One-on-One With KPMG's Atif Zaim

Zaim: My career at KPMG began in the United Kingdom, where I fulfilled my goal of becoming a Chartered Accountant. I vividly recall the moment when I anxiously checked the Sunday London Times list at Victoria Station late one Saturday night in 1994. Seeing my name on the list of Chartered Accountants was a proud and validating moment for both me and my family. In 1998, I made the move to the New York office of KPMG and became a partner in 2003. I am passionate about helping my colleagues advance their own careers and finding fulfillment in their professional lives.

Throughout my tenure at KPMG in the U.S., I have held various leadership positions, providing guidance to organizations on large-scale transformation initiatives. My expertise lies in helping these organizations deliver value, foster innovation, expand their business, and enhance overall performance. This involves implementing technology and data adoption strategies, optimizing organizational structures, improving governance practices, and managing risks effectively.

Consulting: What is your perspective on the current state of the consulting market and what are clients wanting from a consulting partner in 2024 and beyond?

Zaim: Clients continue to seek to drive profitable growth. Many recognize they need to adapt to serve the marketplace, harness technology to do so and guide their business through an enterprise transformation. Over the last 24 months, we have seen clients apply significant rigor to their decision-making process to ensure they are deploying capital appropriately.

Our clients expect consultants to help them understand the art of the possible. Top of mind, of course, is how to harness generative AI, AI more broadly and the power of data and the cloud. Business leaders recognize the potential of generative AI to create value, but they need a partner to help them scale the use of the technology in areas that will generate the greatest returns, responsibly and ethically. Our recent pulse survey found that 97% of leaders are investing in GenAI over the next 12 months and 51% of those surveyed are measuring GenAI-related ROI through productivity gains, employee satisfaction (48%) and revenue generated (47%).

Data modernization with industry-specific needs to accelerate cloud/AI use cases, will be critical to the success of GenAI deployments.

Cloud integration, including SAP S/4HANA transformation, is top of mind, and we're looking to our recent collaboration with SAP to help clients fast-track their digital transformation journeys and become future-ready businesses. We will be working with SAP to deliver industry-specific digital solutions and services to help organizations become agile, data-driven and resilient businesses and bolster their efforts to accelerate value and innovation, facilitating a seamless transition to the cloud, enabling AI adoption, and enhancing transparency in ESG.

Clients also expect us to help them navigate their regulatory environment and protect their organization. Protecting data, securing their organization from cyber-attacks and being compliant with evolving regulations all play a pivotal role in being trusted by key stakeholders.

For some large corporates, there is a tremendous focus on increasing productivity, resilience and responsiveness. For private equity companies, they are looking for ways to both improve their deal-making process and support their portfolio companies in adopting new technology. Companies are also looking for external partners to help reshape their strategies, identify new revenue opportunities, stay ahead of competitive risks and do so at deal speed.

Consulting: Trying to wrap the business world's collective arms around AI and its practical use across the spectrum of business operations has been one of largest challenges we've seen.

• How do you envision AI and its implementation within the professional services/advisory sector?

Zaim: We see GenAI as a transformative opportunity for both our clients and ourselves. We view our efforts at KPMG through the mindset of "client zero." We are integrating GenAI into everything we do – the services and solutions we provide our clients, how we deliver them, how we go to market and sell, and how we run our firm. We are developing GenAI offerings for our clients while also embedding GenAI into our own legacy solutions.

I was proud to see the story of KPMG US's front office transformation featured at the Salesforce World Tour NYC event last December. Those efforts helped to prepare us to guide our shared clients into the future by leveraging new tools and emerging technologies such as GenAI.

Trust is at the foundation of everything we're doing. We know our permission to operate and innovate for KPMG and our clients can quickly diminish if we lose the trust of our stakeholders.

By embracing new technologies and embedding AI responsibly across our business, we see an opportunity to enhance jobs and supercharge the employee experience. AI will help our people unleash their creativity, deliver faster analysis and spend more time on strategic advice — all the things that make KPMG a rewarding place to work.

As consultants, we must reimagine how we deliver services to our clients. We need to be focused on high-value activities and let GenAI do some of the more mundane tasks. We need to help our clients follow the same strategy and help them reimagine their finance, IT, human resource, sales and other functions. We also have a tremendous opportunity to augment the skills of our practitioners and have them focus on the highest value activities to serve our clients successfully.

GenAI is a disruptive force that will fundamentally change business models, including our own professional services industry. It will significantly change what and how we deliver to our clients. At KPMG, we are building on our market leadership and lead the way for the professional services industry.

GenAI will help us improve productivity and scale how work gets done across every function of the firm. By integrating AI, we will be able to scale faster, enhance the quality of services we provide to our clients, and accelerate the value we deliver for them. It will also allow our people to focus more on meaningful and strategic work and chart new paths for success in their careers.

Consulting: How is KPMG utilizing AI, including what it currently offers clients?

Zaim: We are embedding AI throughout our organization. A comprehensive firmwide education and skill-building initiative is also underway.

As highlighted above, we treat KPMG as client zero, using what we learn as we implement GenAI as best practices to share with our clients. We have been helping clients with responsible and trusted AI for more than a decade and are helping them across all phases of their journey — from building an ecosystem of tech partners and solutions that enable their strategy to identifying and implementing early generative AI use cases.

Some of the most frequent requests for support from clients include:

• Mobilization on GenAI: deploying the technology, running experiments, and designing transformation programs
• GenAI functional transformation: identifying use cases and validating value
• Workforce transformation: preparing the workforce for an AI-enabled future and understanding what it means, from workforce shaping to career pathing; this includes enablement and learning and development programs that are required to upskill and train the workforce for an AI-augmented future
• GenAI for mergers and acquisitions: leveraging GenAI for due diligence, integration and value creation
• Tech/data modernization: building or buying GPT platforms, migrating data to the cloud and developing GenAI data engineering
• Trusted AI: establishing governance policies, framework programs to mitigate cyber risk, and tools to manage risks and maintain the trust of their stakeholders

This requires bringing together cross-functional teams that understand technology and people, operations and financials, and opportunities and risks. Business leaders want a consultant who can help them look across their organization and knit all the pieces together to determine when to go fast and when to slow down — all within the specific context of their industry, business function and unique company culture.

• How do you envision AI and its implementation more broadly in the world of business operations?

Zaim: In our experience and in conversations with business leaders and those in the C-suite, the most successful enterprise-wide transformations that see long-term financial returns are those that consistently focus on value creation, invest in people and culture and equip organizations with the right technology and data foundations. It is an ongoing process where orchestration across the enterprise will yield the greatest and most sustainable performance.

AI is expected to have a significant impact, both as a tool to help design and execute transformations and as a means of new and improved operating models and processes. Business leaders should tap into generative AI to help them quickly summarize enormous amounts of information to identify internal patterns and understand changing market conditions and emerging risks, enabling faster and better decision-making.

The immediate impact of AI is an augmentation of the human workforce. KPMG's December 2023 American Worker Pulse survey, of more than 1,800 employees across industries found that 75% said technology and artificial intelligence will automate some portion of their job.

We are certainly seeing an awakening among leaders truly considering AI as a productive way to increase the capability of their workforce. The KPMG generative AI survey of global business executives in June 2023 found that:

• 80% believe that it will disrupt their industry
• Nearly all think that generative AI will provide value to their business
• 84% believe that generative AI will have a positive impact on their workforce

97% agree to some extent that generative AI will play a role in allowing their organization's employees to be more thoughtful and creative by relieving them from manual processes. AI will be a powerful asset to help leaders plan and invest confidently in long-term strategies yet remain flexible and nimble enough to respond to surprises and be prepared to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities.

• How are your clients utilizing AI? Are there industry specific uses?

Zaim: When I talk to executives, the conversation around AI has shifted from "Is the hype real?" to "How do I deploy and build it into my broader transformation strategy?" Consultants can work with their clients to develop their AI strategy and help them understand the power of technology and what it could mean for their business while identifying priority use cases.

Consultants need to help executives experiment to better understand AI's potential impact. They need to plan for workforce training and change management. People will need to be trained to work alongside the technology and understand the responsible and ethical use requirements.

In the finance function, GenAI is already being used in a multitude of ways. Our survey found that 83% of companies are using it for forecasting and budgeting, 64% for fraud detection and 59% for risk management.

We see mobilization, experimentation and scaling across most of the functions of our clients. For example, we see AI adoption gaining traction in the customer service centers of our clients. Clients are using GenAI, and AI more broadly, for quality control, interaction summarization, root cause analysis, assisted Q&A support to customer service agents, interventions to reduce call times, first-call resolution and a higher-quality experience.

The leading US organizations in the KPMG Customer Experience Excellence report utilize AI not to simply automate processes, but to engage with customers, help manage the customer lifecycle, and elevate the human experience. Also, consumers themselves increasingly use generative AI (GenAI) in their personal and professional lives, and are optimistic about its potential positive impact on society, believing that the benefits of the technology outweigh the risks they see.

A recent pulse survey of C-suite and business leaders found that 45% of leaders ranked customer experience as the top investment focus. About half of the leaders surveyed said they anticipate the greatest value creation from GenAI investments will come from enhancing existing products and services by analyzing customer data, enhancing efficiency to generate greater productivity (48%), improving supply chain efficiency and reducing cost (37%), and improving product quality, efficiency and innovation (42%).

Others are using it to develop software and translate code from one computer language to another, generate test data, write documentation for old code and turn non-coders to coders. We're also seeing it used to develop new cybersecurity threat scenarios for testing, summarize complex cyber data into action items for analysts, and verify compliance.

ESG is another area where GenAI may be deployed. ESG is very data intensive, and it's top of mind for many organizations. It can help organizations collect, develop and analyze their data to support ESG reporting.

In sectors where AI has been more readily adopted, such as in banking, the industry where I spend the most time, healthcare insurance, technology, media and telecom industries, and in consumer and retail, we already see the benefit of using it to analyze vast amounts of data, thereby enabling workers to make more responsive, informed decisions and solve complex problems.

Consulting: There's been a lot of uncertainty in the economy, COVID, inflation, geopolitical unrest. Can you talk about how that might have created consulting opportunities, shaped client priorities and how that has impacted the role of consultants in 2024 and beyond?

Zaim: After years of benign business conditions, the past few years have been marked by compound volatility. Short-term disruptions such as the pandemic, geopolitical uncertainty and natural disasters have combined with longer-term structural trends such as high interest rates, inflation, labor shortages and trade frictions.

These structural changes have raised the cost of doing business, constrained strategic optionality and flexibility and reduced the margin for execution error. To manage this volatility, business leaders will need new approaches to strategy, planning, investing, talent and ways of working.

Consultants need to understand that business leaders operate simultaneously on multiple time horizons to plan and invest confidently in long-term strategies, remain flexible and agile enough to respond to surprises, and be prepared to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. At the same time, they need to deliver results in the moment.

Business leaders and their consultants will need to lean into technologies such as GenAI to help them implement their strategies. They should view generative AI as a valuable tool for enhancing strategic decision-making, managing risks, optimizing operations and fostering innovation. However, it's essential to approach AI implementation thoughtfully and ethically, ensuring that it aligns with an organization's values and objectives while addressing the challenges posed by compound volatility.

Consulting: What impact has this uncertainty had on your firm's culture? What are you seeing as trending challenges on the attraction/retention side of talent, and the implications for diversity? What is the best advice you'll give clients?

Zaim: In today's fast-changing business environment with shifting expectations around flexibility and purpose, culture and DEI are more important than ever. Business leaders must invest in continually upskilling their people, protect them from burnout and foster an inclusive environment that embraces change, innovation and smart risk-taking to drive growth. At KPMG, we remain committed to attracting, developing and retaining a high-performing and diverse workforce. These efforts are essential to expanding the pipeline of talent in the profession and advancing diversity of thought, which produces better results and drives business growth. Additionally, we are continually developing innovative ways to identify potential energy imbalances among our people and reimagining work models to reduce pressure in the system. We also recognize that how we select, onboard, develop and manage talent will change. We are committed to leveraging the past and building the high-performance workforce of the future.

Consulting: What elements drive you personally and what is your favorite part of being in the consulting industry?

Zaim: I am passionate about consulting and helping my clients transform and be successful. I thrive in building and leading teams with a focus on growth while working with creative people and developing out-of-the-box ideas and solutions.

With more than 25 years in consulting, I have had the opportunity to work with some exceptionally talented people in learning, implementing and working with the latest technology to drive successful outcomes for multiple organizations. It is the combination of being part of a team of people with great knowledge across multiple disciplines and utilizing emerging technology to drive solutions that makes my line of business massively rewarding. I am intellectually stimulated on a daily basis with the advancement in technology and the solutions we can bring to the rapidly evolving problems organizations face. In consulting, we are given the opportunity to be innovative, forward-looking and strategic thinkers in making the world a better place; that is an exciting and rewarding position to be in.

My motivation is my family, and my mother in particular, who always encouraged me to set ambitious expectations for myself. My family role models encouraged me to strive for excellence and to do so by making a difference. I thrive when challenged to understand the struggles an organization is facing and finding suitable long-lasting solutions that improve outcomes for their customers, their employees and their business. Making a real difference in a crowded world is what sets you apart from the competition.

I also had numerous mentors throughout my career who played a critical role in my professional and personal development. They provided the direction, support and encouragement necessary to succeed, and for that they will always have my immense gratitude.

Consulting: What are the biggest lessons you've learned – as a company or personally – over the past 20 years?

Zaim: I have based my professional life on the principle that surrounding oneself with talented and diverse individuals is pivotal in achieving exceptional results. Fostering an environment that encourages collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning are important to cultivating a motivated and high-performing team, focused on delivering the best outcomes for our clients. Working closely with people, getting to know them and helping them develop professionally is very near and dear to my hear. In particular, welcoming our professionals to the partnership is easily the best moment of my year.

Technology advancements, elevation of customer expectations and changes in market dynamics mean our clients' needs are constantly evolving. I have found that you need to learn from successes and failures alike and reinvent yourself to remain relevant. It is also important to have integrity, reliability, and effective communications at the core of your client relationships. Integrity and continuous learning are vital for sustained success and growth in consulting.

This is why consulting excites me – working with an outstanding team helping clients achieve their outcomes in a constantly changing world. I couldn't be more excited to be taking over the consulting role at the beginning of what is likely to be one of the biggest changes in the business world, brought about by AI.

Consulting: Many thanks for taking the time to share your insights with our readers.