A three-year research collaboration agreement has been signed between professional services firm KPMG and Singapore’s agency for science, technology and research (A*STAR) targetting cyber security, text-mining, machine translation and data analytics.
Under this agreement, KPMG and A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) will launch a joint laboratory together, the first joint laboratory in Singapore for KPMG, with an initial joint investment of S$5 million.
“Almost 90 per cent of Singapore CEOs surveyed in the KPMG CEO Outlook 2018 say that digital disruption presents new opportunities,” said Ong Pang Thye, managing partner of KPMG.
"This opportunity to collaborate with A*STAR’s I²R in creating a data-science powered lab will not just empower our internal processes, but will also allow us to raise our game in serving our clients."
The joint laboratory will focus on cyber security, text-mining, machine translation and human resources analytics, leveraging I²R’s capabilities in cyber security and data analytics and KPMG’s expertise in professional services.
This will be A*STAR’s first foray into the professional services industry.
“A*STAR is happy to partner KPMG to drive its digitalisation efforts in the professional services sector,” said Professor Tan Sze Wee, executive director of A*STAR's Science & Engineering Research Council.
“This joint lab with KPMG will bring our strong capabilities in the areas of cyber security and data analytics to help address the needs of the professional service industry and its clients."
Furthermore, the joint lab will facilitate KPMG offering advanced cyber security services to its clients through improved incident detection and response tools that includes an automated continuous process that has the capability to significantly reduce threats and minimise the impact from a cyber attack.
The lab's research into text mining will benefit KPMG’s clients through increased productivity in the monitoring and curation of clients’ solutions.
Machine translation will able be an important area of research for the lab, and will focus on the translation of Asian languages, resulting in a faster and more accurate engine for the translation of business documents enabling a more seamless multilingual collaboration experience.
The last area of focus for the lab will leverage the data analytics and predictive algorithm expertise of I²R to improve the human resource experience for clients, enabling better insight into recruitment and attrition trends as well as facilitating more accurate workforce planning.
