The University of New South Wales has announced a partnership with outsourcing giant Tata Consultancy Services that will see the pair undertake joint research in areas such as machine learning, virtual reality (VR), robotics, data analytics, and cloud computing. Under the memorandum of understanding, UNSW said the organisations will work together on ideas which stem from pure technology research and give them real-world applications, with the agreement also opening up the prospect of exchanges of scholars and internships for UNSW students at Tata Consultancy's global research facilities. The memorandum was signed by Tata Consultancy's CTO Ananth Krishnan and UNSW's deputy vice-chancellor enterprise professor Brian Boyle at the consultancy firm's Asia-Pacific Summit in Sydney. "There is a lot that UNSW and Tata Consultancy Services can offer each other," Boyle said. "UNSW excels in taking our research breakthroughs and partnering with industry to make a significant global impact. Working with TCS will build on UNSW's strong international links and help accelerate innovation by opening up new opportunities around the world."

Deloitte's award-winning artificial intelligence platform continues to innovate financial statement audits by using advanced machine learning and natural language processing to extract key information from large volumes of audit evidence. FEI Daily spoke with Will Bible, an audit partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP, on innovating financial statement audits with artificial intelligence and how it will impact the world of finance, accounting and auditing. Will is presenting at this year's Current Financial Reporting Issues Conference, November 14-15, 2016 in New York City on the topic. Will Bible: To achieve automation and ubiquitous data analytics, you need data standardization. There's been a lot of progress on digitizing information, and automating processes around that digitized information.

Artificial Intelligence is not a vision of the future. It has become an indispensable prerequisite for a modern and value-added customer management. We have responded already in the past to the new requirements that companies are facing in the course of digitalization – through transitioning from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Journey Management Consulting. Our success proves us right: today, we are one of the market-leading consulting firms in the field of customer management in Central Europe. With the acquisition of Insight Dimensions GmbH (to press release), a German company located in Böblingen we take the next logical step towards the future by linking Artificial Intelligence and Customer Journey Management. We are delighted about the addition of this successful company and wish our new colleagues a heartfelt welcome.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is powering a new class of automation that is disrupting enterprises and entire industries. However, this is not about a single technology. Rather, it is a confluence of technical improvements, lower costs, and generational demographic changes that are driving organizations to accept and adopt technology. KPMG LLP (KPMG) views Digital Labor on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is robotic process automation (RPA), where activities are characterized as process oriented and rules based.

Enterprises around the world are increasingly investing in technologies for data innovation, including machine learning and even artificial intelligence (AI) as they look to close the gap with digital native companies such as Uber and Waze. But will these technologies really make a significant impact beyond these newer companies? New research from consulting firm Accenture says it will. A report from the company shows that these technologies are poised to exert an enormous impact on economic growth rates and workforce productivity. As IT organizations help their enterprises implement such technologies, they will also help those enterprises compete in this new era.

An assemblage of technological breakthroughs are rapidly morphing to create massive changes in how businesses operate. Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) are just three of eight crucial "megatrends" that strategy consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says is going to significantly distort business. Those new forces should clearly be planned for. And although the consulting firm's advice is aimed at generalized CEOs, it's IT and technical teams that will have to lay the groundwork. Robots, augmented reality (AR), 3D printing, drones and virtual reality (VR) are also among PwC's pick of "essential eight technologies" that the firm says in its report (PDF) (released during the summer) need to be considered by company chiefs to move their operations forward.

There's no question that technology is drastically changing the way we work, but what will the job market look like by 2050? Will 40% of roles have been lost to automation – as predicted by Oxford university economists Dr Carl Frey and Dr Michael Osborne – or will there still be jobs even if the nature of work is exceptionally different from today? To address these issues, the Guardian hosted a roundtable discussion, in association with professional services firm Deloitte, which brought together academics, authors and IT business experts. The future of work will soon become "the survival of the most adaptable", says Paul Mason, emerging technologies director for Innovate UK. As new technologies fundamentally change the way we work, the jobs that remain will be multifaceted and changeable. "Workers of the future will need to be highly adaptable and juggle three or more different roles at a time," says Anand Chopra-McGowan, head of enterprise new markets for General Assembly.

Entrepreneurs need little convincing that technology is important, rapidly evolving, and likely to have a profound impact on their businesses. But keeping track of developments, and knowing where to focus one's attention, is anything but straightforward. Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (pdf) say the impact of constant technological breakthroughs represent a "megatrend" – a change so big that "every business should develop an emerging technology strategy". They have highlighted eight key areas that all businesses should pay attention to. The artificial intelligence market is growing rapidly and forecast to be worth 36bn by 2025.

Entrepreneurs need little convincing that technology is important, rapidly evolving, and likely to have a profound impact on their businesses. But keeping track of developments, and knowing where to focus one's attention, is anything but straightforward. Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (pdf) say the impact of constant technological breakthroughs represent a "megatrend" – a change so big that "every business should develop an emerging technology strategy". They have highlighted eight key areas that all businesses should pay attention to. The artificial intelligence market is growing rapidly and forecast to be worth 36bn by 2025.

Companies are increasingly using software robots to perform routine business processes by mimicking the ways in which people interact with software applications. And the rapidly growing market for robot process automation (RPA) is already showing signs of an important emerging trend: Enterprises are beginning to employ RPA together with cognitive technologies such as speech recognition, natural language processing, and machine learning to automate perceptual and judgment-based tasks once reserved for humans. The integration of cognitive technologies and RPA is extending automation to new areas and can help companies become more efficient and agile as they move down the path of becoming fully digital businesses. RPA software automates repetitive, rules-based processes usually performed by people sitting in front of computers. By interacting with applications just as a human would, software robots can open email attachments, complete e-forms, record and re-key data, and perform other tasks that mimic human action.