KPMG and Microsoft have announced a significant expansion of their global relationship that will reshape professional services across a number of business-critical areas including workforce modernisation, safe and secure development, and use of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for clients, industries and society more broadly.
The collaboration between the two global organisations includes a KPMG multibillion dollar commitment in Microsoft cloud and AI services over the next five years that will help to unlock potential incremental growth opportunity for KPMG of over $12-billion. The expanded alliance will enhance KPMG client engagements and supercharge the employee experience in a way that is responsible, trustworthy and safe.
The Microsoft cloud and Azure OpenAI Service capabilities will empower the KPMG global workforce of 265 000 to unleash their creativity, provide faster analysis and spend more time on strategic advice. This will enable them to help clients, including more than 2 500 KPMG and Microsoft joint clients, keep pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape and solve their greatest business challenges while positioning them for success in the future world of work.
As an early access partner for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, KPMG professionals will pilot the technologies with select business groups across the global organisation, bringing together the increased capabilities of these tools with their experience, insights and sector expertise to enhance client engagements and accelerate digital solution development.
Bill Thomas, global chairman and CEO of KPMG International, says: “Our renewed and strengthened relationship with Microsoft is an exciting moment for our people and our clients. It will help harness the power of our multidisciplinary model by ensuring that our people always have the right expertise, skills, and tools to overcome challenges and provide the very best advice to clients. It will also help make KPMG a more agile and resilient business that continues to be an interesting and exciting place to work.
“This expansion of our global alliance builds on the combined power of two world-class organisations that share a common set of core values, working together to responsibly use cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies. KPMG is embracing the future, and we believe that AI is key to unlocking sustainable growth in a way that will build a better future for our people, our clients and society.”
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, comments: “We have a real opportunity to apply this next generation of AI to help transform every industry, including professional services. Our expanded partnership with KPMG will bring together AI innovation across the Microsoft Cloud with KPMG’s tax, audit and advisory expertise to empower its employees and unlock insights for its customers.”
The collaboration, which spans more than a decade, underpinned by this major expansion will benefit KPMG firms’ core business areas in the following ways:
* Audit – By infusing data analytics, AI and Azure Cognitive Services into the audit process, through the KPMG smart audit platform KPMG Clara, 85,000 audit professionals who collectively work on hundreds of thousands of audits a year will be empowered to focus more closely on higher-risk areas of the audit, sector-specific risks and challenges – to the benefit of both stakeholders and capital markets. This integration also opens up new market opportunities for KPMG professionals and their clients. For example, with the integration of Microsoft Fabric, KPMG teams will have the ability to directly point to client data instead of having to ingest it, which is a key component to helping enable KPMG professionals to perform audits on a more real time basis.
* Tax – Integrating Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Fabric into KPMG Digital Gateway, a KPMG single platform solution, will give clients access to the full suite of KPMG Tax & Legal technologies, and allow them to gain more integrated and transparent access to their data and take a more holistic management approach to their tax functions. This was demonstrated most recently through a co-developed AI solution using the Azure OpenAI Service that helps to analyse environmental, social and governance (ESG) data, establish data patterns and draft ESG tax transparency reports, all at increased speed and scale. Additionally, KPMG firms will operate a generative-AI powered “virtual assistant” to create new client service models to help tax professionals become more efficient. It will also help with revenue-generating opportunities such as product experience enhancements and knowledge management for complex tax laws.
* Advisory – Developing an AI-enabled application development and knowledge platform on Microsoft Azure will expedite the creation of specialized solutions for clients, helping to enhance their competitive advantage and profitability while putting ethics and security at the very core of the offerings. The benefits and ongoing success of this continued collaboration already include a joint engagement with Coca-Cola EuroPacific Partners (CCEP) of which Peter Brickley, Chief Information Officer at CCEP said, “KPMG and Microsoft are working together with Coca-Cola EuroPacific Partners on innovative use cases which pioneer improvements to back-office efficiency using generative AI on the Azure platform. By using this new technology, we will prepare our organisation for the future, improve our employee experience and support our growth ambitions globally.”
Making an impact
KPMG professionals will work together with Microsoft to help support businesses with their ESG agendas. Building on the success of the KPMG Circularity Tracker and an ESG and climate data management and analytics solution, both of which have Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability and Microsoft Azure at their core, joint teams will continue to help clients to unify their data sources, leverage the required inputs to help make real-time value-add decisions, and help them to deliver on their sustainability commitments.
In addition, to enhance the commercial prospects of the agreement, KPMG and Microsoft will continue to explore and participate in joint opportunities where they can work together to drive social and community impact worldwide. These currently include the UNESCO global education coalition and the KPMG 10×30 strategy to help economically empower 10-million underprivileged youths by 2030 — through education, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. The companies will also continue to work together to enhance the reliability of carbon accounting through the Carbon Call to which both KPMG and Microsoft were founding signatories.