KPMG deploys Microsoft OpenAI capabilities across its internal platforms

 Another example of AI integration

KPMG LLP and Microsoft Establish Industry-Leading Initiative to Scale Generative AI Across Audit, Tax and Advisory

Companies co-invest to deliver generative AI solutions for Audit, Tax and Advisory U.S. clients

KPMG deploys Microsoft OpenAI capabilities across its internal platforms

Collaboration delivers responsible, secure approach to deploying AI at scale

NEW YORK, May 11, 2023 – KPMG LLP, the U.S. audit, tax, and advisory firm, and Microsoft are establishing an AI Innovation Initiative, focused on co-developing solutions for clients across industries and embedding Azure OpenAI Service across nearly all dimensions of KPMG’s U.S. business. The initiative will be led by Cherie Gartner, KPMG’s Global Lead Partner for Microsoft. 

“Embracing the capabilities of generative AI will shape business solutions and create new opportunities for growth and success at our firm, in our industry and for our clients,” said Carl Carande, Vice Chair – Advisory for KPMG U.S. and Global Head of Advisory. “Over the past decade, Microsoft and KPMG have worked together to put ethics and security at the center of everything we do. The collective ingenuity of the team dedicated to our AI Innovation Initiative will allow us to innovate at a rapid pace, maintain the trust of our stakeholders, and deliver transformational value for our clients.”

Many KPMG U.S. partners and employees can already apply Microsoft’s generative AI capabilities against KPMG proprietary data within the firm’s secure cloud platform built on Microsoft Azure, and the firm will embed generative AI capabilities across its client delivery models. This collaboration with Microsoft and use of Azure OpenAI Service allows KPMG to layer Microsoft’s state-of-the-art machine learning models, natural language processing capabilities and enhanced analytics onto firm data sets and solutions within its secure cloud environment, protecting client and firm data.

“KPMG is known for delivering exceptional audit, tax, and advisory services to its clients, and we are thrilled to expand our collaboration with generative AI technologies to accelerate growth and innovation across KPMG and for its clients,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “Through this initiative, we will work with KPMG to harness the power of Microsoft Azure, Azure OpenAI, and Microsoft 365 Copilot to deliver AI-empowered solutions within our trusted cloud environment. ... ' 

Is AI Moving Too Fast for Retail?

Not well enough, not fast enough.     Unless we want China to eat our lunch.

Is AI adoption moving too fast?  by Tom Ryan in Retailwire  with further expert comment.

According to KPMG’s “Thriving in an AI World” study, 53 percent of business leaders in retail said COVID-19 increased their pace of AI adoption, yet 49 percent believe adoption is moving faster than it should in their industry.

The broader survey of 950 business and/or IT decision makers found similar sentiments for other industries, including industrial manufacturing, 55 percent; and tech, 49 percent. The concerns were traced to debates surrounding the ethics, governance and regulation of AI.

Among retail respondents, 78 percent said it is difficult to stay on top of the constantly evolving AI landscape — a sentiment higher than leaders in other categories. Cybersecurity breaches (47 percent) and possible AI bias (45 percent) were found to be the top two greatest potential risks of AI adoption. Eighty-seven percent believe the government has a role to play in regulating AI technology.

Matt Kramer, national consumer and retail sector leader at KPMG, said in a statement, “The concern about the speed of adoption raises a caution flag for retailers, reminding them to ensure proper process and controls along with change management and effective training are put in motion to address the AI adoption risks.”   ..."

Cognitive Automation

Augmentation is the near term approach here, but I expect augmentation to become more automated over time.    Checking, validation and  Numbers presented here are interesting, dependent much on the specific kind of tasks that are involved, even within an industry.  The tasks may then be changed to better fit with the augmentation.

Cognitive Automation is the Immediate Future of Team Management    By Srini Murali / 04 Nov 2019 / AI / Productivity / Work in ReadwriteWeb

Cognitive automation
   
For all the anticipation of increased automation at work, commentators have spent a lot of energy trying to convince people it can only handle easy, repetitive processes. It’s time to finally confront the truth: Per the McKinsey Global Institute, today’s robots can handle up to a quarter of the average CEO’s job and 35% of management tasks.

While robotic process automation refers to using robots to speed up concrete processes, cognitive automation takes a more advanced version of the same underlying tool set and applies it to more conceptual, judgment-based tasks — what we now call “knowledge work.”

Using specific AI techniques that approximate the way our brains work, cognitive automation helps us make better decisions, complete tasks faster, and meet goals more easily — and it’s swiftly gaining traction. 

KPMG predicts spending on intelligent automation will hit $232 billion by 2025, up from $12.4 billion in 2018.

Of course, we’re a long way off from managerial jobs being fully automated, but these findings indicate that automation can — and should — play a bigger role in how we lead the 21st-century workforce.

Where Cognitive Automation Fits Into the Workforce

At Exela Technologies, our managers wouldn’t be able to support our global workforce of more than 22,000 employees without the help of cognitive automation. Among other things, this technology enables us to obtain information from scattered sources, conduct deep analysis, and collaborate more easily.

We’re not the only ones, either. Deloitte found that increased reliance on cognitive automation in the insurance industry improved firms’ recruitment and development processes, removing much of the heavy-lifting that human managers once performed.

Business leadership has a lot to gain from cognitive automation. Here are some ways managers can take advantage of it.

1. Capture and dissect data.
Intelligent systems can gather more data than manual processes, then analyze that data more effectively to uncover trends, detect anomalies, and produce predictive models.

One sector where we see this technology emerging rapidly is healthcare. AI technology can now compare a patient’s medical history with established guidelines for common illnesses to help identify gaps in care and specific opportunities for improved treatment. When done by a human, this analysis could take hours. When done by a machine, it takes seconds.

Attended cognitive automation — where humans work alongside automated systems — enables great advances in accuracy and productivity.

Another area in the healthcare ecosystem where we see cognitive automation adding significant value is clinical documentation improvement and the prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse. On the provider side, intelligent automated data processing systems are capable of reviewing large volumes of healthcare records to identify potential information gaps and coding errors so providers are more likely to be paid in full and on time. On the payer side, cognitive automation can help flag anomalous transactions to detect potential fraud, waste, and abuse to limit overpayment.

At Exela, we build and deploy systems such as these to perform services for our healthcare industry partners. We also created similar tools that assist with other areas of our business. As part of the sales lead generation process in our legal arm, for instance.   .... " 

We monitor federal and state court activity for business opportunities, such as large class-action settlements. Given that there are tens of thousands of daily updates to case files, it’s nearly impossible for our employees to efficiently differentiate between the “good” and “bad” leads.

To address this, we developed an AI system that uses machine learning based on exposure to an initial sample set and iterative tuning using continuous feedback. The system detects “trigger events” from thousands of regular updates.

These trigger events are then classified, (e.g., complaint, dismissal, etc.), and the content summarized, it alerts stakeholders and integrates with our existing CRM systems to automatically log the newly acquired data. ... "

Drug Supply Chain Blockchain Pilot

Useful example of supply chain blockchain pilot with major supporters. More details at the link.

IBM, KPMG, Merck, Walmart team up for drug supply chain blockchain pilot   By Ron Miller @ron_miller  in TechCrunch

IBM announced its latest blockchain initiative today. This one is in partnership with KPMG, Merk and Walmart to build a drug supply chain blockchain pilot.

These four companies are coming together to help come up with a solution to track certain drugs as they move through a supply chain. IBM  is acting as the technology partner, KPMG brings a deep understanding of the compliance issues, Merk is of course a drug company and Walmart would be a drug distributor through its pharmacies and care clinics.

The idea is to give each drug package a unique identifier that you can track through the supply chain from manufacturer to pharmacy to consumer. Seems simple enough, but the fact is that companies are loathe to share any data with one another. The blockchain would provide an irrefutable record of each transaction as the drug moved along the supply chain, giving authorities and participants an easy audit trail.

The pilot is part of a set of programs being conducted by various stakeholders at the request of the FDA. The end goal is to find solutions to help comply with the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act. According to the FDA Pilot Program website, “FDA’s DSCSA Pilot Project Program is intended to assist drug supply chain stakeholders, including FDA, in developing the electronic, interoperable system that will identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed within the United States.”  .... " 

Companies Take Piecemeal Approach to Automation Tech

Fairly obvious.   Has been the case with every emerging tech since computing emerged.  We saw it with early analytics.   You test at small scales.  To understand results versus goal, consequences known and unintended.  And deployment costs.  Every test also includes inserting results into existing process context, which takes time and requires result measurements.    Stats here are useful.

Companies Take a Piecemeal Approach to Automation Tech 
The Wall Street Journal   By Angus Loten

KPMG surveyed about 600 C-suite executives to determine how companies are approaching the deployment of automation technologies. About 30% of respondents said their companies have apportioned $50 million or more into smart automation projects, and more than 50% have already spent at least $10 million. Such projects include diverse combinations of robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing, and analytics; thus far, funding is going into corporate finance and accounting functions, followed by group benefits strategies, compliance, and industry-specific core operations. More than 50% of respondents listed improving or streamlining customer services and front-office effectiveness as their primary goal. Many companies have adopted a piecemeal strategy to automation, due to uncertainty about how much investment will be needed to make deployments worthwhile, as well as a dearth of "organizational clarity and accountability."  ... '

KPMG on Intelligent Automation

Good thoughts here,  note mention of RPA, specific aspects of operations.  You should always learn much about your operational processes from any such effort.  Intelligent Automation.  Also the close involvement of decision makers at a level appropriate to the importance of the effort and likely changed involved.  Including C-Level.

 Ready, Set, Fail?: Avoiding setbacks in the intelligent automation race

New study reveals most organizations’ low readiness to deploy artificial intelligence technologies
Many traditional businesses with legacy approaches risk falling behind digital-first companies if they stay with the status quo. It takes a comprehensive transformation of business and operating models to compete in their own market at the level at which a Tesla or Amazon do in theirs.

Cliff Justice, KPMG Partner, Innovation & Enterprise Solutions, and leader of Cognitive Automation initiatives

Executives have high expectations for the impact of intelligent automation, but they're not yet ready to implement it from the top down and at scale. They'll struggle to get adequate ROI until they recognize two critical issues: 1) intelligent automation investment decisions need to be C-level strategy imperatives, 2) intelligent automation is about business and operating model transformation not simply technology deployment.

It's not clear whether most companies understand that intelligent automation is about changing business processes, and then restructuring the organization around those new processes now driven by technologies that didn't exist before. This means shifting the business and operating model from one of people supported by technology to one of technology supported by people. It's a digital-first operating model.                     

KPMG recently undertook a study to understand the reasons for and implications of deploying IA and what it takes to scale. KPMG professionals interviewed executives from numerous industries and geographies worldwide about their experiences with deployment and their perspectives on the future. Most emphasized that IA is poised to digitally transform their companies and industries and profoundly impact their employees' roles.                                                                           

At the same time, executives highlighted several challenges. In addition to grappling with the extraordinary pace of change, they are faced with understanding and choosing among hundreds of technology options, the need for effective data and analytics, prioritizing automation focus, and defining their future workforce. KPMG research considered three main areas of intelligent automation -- basic or robotic process automation (RPA), enhanced automation and cognitive automation.

These results underscore the need to not only act quickly but to plan deployments strategically with scale in mind. Most companies' executives acknowledged they are still experimenting only with RPA, applied to legacy applications and processes. With such a narrow focus and a bottom-up approach, they have not positioned themselves to transform their business and operating models so they can become and remain competitive with digital-first companies.     .... "

Intelligent Automation on Pace for Explosive Growth

Links of common processes to automation.   Good place to start before you decide to make all your systems 'intelligent'.    Note in particular coverage of RPA:  Robotic Process Automation.

Intelligent Automation on Pace for Explosive Growth, but Organizational Challenges Prevalent  by Kent Weare in InfoQ

In a recent KPMG study, the professional services organization published a report called Ready, Set, Fail?: Avoiding setbacks in the intelligent automation race which projects rapid growth of the intelligent automation (IA) domain. The report suggests that overall spend will reach $232 billion by 2025 compared to $12.4 billion which is spent today. But, this expected growth comes with many challenges, including tool maturity, skilled labor, organizational change management, governance and a lack of clarity involving return on investment.

Intelligent automation is an emerging set of new technology tools that mimic the actions a user would ordinarily perform to complete a task. Federico Berruti, a partner at McKinsey & Company, defines intelligent automation as: 

A suite of business-process improvements and next-generation tools that assists the knowledge worker by removing repetitive, replicable, and routine tasks. And it can radically improve customer journeys by simplifying interactions and speeding up processes.   ... "

Integrated Work System

A conversation with former enterprise colleagues led me to this piece on reliability innovation I had a small part in.    See the tag links to Los Alamos Labs, which was also involved.  Here to pass this on to my readers for reference, worth examining.

Pointer to some of the above work in R&D Magazine.
This was originally offered for use by KPMG Consulting. in 2005.

EY and P&G Alliance  and see also @EY_Alliances
What will operational excellence look like in your organization’s future?

Despite investments in lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and total productivity maintenance, companies are struggling to achieve a breakthrough in manufacturing productivity. EY and P&G have combined their manufacturing excellence capabilities to bring a significantly different approach to attaining higher levels of manufacturing performance.

P&G’s Integrated Work System (IWS) is a proprietary way of improving manufacturing reliability, reducing costs and elevating productivity. IWS is a disruptive way of working predicated on two primary principles: the drive to zero losses and 100 percent employee ownership. The EY and P&G alliance combines the Integrated Work System with the global EY manufacturing performance improvement experience and P&G certified consultants to help clients improve performance via sustainable change and transformation.  ..... 

Newsroom
  
Procter & Gamble (P&G) has recognized EY as one of twelve top performing companies to receive its highest honor of being named Excellence Award winners and External Business Partner of the Year at the 2016 P&G External Business Partner of the Year Recognition Dinner, which recognizes exemplary partner collaboration.

Among P&G’s more than 50,000 suppliers and agencies, EY was the only professional services organization to receive the award. EY has now received the P&G Excellence Award six times and the Partner of the Year award three times.

Kristina Rogers, EY Global Consumer Products and Retail Leader, says:

“We are thrilled to be recognized by P&G for EY’s commitment to collaboration. With the industry facing unprecedented disruption, business innovation is critical to meet changing consumer wants and needs and to sustaining profitable growth. We are proud to be a key member of the P&G innovation ecosystem, challenging thinking and helping to deliver on its consumer promise.”

David Taylor, P&G President and CEO, presented the award to EY for engendering strong trust and collaboration through agility and quality advisory services.

Taylor says: “Supplier partners have a key role to play in our ability to deliver. The more integrated and connected P&G and our supplier partners are, the better able we are to be more innovative and productive in meeting consumers’ needs.”   .... "

AI and Insurance

Some of our earliest work in advanced analytics and AI work dealt closely with risk and thus with elements of insurance.   And then talking to the insurance industry, so this DSC is interesting,  Insurance and risk is all about detecting and using complex patterns.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Disrupts the Traditional Insurance Industry    Posted by Deena Zaidi  in DSC

relying on traditional virtual assistants. But with the advent of improved analytics, insurance technology startups (better known as Insurtech)are paving way for smarter and more innovative platforms.

With strong data analytics, Insurtech startups seem to have no lack of funding. According to a report by KPMG, since 2015 the interest in Insurtech has increased dramatically. The report shows that Insurtech startups attracted more than $1.7 billion worldwide in 2016.   .....  "

And a further look by regional and country participation.

GE Predix Cloud Predicts Machine Failures

We worked on a similar project in collaboration with Los Alamos Labs. In particular to do reliability and failure prediction for systems that were composed of elements that only rarely failed.   So called 'Black Swans'.    This was eventually licensed out via a third party.  Examining the difference between the ideas.   Will report back here with more information.  A related project looked at out of stock condition on a store shelf as a failure that could be predicted by multiple sensory inputs.

Pointer to some of the above work in R&D Magazine.
This was eventually offered for use by KPMG Consulting. in 2005.

In FastCompany:
GE wants to give industrial machines their own social network with Predix Cloud ... GE is selling a new service that promises to predict when a machine will break down, so technicians can preemptively fix it. .... "

CPG Needs Consumer Trust

In Supermarket News

CPG execs: Consumer trust is key industry value, challenge
Building consumer trust is a core value for more than 60% of business leaders in the global consumer packaged goods market, and almost a third expect the issue to be a major challenge in the next one or two years, according to a new survey by KPMG International and the Consumer Goods Forum. CPG companies should "invest in fully understanding their customers and their expectations in key areas such as sustainability, health and wellness and food safety," CGF Managing Director Peter Freedman said  ... " 

CGT Execs Admit Lack of Digital Knowledge

Based on a survey in CGT .  Not universally, but I would generally agree.  In particularly regarding digital innovation.

" ... The Consumer Goods Forum and KPMG International released the findings of their annual Global Top of Mind Survey, which polled nearly 500 C-suite and senior executives globally. Findings reveal how important the digital revolution will be over the next 12 months to consumer goods and retail companies – impacting everything from business growth and supply chain management to food safety, sustainability, and data security and privacy.

“This year’s research clearly shows how important digital strategy is to the modern consumer goods industry, as new technologies and new entrants to the market disrupt traditional consumption," says Peter Freedman, managing director of The Consumer Goods Forum. "Getting this strategy right and acquiring new digital skills will allow businesses to reach out to consumers in new ways, drive growth and enhance other important elements of their businesses; not least when it comes to ensuring a transparent and collaborative end-to-end value chain.” ... ' 

Data Analytics Ranked High in C-Suite

In Research Mag:     " ... 56% of consumer goods and retail business leaders cite data analytics as being important to their firm’s strategy, according to a recent survey.

This makes it the highest-ranked strategic area in the survey. The annual Global Top of Mind survey, run by Oxford Economics on behalf of The Consumer Goods Forum and KPMG International, gathered the views of 469 C-Suite and senior executives across 32 countries.   ... " 

Managing Customer Experience

An impressive writeup about how companies like McDonald's are attempting to manage customer experience.  Can it really be optimized, as they say, when people are involved?

" ... McDonald's customer experience management (CEM) is a good example of what companies can strive to achieve. SAS Customer Intelligence expert John Bala says McDonald's special sauce, so to speak, is that the customer experience is always at the center of its business, and the company keeps it there using an analytically-driven optimization process.... " 

" ... "Preference research, consisting of both qualitative and quantitative studies, can help organizations gain insights on customer shopping, pricing, product usage, and service support preferences," KPMG suggests.
"This critical first step is not about creating a new segmentation scheme." Instead, the focus needs to be on a number of of customer-centric variables, such as gaining insights regarding (1) how prospects hear about new products; (2) the factors that influence where they shop and for what; (3) onboarding needs and expectations when prospects turn into customers; (4) how customers and prospects like to get help when issues arise; and (5) the perceived value at specific price points, and how these relate to market trends and competitive offerings ... "