New innovations built on Microsoft cloud and
AI technologies help clients achieve greater accuracy and
decision-making capabilities, increased productivity, and cost
efficiencies.
AMSTELVEEN, Netherlands and
REDMOND, WA, Dec. 5, 2019 /CNW/ - KPMG and Microsoft Corp. are
strengthening their global relationship through a five-year
agreement to accelerate digital transformation for KPMG member
firms and mutual clients. As part of its announcement to
significantly invest in technology, people and innovation, KPMG is
modernizing its workplace using the Microsoft 365 suite of
cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools, including
Microsoft Teams. KPMG is also utilizing Microsoft Azure and Azure
AI as the backbone for a new common, global cloud-based platform.
The platform will strengthen KPMG's range of digital offerings with
new innovations in cloud-based audit capabilities, tax solutions
and risk management. Clients in all sectors, including those in
highly regulated industries, benefit from globally consistent and
continuous service delivery that enables greater speed of
deployment while adhering to industry-leading compliance and
security standards.
"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."
New business-critical solutions
As organizations expand to new geographies, develop new products
and recruit new talent, processes can become increasingly complex
and harder to scale. Market forces, such as evolving data
protection laws, currency fluctuations and geopolitical tensions,
increase the complexity and require a greater responsiveness for
systems and tools.
The strong portfolio of KPMG and Microsoft alliance offerings
can help address these challenges more quickly by building
applications on demand, automating manual processes, and
continuously analyzing information to minimize the risk of errors
and increase the ability to make smart decisions.
"Our alliance with Microsoft has become a critical component in
helping us deliver industry-leading solutions and services to
clients. Our significant multiyear investment continues to empower
our people to work more efficiently and collaboratively while
maximizing the power of a workforce that blends people and
technology," said Bill Thomas,
Global Chairman, KPMG International. "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."
Combining industry expertise with advanced
technology
Through a jointly funded incubator, KPMG and Microsoft are
co-developing a robust portfolio of solutions and managed services
in the areas of cloud business transformation, intelligent business
applications and smart workplace solutions.
For example, KPMG in the U.S. and Microsoft are working together
to bring the power of Azure to the healthcare and life sciences
industries. This collaboration is enabling organizations within
this highly regulated sector to maximize their clinical,
operational and financial performance with an easily scalable
solution that helps improve deployment speed, accelerate ROI and
increase data-driven insights.
In addition, KPMG in the
Netherlands has developed risk management, compliance and
internal audit solutions that leverage discovery tools to enable
the digitization of risk and compliance processes across domains
such as finance, legal and IT. Designed by KPMG and built on
Microsoft Azure, the solutions provide seamless and cost-efficient
policy and controls automation, putting smart analytics directly in
the hands of business and IT operators so they can make timely,
corrective actions when deviations occur.
Smart audit platform
KPMG, with the launch of its smart audit platform KPMG Clara in
2017, became the first of the Big Four to take its audit workflow
to the cloud. Based on Microsoft Azure, KPMG Clara is an automated,
agile, intelligent and scalable platform that allows KPMG
professionals to work smarter, bringing powerful data and analytics
capabilities into one interface, while allowing clients to interact
on a real-time basis with the audit process.
By enriching the audit mandate with AI, KPMG enables its
professionals to make decisions based on real-time data. This
further reinforces KPMG's commitment to maintaining and enhancing
audit quality and building a future where technology continually
enriches the audit through the introduction of new digital
advancements.
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.
Empowering workforce transformation
Through its common, global cloud platform, 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.
About KPMG International
KPMG is a global network of professional services firms
providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. We operate in 153
countries and territories and have 207,000 people working in member
firms around the world. The independent member firms of the KPMG
network are affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG
International"), a Swiss entity. Each KPMG firm is a legally
distinct and separate entity and describes itself as
such.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an
intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.
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SOURCE KPMG International