KPMG demonstrated how AI supports a service backbone

PAC recently had the opportunity to attend KPMG’s 2023 global analyst day at their Orlando Lakehouse facility in the US. The event provided an excellent in-person opportunity to engage with a range of KPMG leaders and clients. As is to be expected a significant element of the sessions focused on the ever-expanding role of artificial intelligence (AI), and of course in particular on generative AI (GenAI), regarding its impact on evolving and supporting ways of working within organisations, optimising interactions with partner companies, and engaging different customer types. It was evident that KPMG clearly understood the overall opportunity of AI, and specifically GenAI, as they discussed how they are supporting clients through one or more of the following types of AI-related engagements:

• Strategy.AI
• Data.AI
• Technology.AI
• Solutions.AI
• Transformation.AI
• Workforce.AI
• Trusted.AI

KPMG see these seven areas as currently; the most important types of AI engagements organisations need support for as part of the company's core offering. They are also actively embedding AI, and GenAI, into a broad range of transformation services from risk to customer to tax to finance transformation in the form of chat, co-pilot, API, and applet capabilities across the suite of tools they use to deliver engagement to clients. For PAC it is particularly reassuring to hear that KPMG clearly understand that AI is a business process change conversation and not purely a technology one. It was evident that KPMG is focused on how the role of AI supports a client's employees across a range of service management tasks underpinning business processes and workflows. This was emphasised further over the event as KPMG discussed their strategic alliance with ServiceNow. As a platform ServiceNow, from PAC’s perspective, provides means to support or directly deliver upon each of the seven types of AI-related engagements KPMG are focused on currently. This was evident at the event after PAC had a chance to talk with both KPMG and ServiceNow leaders relating to the two companies' strategic alliance. KPMG has years of depth and breadth of expertise working with clients on business transformation initiatives that give them knowledge, insights, and an understanding of organisational dynamics globally which is invaluable to helping grow their ServiceNow practice within their digital platforms function. This reaffirmed PAC’s first-hand experience of the ServiceNow landscape relating to the evolving demands of organisations. Whilst the entry point for many organisations has been through the IT function the value of ServiceNow is as a service management backbone underpinning a wide range of business processes and workflows outside of an IT function. This evolving demand by organisations is something that KPMG understands all too clearly and it was evident from discussions at the event that ServiceNow values their relationship with KPMG for their breadth and depth in business process change transformations. In recent years when PAC has spoken with organisations that have been using ServiceNow for a long time several have indicated that, as is all too often the case, their deployments of the platform have become overly complicated to manage. Not because of the ServiceNow product but rather how the organisation has deeply configured and adapted it. Often making ongoing use of it complex and harder to adopt newer capabilities of the ServiceNow platform. Organisations can put themselves in a situation where their tailoring of a product makes the long-term operation of it more costly and complicated. KPMG leadership have recognised this and discussed with PAC that they are working with clients on ‘back-to-baseline’ transformations to allow organisations to drive new value from ServiceNow by reducing operational complexity and enabling clients to take advantage of new platform capabilities including AI by being closer to an ‘out of the box’ style deployment. PAC is very encouraged to hear that clients recognise the need for this and that KPMG is providing transformation engagements that further leverage the value of ServiceNow as a business process transformation opportunity, especially with the broad onset of AI across business processes and workflows. Overall PAC found the event valuable in providing an insight into how KPMG is engaging with their clients and the value their breadth and depth of expertise provides to address the challenges faced by organisations. It is clear that KPMG understands the transformation complexities organisations face, the roles AI can provide in supporting an organisation, and the key role of strategic alliances with companies like ServiceNow. This combined approach is a valuable differentiator for organisations when considering engaging with the likes of KPMG.