Kunai Helps Ernst & Young Global Limited Save $30MM per Year With Renewed Data and Automation Engine

Ernst & Young Global Limited (rebranded to EY in 2013) is one of the Big Four accounting firms in the United States and provides assurance, tax, consulting and advisory services to its clients. It is one of the largest privately owned organizations in the United States and is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. EY employs 312,250 in more than 150 countries across the globe.

Corporations count on EY’s data platform for the insights they need to grow, transform, and protect their businesses. However, EY recognized that outdated data operations were costing them and their customers tens of millions of dollars a year as well as exposing EY to a massive risk of misreporting financial information.

Having been a major player across all sectors in financial services since the 1990s, EY had witnessed the catastrophic consequence of poor governance and security compliance. They decided to take matters into their own hands and proactively address weaknesses across their data platforms.

In 2018, EY contracted Kunai as a third party technology and cybersecurity auditor to identify weaknesses and reinvent EY’s data platform to modern standards.

After an extensive audit across EY’s data platforms, Kunai approached EY with a three-part strategy:

1. A new platform developed and deployed on the cloud for scalability, security, and ease of access

2. Automate and digitize key tasks, administrative assignments, and data pipelines with machine learning modules

3. Build, hire, and train new teams to maintain and update the new platform

Kunai designed, built, and launched the platform in the cloud, allowing EY's tax advisory business to meet the evolving needs of their customers. The new platform also shipped with best-in-class security measures such as end-to-end encryption and data normalization among other features. Collaboration among EY teams, previously bottlenecked by the handling of sensitive client documents, was able to flow freely thanks to the fluid exchange capabilities of a secure cloud environment.

Kunai also leveraged machine learning capabilities to turn data into actionable benchmarks and insights. Powerful data transformation systems with specialty machine learning models were also trained to read tax documents. This in turn offloaded formerly painstaking, labor-Intensive activities onto the platform's automation engine, reducing errors, eliminating the possibility of negligent misreporting, and saving EY and its clients valuable time.

Finally, Kunai also worked closely with EY to build, hire and train new teams so the platform could continue to run smoothly and evolve. Kunai structured out the inhouse development team for EY and provided vetted candidates who could immediately take over maintenance of the system.

By updating legacy systems and converting manual procedures into automated processes, EY delivered an operational savings of $30MM per year. The cutting-edge security measures go beyond simple check-box compliance to-dos and provide EY with a living system that can grow and adapt to the changing landscape of financial markets, government regulation, and data security.