KPMG’s AI boss explains how you can use AI for your business

• David Rowlands, Head of AI at KPMG, is helping the company transform into an AI future.
• He spoke to BI about the obstacles companies face when trying to do the same.
• Don’t focus on single use cases for AI and sort your data, he advised.

KPMG, one of the Big Four consulting firms, has integrated AI into all of its operations and is advising global companies on how they can do the same.

All employees in the three company areas – accounting, tax and consulting – can use AI. Everyone has access to some form of GPT and about a fifth of the global workforce has copilot licenses, David Rowlands, KPMG’s global head of AI, told Business Insider.

“Whatever they’ve already done, they can do it faster now,” he said in an interview.

But the vast majority of companies are still on the rollout journey and clients coming to KPMG are still figuring out how to get it up and running and get the data, Rowlands said.

Customers’ concerns about AI have changed over time: first, they were ethics, hallucinations and trust; The last four to five months have been about realizing the business case and enabling the workforce to take it on. And next is the question of data and how organizations differentiate and protect themselves through their data.

BI spoke with Rowlands about KPMG’s own journey to adoption and how the firm advises companies on deepening their use of AI.

One of the biggest hurdles companies have to overcome is focusing on single-use cases for AI systems.

Many companies employ an AI agent that sits over a curated database and selects data to provide quick recommendations to a human operator, he explained. But systems must be reusable.

“You need to think about embedding AI into your operating model,” he said. “At KPMG, we care about moving people beyond use cases, because a single technology, a single use case, has not been a particularly effective business case.”

Clarity about the business case is also the best way to see a return on investment, he added.

The question of return on investment is a hot topic among CEOs as billions of dollars continue to flow into AI infrastructure. Some economists and analysts have warned that money is being wasted on hype, while others say the rate of improvement is slowing and AI is reaching its limits.

KPMG is buying into the hype. In 2023, the company announced it would invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence and cloud services over the next five years in collaboration with Microsoft, and expected the strategy to generate more than $12 billion in revenue over that period. would generate dollars.

In November, the company announced a $100 million investment in Google Cloud, which it said could lead to $1 billion in growth.

Rowlands said it’s difficult to get clients to see the broader impact when they can’t see immediate ROI. However, he said the benefits come from improvements in growth, quality and agility: “We are already seeing a copilot system save around 40 minutes per week.”

In mid-2024, some of the KPMG surveys were “ambivalent” about returns, but he said they were now getting “some anecdotal evidence of ROI.” This time next year, COOs and CFOs will be positive about the returns they are generating, Rowlands added.

Data will differentiate your business

Handling data is another obstacle for customers on their AI journey, Rowlands said.

“Organizations will increasingly differentiate themselves by the data they own,” he said. This requires you to be more mindful of where your data is, who owns it, where it is generated, and how you keep it up to date.

Data will only become more integral as we enter the next stage of AI development, Rowlands added. He expects that within the next 12 months, multi-agent models – a group of specialized AI agents coordinating to solve a common goal – will quickly become a reality.

“This is where AI will have a big impact on solving some of the biggest problems, such as decarbonization,” he said.

Preparing the workforce for these changes is part of responsible AI implementation, Rowlands said.

KPMG conducted training on “24 Hour AI” in January this year. The key message was that everyone should know how to use AI to solve their problems and that they should be trustworthy and innovative when using it in front of customers. The company continues to train its employees in the areas of data maintenance, data maintenance and quick craftsmanship.

Rowlands doesn’t deny that AI will have a “profound transformative effect” on the professional services industry. He said there will be a rotation of jobs, as there is with the Internet, but he doesn’t think that will diminish the purpose of the consultants.

“We don’t really think about replacing jobs. It’s more about empowering individuals and roles. And those who use AI well are more successful than those who don’t.”

“Our consultants will, as they always have, increasingly strive to ensure our clients get valuable results from our work.”