This article in the Wall Street Journal details how KPMG LLC plans on using IBM Watson to automate routine tasks in audits. The article explains that auditors today often take samples of a client’s transaction to validate financial statements. Sheer volume and time prevents auditors from looking at all of a company’s transactions. the goal is to use Watson to free up the auditors time from rote activities, focusing on transaction that are out of the ordinary. 
To date Watson has been highlighted winning Jeopardy and fighting cancer. While those are noble pursuits, well fighting cancer certainly is, and have captured people’s imagination, I believe we are moving into a new phase. A phase, which may lack some of the glamour but provides additional value. When I was at the IBM Connect conference earlier this year several examples were presented. From using analytics inside email to highlight critical communications to using Watson to suggest tags for images uploaded into IBM Web Content Management.
I am especially looking forward to when Watson is helping individuals in their daily work. Over the years I have seen a number of great uses cases to help cut through the clutter of our workday. This week I’m scheduling a meeting and due to scheduling, new team members are being added to the attendee list. How much easier would it be for my email to recognize that all these emails are related and to prioritize them even if I’ve never received an email from Kevin or Sarah before? Prioritizing emails by frequency is such a horrible idea that I’m surprised it ever got out of the lab. For me that list includes airlines and our time tracking system.
To learn more about Watson, including the ability to use Watson APIs on IBM Bluemix, here is the link. You will be surprised at all the ways you can use Watson.
