KPMG announces new lease and tax credit solutions using IBM Watson artificial intelligence

KPMG International announced new cognitive solutions under their expanded strategic alliance with IBM. They offer businesses global offerings that apply IBM Watson artificial intelligence technologies with KPMG advisory and tax services.

With a focus on some of the most critical issues around digital disruption and transformation, KPMG member firms are bringing to market solutions, powered by IBM Watson, that help address business needs in the areas of workforce empowerment, customer centricity, regulatory compliance, income tax credit subsidies, among other issues which top the C-level agenda.

IBM Watson integrates machine learning, intelligent automation and other artificial intelligence technologies into a scalable system that can be accessed through a range of applications. The empowered solutions utilising IBM Watson are now available and include the KPMG Contract Abstraction Tool for IFRS 16 lease accounting compliance, and KPMG Research Tax Credit Services with Watson.

“Pervasive digitisation and technological disruption is changing the business landscape and the way humans work with technology,” said Farhan Syed, Partner and Digital Transformation Lead, KPMG Lower Gulf.

He added, “Our workforce offerings, such as the KPMG Contract Abstraction Tool are collaborative tools, designed to equip businesses with enhanced capabilities enabled by machine learning to help improve efficiency and decision making. We believe these collaborative solutions will provide employees with the capacity to learn new techniques, gain expertise knowledge to uncover new value and be more empowered in their roles.”

“IBM is making AI more accessible for organisations, embedding this technology in workflows and helping businesses gain insights from data to make better informed decisions,” said Beth Smith, General Manager, Watson Data & AI.

She said, “The introduction of these IBM Watson-enabled solutions with KPMG is key to bringing the benefits of AI to professionals across the business. With the help of Watson, these KPMG solutions are able to scale the expertise of the organisation.”

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The first offering, KPMG’s Contract Abstraction Tool aims to simplify the management and tracking of lease contracts for compliance with IFRS 16. The tool, developed by KPMG Lighthouse Center of Excellence for Data & Analytics and Intelligent Automation team in Germany and IBM Germany, automates the extraction of lease contract data to reduce preparation time and improve accuracy of lease accounting.

The second offering, KPMG Research Tax Credit Services with Watson examines relevant documents to help identify research projects that are eligible for credit subsidies and provide higher-quality documentation to help retain the credit subsidy upon a US Internal Revenue Audit IRS.

Companies that are eligible to claim the US income tax credit subsidy for increasing research activities are likely to witness benefits including reduced income taxes, enhanced cash flow, increased financial statement earnings and earnings per share.

Farhan Syed concluded: “Through our alliance with IBM, we are developing cognitive solutions with Watson that allow greater collaboration between humans and systems. Ensuring the human in the loop means that our professionals’ skills and experience will be augmented by systems to help deliver richer insights for our clients.”