EY dates back to 1849, and over the 170 years since, has become one of the most successful and respected global professional organizations. Its name is synonymous with credibility and trust, serving many of the largest multinational enterprises on their most complex business needs.

EY has a rich history of innovation and is no stranger to advising and helping clients navigate through their digital journeys. The organization explores new and emerging technologies to innovate inside its walls, and also passes those learnings and values to clients. For example, one area has been in adopting AI to its approach to traditional services like tax and audit by tapping into the power of AI to automate and streamline processes dramatically.

AI accelerates digital business

AI and automation have been hot topics, both for their transformative potential and also 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 time back to work on the most important activities. This exploration culminated in the use of AI capabilities, supported by Microsoft, to automate over 250 processes globally—freeing 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 and progress must adhere to EY key principles for automation: That they free up resources, improve decision-making, and ultimately complement rather than replace people.

Now that EY had successfully proven the internal service value of AI, it was ready to apply and provide those types of successes as new services to its global clients. The EY approach is human-centered, pragmatic, and outcome focused. Its goal is to help clients achieve tangible progress, and guided by a robust ethics framework, to improve its workers’ and customers’ lives. To EY, AI and intelligent automation are proven tools and capabilities used to advance and improve services in ethical and thoughtful ways.

A strong EY and Microsoft AI alliance, grounded in customer value and ethics

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

Microsoft endeavors to empower organizations to apply AI across the spectrum of their business to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations, and transform products. “We are partnering with EY to combine Microsoft AI with intelligent automation. Using Azure AI, we are automating traditional services, streamlining processes, and improving worker productivity,” says, Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft.

Simran Sachar, AI Partner Lead and Sr. Strategy Manager, Microsoft, believes a strong alliance partner ecosystem is key to to bringing AI innovations that deliver high value to customers. “Our alliance with EY is solid, grounded on the strong ethical use of AI and creating business value for customers,” says Simran. “Together, we bring the power of our AI platform and EY knowledge to help customers accelerate their digital transformation through AI, solve high-value problems, and gain business service value by deploying AI solutions at enterprise scale.”

For EY, the benefits of practical and useful AI tools that could be deployed immediately were important. The organization found this in the AI platform developed by Microsoft, which provides pre-built solutions like Azure Cognitive Services. Chris Aiken, Executive Director, AI and Automation Practice, EY, sees this as a great way to quickly provide customer value. "Our alliance with Microsoft helps enable us to offer joint solutions that marry Microsoft’s innovative technology with EY deep domain and sector knowledge. We help our clients accelerate performance by realizing the full potential of digital across the enterprise.”