks to his more than 15 years’ experience working in insight, strategy, design and UX teams around the world. He has helped transform some of the world’s most admired businesses and brands in his previous roles, including his most recent role as Managing Director in Insight, Strategy & Design for global professional services firm Cognizant.
Prior to that, Gagnon was SVP, Global Head of CX Strategy for RAPP, a role which he spent a year in, having joined from Capco in 2016. When working for a year with Capco, based in the Greater New York City Area, he held the position of Head of Strategy & Innovation. Gagnon arrived at Capco in 2015, having held various senior roles with global design agency, Critical Mass, over an eight year spell. He began his career with human resources consultancy CHR, working with the Canadian wing of the firm as a consultant and senior consultant for a total of four years, after graduating from the nearby University of Calgary in 2002.
In his new role with PwC, Gagnon will help implement PwC’s new approach to consulting. The firm has said this approach centres on combining business, experience and technology to help clients accelerate their business transformations – a booming line of work for consultants, worth over $23 billion globally. The new Chief Experience Officer will need to work to embed digital solutions across all of PwC’s business, rather than within a specialist digital group; ensuring that the newly-formed experience team works closely with a multidisciplinary group of business strategists and technologists from across the Big Four firm.
Commenting on his new challenge, Roger Gagnon said, “PwC believes that combining business, experience and technology is critical to delivering real transformative outcomes for our clients. I’m excited to build our new experience strategy and design group in the UK, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with some really smart people - from business and technology strategy, to tax, and assurance - to build on the success that we’ve seen in the United States and Asia working this way, and to create something special and different for this market and our clients.”
Colin Light, Digital Consulting Leader at PwC, added, “Many of our clients operate in complex regulatory environments, and have complex transformation needs… Roger is a recognised leader in his field, and he’s a hands-on practitioner who brings a wealth of strategy and execution experience to the table. We’re excited to work with Roger to embed human insights and user-centered design at the heart of our Consulting approach to transformation.”
Recently, PwC’s attempts to emphasise the digital aspects of consulting saw the firm partner with Beyond Analysis. The deal enables PwC to bolster its data visualisation offering, allowing for clients to leverage digitally illustrated insights to make important decisions about the needs of their business.
