KPMG recently held an event updating analysts on its Blockchain Strategy, highlighting its collaborative work with technology partners and clients around the use of blockchain technology.
KPMG's Innovation & Enterprise Solutions group is driving the firm's multi-year mandate to develop blockchain and other technology-enabled solutions that address client issues across its global Tax, Advisory and Audit practices. The event showcased the firm's new strategy to partner with and invest alongside an ecosystem of trusted technology partners in creating deliberate, pragmatic, and scalable solutions to real client issues. This strategy represents an evolution from earlier initiatives to lead with developed technology products based on the faulty premise of "build-it-and-they-will-come," only to get burned when no one showed up to the party.
KPMG is clear that it is not interested in building a new blockchain foundation or any other technology platform and insists that clients should have already embraced a cloud strategy before considering blockchain solutions, the latter point to align customer and vendor interests around the mutual need for trust, transparency, speed, and efficiency. KPMG will instead contribute its deep industry and functional knowledge across tax, regulation, audit, and finance and will use its position of trust to lead a consortium-centric approach to connect the technology with both strategic and tactical business use cases.
While the industry searches for its killer app, blockchain, according to KPMG, is all about creating trusted commerce among diverse stakeholders. In many ways, KPMG asserts, blockchain does for ecosystems what ERP systems did for the enterprise. Highlighting examples of its work, the firm demonstrates how permissioned blockchain networks speed the flow of funds or information, creating a single source of truth across different business units, systems or enterprises with an immutable audit trail that removes the need for complex reconciliation or lengthy settlement processes. Real-time track-and-trace applications enabling trust and transparency among anonymous third-party entities are another core blockchain application.
Another area of distinction for KPMG is its ground-breaking work advising both governments and nascent crypto-currency exchanges on the development and implementation of policies around crypto currency custody, helping both to navigate complex regulatory nuances, system and licensing requirements, and audit assurance that help attract institutional-grade clients.
Naima Hoque Essing is a Senior Analysts with ALM Intelligence, Management Consulting Research
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