Quick Briefing

  • KPMG announced an expansion of its investment in Salesforce's "Agentforce" platform, providing its global sales professionals with access to agentic AI tools. The Big Four accounting firm disclosed this in a recent announcement.
  • The company announced its partnership with Salesforce last week, following its firm-wide adoption of Gemini Enterprise—Google Cloud's agentic AI platform.
  • "We are leveraging these investments to understand this rapidly changing market and to bring actionable, real-world insights back to our clients," said Todd Lohr, KPMG's U.S. National Leader of Customer & Markets, in an interview.

In-Depth Insights

KPMG and its competitors are engaged in a technology investment race that is heating up as AI advances rapidly.

In August, a Salesforce survey revealed that only 4% of chief financial officers (CFOs) have adopted a conservative AI strategy, down from 70% in 2020.

"This rapid shift underscores a broad consensus among finance leaders: AI is no longer just an emerging technology but a critical tool for enhancing efficiency, optimizing operations, and, crucially, driving long-term growth," the survey summary stated.

Respondents said they particularly expect AI agents to increase company revenue by nearly 20%. On average, CFOs reported allocating 25% of their current total AI budget to agents.

Despite AI's vast potential, it is also increasingly becoming a point of contention.

In 2023, a New York federal judge sanctioned two lawyers for submitting legal briefs that included fictitious case citations generated by ChatGPT.

More recently, this month reports emerged that KPMG's competitor Deloitte Australia had to refund part of its fees to the Australian government because a document it delivered was riddled with AI-generated errors.

"Every technology that changes how we live and work brings both promise and risk," Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said in a speech last week. "AI is no exception. Fraud, misinformation, bias, and cybersecurity threats are already evident... The task for policymakers is to manage these risks without slowing the innovation that drives growth."

For its part, KPMG views AI as a game-changer impacting its entire business, Lohr said.

"I think many organizations view AI as an efficiency tool," he said. "It is that, but we see this more as a business model disruption across the entire organization."

KPMG's Agentforce deployment will enable its teams to "automate research, streamline meeting preparation, and summarize key insights to strengthen critical discussions at every touchpoint of client relationships," the company said in last week's press release.

"KPMG has rigorously reviewed Agentforce against its 'Trusted AI Framework'—as it does for all AI deployments—enabling the firm and its clients to adopt the technology with confidence," the release stated.

According to Lohr, KPMG's adoption of Agentforce globally is still in its "early stages." While current efforts focus on KPMG's sales activities, this could expand in scope over time, he said.

"I know Salesforce's strategy is not just to be a CRM (customer relationship management) platform, but truly an enterprise platform—connecting the front office, middle office, and back office," he said.

On the Google Cloud side, KPMG is "exploring a wide range of enterprise use cases across its functions," Lohr said.

The firm is leveraging Gemini Enterprise to "pioneer AI agents for clients and deliver reusable use cases in finance, procurement, and infrastructure," according to the October 9 announcement. Since late September, employees have created nearly 700 "no-code AI agents," the company said.

Meanwhile, KPMG's competitor PwC is driving adoption of Oracle's Fusion cloud enterprise resource planning platform, which now comes equipped with new agentic AI features, according to Oracle's October 15 announcement. PwC also announced this month that it is expanding its alliance with Google Cloud and launching an agentic AI-powered customer engagement tool created in collaboration with Salesforce.

Deloitte also highlighted agentic AI-related deals with Salesforce and Google in announcements earlier this year.