How to create an AI-ready staff

Accounting firm leaders have long heard that artificial intelligence is an inevitable part of their distant future — that at some point, partners and employees must learn how to leverage AI to continue serving clients, growing efficiencies, and improving the bottom line.

Whether firm leaders like it or not, that time is now.

The global pandemic has virtualized day-to-day firm operations and has brought down unprecedented economic pressures on both firms and clients, the ripple effect of which is two-fold:

• 1. While many previous AI solutions were abstract, there are now more practical AI solutions being crafted in the crucible of COVID-19 and honed to solve concrete problems.

• 2. If firms are to unlock the productivity and profitability needed to survive in this post-COVID-19 economy, these new, practical AI solutions are operationally necessary.

Put more bluntly, inaction on AI was once a permissible approach. Now it’s an existential threat.

Dire as this reality may be, firm leaders still may be saying: “But I have partners and clients married to their pen and paper. How do I bridge the gap between the old way and the new?”

The most effective way to build AI expertise among your workforce and create a sustainable firm of the future is to focus on AI solutions that are tailored to the accounting industry and employ “mutual learning” to solve problems and support your staff.

What is mutual learning?

Mutual learning is based on a simple, core premise: AI recommends, humans decide, and the two grow smarter together, over time.

In systems built with mutual learning, AI tools can recommend data-driven actions in response to specific problems, and then humans can either approve those moves or edit and course-correct those actions as necessary. In either case, humans learn how data can shape decision-making. The AI itself then learns from those approvals or course-corrections, applying the human input to improve the AI’s models and algorithms. This, in turn, allows the AI to make better-informed recommendations in the future that will ideally require less human input—over time, the tool and the human continually increase their individual knowledge and collaborative effectiveness, creating ongoing and compounding value together.

This concept is explored in much greater depth in this 2020 MIT Sloan study.

The benefits of mutual learning (especially in work-to-cash management)

Brass tacks, the ROI on mutual learning is a no-brainer. Big picture, firms that employ AI-powered mutual learning are six times more likely to realize significant financial benefits according to that same 2020 MIT Sloan report.

And firms that start their mutual learning journey may be best served by introducing AI in their work-to-cash cycle, the ongoing process of bill prep, collections outreach, processing client payments, and cash flow reporting. A 2021 AMEX survey found that 87 percent of firms that use AI in the work-to-cash cycle are processing payments faster. Further, 75 percent of firms report that bringing AI into their billing and collections process has been useful in “superior customer experiences.” AI can also help firms reduce their days sales outstanding in some cases by 30 percent!

With firms needing more ways than ever to differentiate services, protect their financial health, and delight clients, AI platforms that utilize mutual learning — especially those focused on work-to-cash challenges — are a mother lode of value.

Wherever you start, though, the key is to just start. Getting your staff working with AI solutions that employ mutual learning now is a win-win. It allows you to solve basic problems you’re facing today while simultaneously teaching your staff how to collaborate with data-driven machines and applications, increasing their knowledge and comfort level for using AI solutions to tackle bigger problems down the road.

Starting now raises the baseline for your staff, and your tools themselves will also be smarter and more valuable to you as that knowledge compounds with mutual learning and sets your firm up for what is to come.

How can you know if the solutions you’re using or considering are the right ones or if they employ mutual learning? Start by asking these questions:

Does the solution take feedback and get smarter over time?

The right AI tools will have inherent feedback loops built in. For example, if you’re considering an invoicing solution, it should analyze data — work in progress, rate, previous year bill, etc. — to automatically highlight issues (is realization too low?) and/or recommend a course of action for partners or billers. After a partner or biller either confirms or edits the AI’s recommended action, the platform should take in that human feedback, learn how to properly treat similar scenarios in the future, and automatically adjust ongoing operations.

Will the AI vendor help me help our firm staff navigate the behavioral changes that need to come with new, smart technologies?

More than 80 percent of executives believe AI leads to a competitive advantage (Journal of Accountancy), but only 8 percent of CPA leaders think they are future-ready (AICPA). Industrywide, firms need both new technologies and experts who can help them learn how to best utilize those new technologies. So, you’ll want a partner that has a robust customer success team that will serve as your collaborator in configuring AI tools for your unique workflows and needs.

Is the AI solution or vendor promising me a “silver bullet” or quick fix?

You should be wary of anyone claiming you can simply plug in an AI product, flip a switch, and revolutionize your operations overnight. Because AI involves learning, there’s typically a transition period during which the application of technology adapts to the nuances of your firm’s workflows and your peoples’ preferences. Vendors selling supposed quick fixes won’t be the partner you need and won’t offer the kind of implementation services that will make the technology successful.

Does the AI solution use seamless and robust integrations to work with my other systems?

This is table stakes for any new technology platform — it must play nice with on-premise and/or cloud-based practice management, accounting, and workflow assets. We all know the risks of siloed systems that don’t sync and unify data.

Practically preparing for an AI future

The right AI tools powered by mutual learning, and the right partner, will put you on the best path to future-proof and empower your workforce. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the manual, offline processes that were responsible for much of the day-to-day delivery at accounting firms are no longer sufficient.

At the same time, the past year has highlighted accountants’ resiliency and ability to quickly learn how to use technology to solve new problems. Now is the time to keep that momentum going and focus on increasing your staff’s AI readiness to ensure that they’re able to adapt and thrive as the prevalence of AI increases in the coming years.