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KPMG this week nabbed a Supplier of the Year Award from Microsoft, a seemingly mundane development that contains several valuable insights into the two corporate giants’ collaboration. 

KPMG is a member of the Big Four, an industry term for the accounting sector’s four largest firms. In its announcement of the award win, the KPMG revealed several new details about its work with Microsoft, a disclosure that is notable for two reasons. The first is that it increases the marketing value of one of KPMG’s most important customer case studies by giving a more in-depth view of the projects it has completed for Microsoft. The other, more significant reason is that the announcement sheds new light on how the world’s top professional services firms work with their most important clients.

KPMG disclosed that it has counted Microsoft as a customer for about two decades. During that time period, its professionals collaborated with the tech giant on projects across areas such as data analytics, AI, cloud computing and sustainability. It’s notable Microsoft sought help from an external consulting partner given that, as one of the world’s largest tech firms, it has extensive experience in all four of those areas.

More notably, KPMG also revealed it has worked with Microsoft to develop a “sustainability co-pilot” to track supplier Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. The term “co-pilot” is typically used by Microsoft to describe its AI chatbot products. In other words, KPMG worked with the software giant to build a new machine learning service.

Microsoft is the first customer of the suitability co-pilot. Down the line, it plans to make the co-pilot available to customers through its Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, which further underscores the importance of its partnership with KPMG. 

Microsoft CFO Amy Hood commented  in a prepared statement that “KPMG has put AI and innovation at the forefront and has reshaped its professional services offerings to uplevel employee experience and accelerate innovation. Together, we are creating more value and achieving more together as a result.”

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