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KPMG is expanding its Google Cloud partnership to enhance AI services for clients.
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The Big Four accounting firm could drive $1 billion growth from its AI initiatives.
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This article is part of “CXO AI Playbook” — straight talk from business leaders on how they’re testing and using AI.
KPMG is a professional services company and one of the Big Four accounting firms in the US. It offers audit, tax, and advisory services to organizations in multiple sectors, including healthcare, finance, banking, and more. KPMG has more than 90 offices and 36,000 employees in the US. It also operates in more than 140 countries.
Situation analysis
Steve Chase, vice chair of artificial intelligence and digital innovation at KPMG, said part of the company’s business involves helping organizations across industries modernize their operations with technology, including their accounting systems and customer service.
Recently, Chase said more clients have sought assistance in incorporating artificial intelligence and cloud services into their digital transformation strategies.
To help, KPMG announced an expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud in November to advance GenAI, data analytics, and cybersecurity for its clients. The expansion includes a $100 million investment in KPMG’s Google Cloud practice.
Chase said the goal is to tailor AI services to specific customers, business models, and industries so that these organizations can use AI to improve their businesses, such as by speeding up data analysis.
The expanded Google Cloud partnership will initially focus on clients in the retail, healthcare, and financial services industries.
Key staff and partners
Chase said KPMG has been using AI for several years and has had a long-standing relationship with Google. In 2024, KPMG created the Google Cloud Center of Excellence to combine Google’s AI technologies with its own expertise to help clients use AI to boost their businesses. Its latest partnership expansion involves creating new AI tools.
KPMG also works with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and other tech companies on other AI-related projects.
AI in Action
KPMG has been using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search, an AI development platform for building and using GenAI, internally to connect and analyze its vast amount of data. Chase said the company is using this information to develop GenAI agents for clients, such as chatbots to answer questions or tools to gather and analyze data, to address various business challenges and expand capabilities.
For example, Chase said KPMG is using Vertex AI and Gemini, a Google Cloud AI-powered assistant, to help financial-services companies automate tasks that have been cumbersome for humans, including fraud detection and loan applications.
Chase added that KPMG also built an AI “store performance analyzer” for a large retailer. The tool allows the company to use automation to speed up and combine information from store locations, such as inventory levels, sales data, and details about the location, to determine how it performs compared to other stores.
“It’s able to actually do a detailed analysis in a fast way,” which used to be completed by a team of people and take longer, Chase said. “Now, the people involved are actually reviewing the results, as opposed to doing all the manual work of pulling all the data together.”
For healthcare clients, KPMG is using Google Cloud’s Healthcare API to develop AI tools that help doctors improve disease detection, treatment, and overall patient care.
Did it work, and how did leaders know?
Chase said that KPMG’s partnership with Google Cloud could drive $1 billion incremental growth for the firm. “We’ve been super pleased with how it’s going,” he said.
While he said the company couldn’t disclose specifics on how it’ll reach this figure, he said it will be a multi-year initiative that involves adding new clients and expanding the AI services it offers to existing companies.
KPMG continues to roll out new AI initiatives. In April, the company announced another expansion of its collaboration with Google Cloud on AI tools for the legal and banking industries. KPMG also announced that it’s joining the Google Cloud Security Partner Program to enhance cybersecurity for its clients.
Read the original article on Business Insider
