PKF is an international network of independent audit, tax, and advisory firms, serving clients across a wide range of industries with a focus on accuracy, compliance, and professional integrity. PKF Belgium supports thousands of businesses with auditing, accountancy, M&A, and compliance services, relying on timely data and rigorous analytical workflows. As their client base grew and regulatory expectations intensified, PKF sought a more modern and scalable way to handle audit data, streamline compliance checks, and accelerate valuation work.

PKF's barriers to scalable audit & compliance

PKF’s teams worked across multiple systems, tools, and data sources. Most work depended on manual data preparation, repetitive checking, and document creation. This created several challenges:

• Integrating data from client ERPs into a consistent model

• High analyst workload due to manual preparation of working papers

• Compliance teams spending time cross-checking thousands of clients

• Slow turnaround times for valuation modelling

• Limited automation and no unified platform to support future AI adoption

PKF needed a scalable, secure, and future-proof foundation that could support both today’s workflows and tomorrow’s AI-driven audit capabilities.

How Cnext helped

1. Audit Phase 1: Building a modern data platform

We created integrations with clients’ ERP systems and developed transformation “adaptors” that convert raw financial data into a standardized Common Data Model (CDM). This model became the backbone for generating audit reports and working papers, enabling auditors to conduct analysis faster and with greater consistency.

Technologies: Microsoft Fabric, dbt

2. Audit Phase 2: AI-generated working papers (in design)

The next step is to bring intelligence directly into the audit workflow. The planned solution connects the existing data platform with an AI layer that will:

• interpret data automatically

• generate audit working papers based on auditor prompts

• produce structured outputs directly in Excel

• reduce manual preparation and improve audit quality

Technologies: Kairos

3. KYC: Automated compliance monitoring

To support PKF’s compliance obligations, we built a data platform that integrates PKF’s internal client management system, covering ~8,000 active clients. The system is connected to compliance and credit platforms via API, continuously monitoring each client for:

• PEP status

• Sanctions lists

• Watchlist activity

A dashboard provides real-time visibility, and the compliance team receives automatic notifications whenever a client is flagged.

Technologies: Microsoft Fabric, Logic apps

4. M&A: Streamlining valuation models

For PKF’s M&A team, we built an Excel-based valuation model to standardize and simplify financial assessments. In the next phase, AI will automatically generate valuations based on financial inputs, reducing analyst time and increasing consistency. The proposed direction builds on MPL’s existing Microsoft ecosystem. It includes an Azure based integration layer to unify operational data, a Microsoft Fabric platform built around a medallion structure for reusable data products, and Dynamics 365 with Power Platform components for workflow and customer interaction. AI enabled insights were identified as a possible next step once the data and business requirements are clarified.

What this means for PKF

PKF is moving from manual, fragmented processes toward a unified, intelligent workflow ecosystem. The custom-built improvements enable:

• faster audits with less repetitive work

• automated compliance alerts for all clients

• a modern data stack ready for AI adoption

• standardized valuation models that scale

PKF now has a clear, technology-driven path to delivering higher-quality services with greater efficiency—while building the groundwork for the next generation of AI-enhanced audit and advisory work.