KPMG Enterprise to help small businesses receive accountancy support

KPMG aim to bring cloud based accountancy support to small businesses by investing £40m in its Enterprise program.

It seems that KPMG are now looking to bring their services to small businesses as they invested £40 million in the KPMG Enterprise programme, a subscription-based cloud platform for accountancy support.

This investment is designed to target growth in the mid-market, of which smaller firms hold the majority market share.

Speaking in an interview with Business Development Leaders’ Network (BDLN), KPMG said the creation of the cloud-based service was partly in response to large tech companies using “big data” to steal market share.

“In the next five years, are big accountancy firms going to be our competition, or is it actually going to be Google, or Amazon, or somebody else?” said Iain Moffatt, head of KPMG Enterprise.

He continued to describe how technology has transformed the accountancy industry. Greater access to more intimate data has changed the game, making their profession “all about data”.

“The more data you have, the more powerful you are. With big data you can create more-effective KPIs, better benchmarking, and more accurate insights. That’s the secret. That’s what the future holds,” Mr Moffat explained.

Indeed, it seems that large tech companies, such as Google, have such a wealth of data at their fingertips that the only thing holding them back from competing with such companies as KPMG is the lack of a recognition or trust in the field of accountancy.

With its Enterprise program and the investment of £40 million, the largest funding KPMG have made in the SME market in 30 years, Mr Moffatt hopes to “transformationally change” KPMG’s mid-market business in a structured and integrated way.

“We have made a conscious decision to invest in the SME market – particularly the lower end. We’re building a new arm to our business here and we’re recruiting new people to run it,” he said.

The plan is to get as many companies signed up as possible by offering services at the same price as more local accounting firms, all accessible via a tablet from the comfort of your couch.