Professional services giant Deloitte announced the formation of Deloitte Catalyst, a network of leading startups working to help business harness transformative technologies, blockchain, and IoT.

According to the official release, Deloitte Catalyst will include Narrative Science, Kira Systems, Ayasdi and Loyyal, among others, as initial members. It will accelerate digital transformation by bringing critical assets and capabilities from the domains of cognitive technologies, IoT and blockchain.

"Deloitte Catalyst is enabling Deloitte and our clients to more easily tap the power of innovation. Many businesses are searching for ingenuity amongst disruption given today's economic climate, and they need an efficient way to access the latest advances in science and technology," Cathy Engelbert, chief executive officer of Deloitte LLP said.

Deloitte Catalyst will perform activities including pairing larger companies with the right startups to explore applications for emerging technologies. It will identify use cases, develop proof of concepts and prototypes, and run pilots to evaluate new solutions. Deloitte has launched more than 50 client-focused use cases related to automated document review, natural language processing, natural language generation, data wrangling, among others with the help of Deloitte Catalyst.

The big four’s relationships with several blockchain startups are working on use cases related to loyalty and rewards, digital banking, digital identity, cross-border payments, among others. Some of its use cases are aimed at improving its client services solutions. Cognitive technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning are helping audit and tax professionals review invoices and financial statements

"By engaging the world's leading start-ups on a number of fronts, we are in a position to deliver the right path for a company given its place on the innovation journey," Andrew Vaz, Deloitte's global chief innovation officer, Deloitte Catalyst said. "Tapping innovation successfully can take a variety of forms, but the heart of it is having the right relationships to draw from, at the appropriate stage of the innovation lifecycle."