where does ai fit? as a team member.
by penny breslin
it’s not just the numbers
team building can be a difficult concept in a compartmentalized world. accounting firms are often set up so that specific people within the firm do specific work and are not always involved in the setup, mid-work or outcome. that is a function of 19th- and 20th-century education and business work practices as well as the native privacy inherent in minding clients’ financial data.
more: which kind of team do you have? | you don’t have to do everything | what do you want advisory services to be? | meet the new bos | why ai is not the enemy
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but as andres oppenheimer points out in his book “the robots are coming!,” it is the specialized functions of professionals that are most susceptible to automation. the more specialized the work and the information used, the more a robot can automate.
teams need to work in harmony and share information that allows for the special story of a client to come out. documents and data can tell a story, but documents and data alone cannot add the nuances of the people involved in the business that can affect outcomes and need to be understood.
when we take on a new client, the team first asks to know the client’s story. they will review the data and the documents easily as the automated process we have implemented gathers and organizes it for us. the humans on the team all want to know where the client came from, what they are doing now and most importantly, where they want to go.
a cooperative team will provide texture to the whole, based on their viewpoint of the past and present of the client. ideally, we build teams that are in agreement on how we want our firm to appear and what we want it to stand for. team members should complement each other’s talents and respect the individual capabilities of all team members. most assuredly, they should all respect the client.
in large firms, this can be an interesting endeavor as you may build a group to perform these types of client services with firm and external procedures or personnel that can inhibit or enhance the team. a good team leader is there not only to protect the team from sliding back into old practices, but to keep it as a whole from being pulled into old compliance thinking by others in the firm.
compliance fallback is the death knell for this endeavor. we often have to review accounting files for our cpa firm clients. audit trails are very revealing. log into a firm’s site and see how they tout they are cloud accountants and all the services they provide and certification they have in apps. they mean well and do want to provide these back office support types of services, but the sheer amount of compliance work that is required for u.s. firms can make it untenable for smaller and one-person firms. you can see gaps in the access times in audit trails of a gl that match compliance dates. the team did not do the work and one, then two, then three clients fell behind. taking those scorekeeping numbers and finding actionable events becomes impossible.
caveat: while discussing the product launch of an accounting application with a developer from outside the u.s., he was amazed at the small amount of time afforded to u.s. accountants and bookkeepers to learn and adapt to new technologies. we do have quite a bit more compliance regulations here. but compliance is data and documents and much of that workflow is dictated by the agency that mandates the compliance. compliance is a perfect complement to ai. add ai to your team for these areas. let the ai take the processing brunt of 1099, w2, sales tax, payroll, annual tax, etc.
ai is a team member, after all, as it does perform the functions that were heretofore done by data entry personnel.
oppenheimer discusses compliance, accounting and the inevitability of all things ai in his book “the robots are coming!” not to worry, it is not the asimov somewhat morbid view from “i robot.” but asimov also wrote “the gods themselves.” the title of that book comes from the play “the maid of orleans” by friedrich schiller: “mit der dummheit kämpfen götter selbst vergebens,” or “against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”
oppenheimer first tells us that yes, change is coming, and yes, jobs will be lost, but out of that change will come new jobs. robots may take some jobs, but humans’ unique capacity of adding humanness to the equation will win out. the professions of accounting, law, insurance and psychology will work as teammates in the future for their joint clients. these professions will become centers of influence for each other and the clients. and yes, the psychologist will be part of the team.
human re-engineer was something i sarcastically told people i did when they asked me to define my job. it can be tough for folks to get out of their own way. i am grateful, sometimes kicking and screaming but eventually grateful, for those who re-engineer me out of my own way.
so, build your internal team with humanity in mind. make sure they all learned the kindergarten rule of not throwing sand. give them the privacy they need to do complex work and open communication that allows data to flow and be analyzed. and treat the client as a member of the team. they may be the weakest link because you are depending on them to utilize all the tools you present, but then they do pay the bills.