How EY is empowering business with artificial intelligence

EY’s AI-driven automation is transforming the way organizations work to address business and societal needs.

EY has a rich history of innovation and is no stranger to advising and helping clients navigate through their digital journeys. It explores new and emerging technologies to innovate inside its walls and passes those learnings and values to its clients. One example of this is EY’s adoption of AI in its approach to traditional services like tax and audit. It has tapped into the power of AI to automate and streamline processes dramatically.

EY’s internal adoption of AI

AI and automation have been hot topics, both for their transformative potential and for their capacity to introduce new opportunities by disrupting old models. EY took a hard look at the impact that AI would have on its audit services: what if AI and automation could drastically reduce the number of documents EY smart auditors needed to review so that they could spend more time advising clients?

EY identified ways to give its people the time that they needed to work on the most important activities. This exploration culminated into the use of AI capabilities — supported by Microsoft — to automate over 250 processes globally. This freed up an estimated 2,000,000 human hours annually while improving quality and accuracy.

A multi-year vision for AI

The EY vision to improve its services through AI and automation has manifested in a multi-year plan, with each year in its road map representing specific and real advancements. Each step has adhered to EY’s key principles for automation — free up resources, improve decision-making and, ultimately, complement rather than replace people.

The EY approach is human-centric, pragmatic and outcome focused. Its goal is to help clients achieve tangible progress, guided by a robust ethics framework, to improve its workers’ and customers’ lives.

Why EY saw an alliance partner in Microsoft

When looking to support its new AI and automation services, EY wanted an alliance partner with similar values. The organization found a match in Microsoft. Both the organizations focus on the empowerment of people. Also, both take the ethical implications of AI seriously. Moreover, both the organizations address business and societal needs in practical ways.

For EY, practical and useful AI tools that could be deployed immediately are important. The organization found this in the AI platform developed by Microsoft, which provides pre-built solutions like Azure Cognitive Services.

The way forward

As EY works with clients to uncover their next AI opportunities, it also looks ahead to the horizon across its AI automation vision — going from robotic process automation to hybrid and intelligent services, the use of cognitive automation and beyond.

It will continue to push the art of the possible through AI-driven automation to transform the way organizations work to bring more value to their customers. EY will also continue to be a steward for safe, and ethically sound AI solutions that help deliver on the promise of AI for the good of the planet.

This article was originally published on the Microsoft Partner Network website.