Digitization of business demand a more agile way of operating applications and processes to meet the constantly changing market needs. Unlimited amount of knowledge available at our fingertips and technological advancements are accelerating faster than ever before, thereby blurring lines between physical and digital domains. As we move towards the fourth industrial revolution, looking back at some of the key technological developments in 2019, here's what we can predict for 2020. In 2020, workplace changes related to artificial intelligence (AI) will become a noticeable trend. A recent PwC report revealed that 67 per cent would prefer AI assistance over humans as office assistants.

In the coming year there will be less isolated experimentation around AI; many companies will move out of the pilot phase and toward enterprise-wide deployment. Although AI at scale is rare today, many companies are setting this as a core objective over the next three years. To rapidly pursue AI, many companies are looking to third-party AIaaS vendors. While embracing third parties does not eliminate the need to build up internal capabilities, it opens up more options. In a sample we surveyed of large global companies, we estimated that roughly two-thirds of their total AI spending is currently allocated to internal build – and only one-third is dedicated to buying services from vendors.

With the ever-changing technological environment in today's world, we have completely changed the way we interact with one another. Now, we connect via smartphones and social media. This phenomenon has grown to an extent where businesses and brands now use influencers to communicate with the public. Here at Qemploy, we have come up with a grand list of the most influential individuals or groups in the IT-consulting industry. These influencers vary between IT-specialists, IT-consultants and IT-consulting firms.

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) announced on Friday it has completed its acquisition of consulting firm, Silveo. According to Accenture, Silveo is a French consulting company providing services and solutions for digital manufacturing and intelligent supply chains. Accenture also noted that Silveo brings a team of 50 professionals, who are joining Accenture Industry X.0. The latest acquisition comes just after Accenture announced it has agreed to acquire Clarity Insights, a U.S.-based data consultancy with deep data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise. Accenture claims that Clarity Insights is a leading provider of data science and AI/ML engineering capabilities for large enterprises, and a strategic partner to clients across a range of industries, particularly healthcare, financial services, and insurance.

KPMG International has been ranked #3 overall among the world's leading providers of Enterprise Artificial Intelligence (AI) services - and #1 for its technology innovation capabilities - in a new HFS Research report. The HFS Enterprise AI Services Top 10 Report (PDF 1.3 MB) examines the impact that leading global services providers are having in today's complex and rapidly expanding AI landscape. Noting AI's growing significance as "a key change agent" in how enterprises operate - and calling AI's potential to drive revenue growth "immense" - HFS Research assessed and ranked 21 firms based on Innovation Capability, Ability to Execute and Voice of the Customer criteria. The report praises KPMG's "industry-leading approach to consolidating IA assets and creating an ecosystem for AI talent." The report also calls out KPMG for demonstrating both an "integrated view of intelligent automation technologies" and "a globally consistent approach" under KPMG's Lighthouse Centre of Excellence and the KPMG Ignite AI platform.

The world's first'employment agency' offering AI controlled robots to undertake'strenuous work normally endured by humans' has launched in Israel. MusashiAI, a joint venture between SixAI of Israel and Musashi Seimitsu of Japan has a completely autonomous forklift and a visual inspection robot on its books. The company says its fully autonomous robots will be able to integrate seamlessly with human workers in a modern factory environment. They say their model allows factories to hire robot labour by the hour or pay a task-completed rate, rather than buy expensive robot equipment outright. The world's first'employment agency' offering AI controlled robots to factories to undertake'strenuous work normally endured by humans' has launched in Israel.

Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture, which is headquartered in Dublin, did not disclose the terms of the deal.