KPMG has entered into a five-year agreement with Microsoft to accelerate digital transformation for KPMG member firms and mutual clients.
The US$5 billion digital strategy investment will focus on technology, people and innovation, and will primarily leverage the Microsoft 365 suite of cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools, including Microsoft Teams.
In addition, KPMG will also utilize Microsoft Azure and Azure AI as the backbone for a new common, global cloud-based platform.
Through a jointly funded incubator, KPMG and Microsoft are co-developing a portfolio of solutions and managed services in the areas of cloud business transformation, intelligent business applications and smart workplace solutions.
In one such joint initiative, KPMG in the U.S. and Microsoft are working together to bring the power of Azure to the healthcare and life sciences industries
The digital strategy will help KPMG strengthen its digital offerings, driven by the innovations in cloud-based audit capabilities, tax solutions and risk management, the company said.
The innovations will address the challenges arising from the evolving market forces like data protection laws, currency fluctuations and geopolitical tensions.
Clients will benefit from globally consistent and continuous service delivery that enables greater speed of deployment while adhering to industry-leading compliance and security standards, KPMG said.
“Together with KPMG, we’re accelerating digital transformation across industries by bringing the latest advances in cloud, AI and security to highly regulated workloads in tax, audit and advisory,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.
“KPMG’s deep industry and process expertise, combined with the power of our trusted cloud — spanning Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 — will bring the best of both organizations together to help customers around the world become more agile in an increasingly complex business environment,” Nadella added.
Launched in 2017, KPMG Clara is a smart audit platform based on Microsoft Azure. KPMG Clara will integrate with Microsoft Teams, providing a platform for audit professionals to centrally manage and securely share audit files, track audit-related activities, and communicate using chat, voice and video meetings. This helps simplify the auditors’ workflow, enabling them to stay in sync throughout the entire process and drive continuous communication with the client.
To empower workforce, KPMG will create a set of cloud-based capabilities ranging from hosting infrastructure based on Microsoft Azure to more than 50 advanced solutions, such as AI, cyber and robotic process automation (RPA).
KPMG will further empower its global workforce of over 207,000 employees across 153 countries with Microsoft 365, including Teams, to better meet the needs of clients through increased collaboration, improved productivity and data-driven insights.
In addition, more than 30,000 KPMG professionals across 17 member firms have been equipped with Dynamics 365, a suite of powerful customer relationship applications.
Bill Thomas, Global chairman, KPMG International, said, “By harnessing Microsoft’s intelligent and trusted cloud, we aim to help clients be at the forefront of change and better prepared for a digital-first future.”
