KPMG Australia calls on IBM's Watson

KPMG Australia has announced plans to further increase its ‘cognitive capabilities’ and apply IBM Watson cognitive computing technology to a range of its professional services offerings in Australia.

The agreement signed today between the company and IBM Australia focuses on audit and assurance services and extends on existing agreements in the USA and UK.

In a statement, KPMG said it intends to introduce cognitive technology to these and other offerings in a move “designed to further enhance its focus on quality and insights”.

The company said that auditing is particularly suited to cognitive technology because of the increasing challenge to tackle immense volumes of structured and unstructured data related to a company’s financial and non-financial information.

“Already, data and analytics techniques are transforming audit by allowing analysis of much bigger populations of data than traditional sampling from which to draw conclusions,” said Duncan McLennan, KPMG’s national managing partner of audit in Australia

“Cognitive technology will allow us to build on these data and analytics advances. They will be a game changer in how the value of audit is perceived by the marketplace.”

KPMG said its use of IBM Watson technology will accelerate its team’s ability to analyse and act on core financial and operational data central to the health of organisations and the capital markets.

Watson integrates machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies into a scalable system that can be accessed through a range of applications.

“We believe we are nearing a tipping point where the use of automation tools, machine learning and data analytics will provide significant enhancements to the range of services and the depth of insights we can provide to clients,” said Ken Reid, KPMG Australia’s national managing partner for innovation.

The company recently launched a new practice, Solution 49x, to help clients harness the power of cognitive and artificial intelligence.

Image courtesy IBM