Adopt AI to stay ahead of your competitors, that is what accountants are hearing more often these days.
The idea is sound, but there is a lot more nuance to that than might be immediately obvious.
You can hand someone a set of car keys and tell them that they can get to places more quickly now, but if they don’t know how to drive then it’s not going to work.
AI is a vehicle for growth, but accountants need to understand how to make the most of it.
What is the value of AI?
It can be difficult to fully understand the value of AI as it dramatically varies depending on how it is used and by whom.
One company in America reportedly blew through $500 million (£379,556,500) after failing to cap the use of tokens among employees using Claude to assist with work.
In that instance, it is unlikely that the value generated by the AI matched the cost associated with it.
More importantly for the UK accounting sector, AI adoption is so widespread, as many as 98 per cent of accounting firms use it, that simply having some level of engagement with AI is no longer a sufficient guarantee of growth.
In the same way that giving every employee a computer was once a radical way to break new ground, AI is a core part of accounting work that is unlikely to diminish in the near future.
This reduces the competitive edge inherently provided by AI adoption and forces accounting firms to be more strategic in their implementation if they want to access the true value of AI.
How do accountants build a strategy around AI use?
AI does the tedious work faster, giving your team more time to spend doing other tasks.
For a sector that used to be governed by billable hours, this either presents an excellent opportunity or an immense risk, depending on how it is handled.
Clients will be pleased to see turnaround times fall, but may raise questions if accountants continue to charge the same price for what appears to be less effort.
Rather than using the time saved by AI to practice golf swings in the car park, it could be worth re-examining how the client relationship looks.
Depending on the priorities of the firm, this could manifest in one of two ways.
Accountants may want to take on a more advisory role, provided they have the licence and qualifications to do so, in order to give existing clients a higher-value service and negate the need for price drops.
Alternatively, the extra time could be used to tackle a greater amount of client work, ensuring that client bases can grow without holding teams back.
Some accountants may find a way to do both if they have the capacity to offer quality advice to a greater number of people.
The question of capacity is one that will determine the best path forward for accountants, so the ideal AI will be one that focuses on addressing this concern.
Glasscubes is designed to enhance your workflow and strengthen client connections.
Clients feel the benefit of our incredible AI as it is capable of interpreting even complicated documents.
If your clients or team members were annoyed at having to salvage data from a stack of papers that had enjoyed swimming in someone’s afternoon coffee, having an AI pick out the data will be helpful.
The AI can also be used to keep clients engaged with your firm through automated reminders and outreach communications.
Internally, the AI can feed into visible workflows that allow everyone involved in a client’s work to understand how far along everything is to ensure that nothing gets missed.
The time saved from having to manually extract and review data and constantly chase clients for information is the time that can be used to grow your firm.
Glasscubes is simple to use, designed by accountants and equipped with reliable AI.
For an AI-powered solution that can form a core part of your firm’s growth strategy, book a demo today!AI isn’t your edge. How you use it is
