When the Head of Enterprise at KPMG, Lain Moffatt, was asked about its reasons for coming up with a cloud-based service, indicated that this was in part responding to the likelihood of large tech companies making an entrance in the accountancy market and now using ‘big data’ to grab a market share from the functionary firms, which includes the Big Four.
In his response, he further reported that when KPMG talked about their mid-market business, it considered their competition. It was obvious that they had had firms like EY and PwC in mind but they were keen to consider if at all these were actually their competition.
Are the big accountancy firms going to be KPMG’s competition in the next half-decade? Or is it just Amazon, Google or somebody else entirely?
Currently, their profession is all about data. This means that the more data you have in your possession, the more powerful you are. You can easily create more efficient KPIs, more accurate insights and better benchmarking when using big data. That is the trajectory of the future.
Mr. Moffat also mentioned their deal with McLaren in November of last year, further highlighting KPMG’s focus on the acquisition of data and analysis. He pointed out that their deal was just about racing cars, but more about exploiting their incredible data analytical capability.
He further argued that there are fundamental changes in the markets where KPMG is operating because start-ups are becoming less interested in the accepted brands and shifting their attention to the data quality supplied by their services firms. He also noted that Google as a data organisation, sells data. He believes that the only thing that is stopping Google from becoming a provider of advice basing it on data analysis is that it doesn’t currently have a trusted or recognised brand in their area of expertise.
However, he believes that in half a decade things might change because you don’t care about the company you deal with but what the firm can do for you.
