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KPMG US has teamed up with Microsoft, a long-time partner of the Big Four firm, to develop a new AI productivity tool for its employees.

The collaboration underscores the growing importance of AI for the world’s top accounting firms. There is much consulting revenue to be generated from machine learning projects, but competition is tough. Adopting cutting-edge AI products internally is one of the best ways a consultancy can differentiate itself in such a crowded market. If KPMG US can show corporate clients that AI is making its employees more productive, those clients will become more likely to trust it with their machine learning projects.

The firm’s collaboration with Microsoft produced a generative AI tool called Advisory Content Chat. The tool is meant to make internal information easily accessible for KPMG US employees. The Big Four firm has many internal business applications and figuring out which one holds the specific client record a staffer needs for a project can be a time drain. Advisory Content Chat uses AI to automatically retrieve records for employees.

The tool is based on Azure AI Search, a sort of ready-to-use cloud search engine that Microsoft offers through its IaaS platform. This search engine can plug into a firm’s internal applications and pull relevant records in response to user queries.

“Building ‘Advisory Content Chat’ with Azure AI Search allows us to deliver a scalable, high quality knowledge management system for our professionals, and offers a secure, efficient RAG solution for our clients,” said KPMG US CTO Matt Bishop.

KPMG US is providing Advisory Content Chat as part of an existing AI productivity tool it provides for employees. According to the firm, that tool is based on OpenAI large language models hosted on Microsoft infrastructure.

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