AI: 3 ways to reap the rewards and reduce the risks

Andrew Bone, CEO and Co-Founder of Dayshape

Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.

Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Interest in AI has risen sharply in 2023, but as with all advances in technology, it’s not exempt from the perceived risks of adoption. Whether that be mass market AI tools such as Chat GPT or accountancy specific AI software, public resistance to AI remains. However, with great benefits to gain from using AI, learning how to navigate the risks and reap the rewards is increasingly important for firms.

Navigate the risks
Whilst AI’s promise is huge, people are still acutely cautious, with three out of five people (61%) reporting either ambivalence or an unwillingness to trust AI systems. Even within firms that have significantly invested in AI, such as Deloitte, barriers to both starting and scaling AI projects remain. So what’s holding firms back?

Findings from Trust in Artificial Intelligence: A global study published in 2023 by KPMG

According to the Deloitte report, 50% of respondents cited AI-related risks as a barrier to scaling AI projects. These AI-related risks mirror the ethical AI concerns often covered by the media. The risks include a lack of explainability and transparency in AI decisions, data privacy or consent management issues, and general safety concerns around AI systems. Whilst these are understandable concerns, not all are valid.

Given that understanding AI sets a foundation for trust, it’s important to note that not all AI is the same. In fact, there are many different types, and they are often built with certain purposes in mind. For instance, machine learning and generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) are forms of black box AI which provide quick results to specific learnings/commands but provide little to no indication of how that result was reached. In these forms, there is justifiable concern for AI-related risks around data transparency, privacy, and security.

In contrast, Dayshape’s AI is built on a combinatorial optimisation model which provides clear reasoning behind AI-powered suggestions. Plus, significant enhancements have been made to Dayshape’s AI functionality and UI to further reduce the AI-related risks and enable users to unlock the full capabilities of AI across various use cases as illustrated below.  

Reap the rewards – 3 ways
1. In-built flexibility with tiered, adaptable levels of AI
Users can adopt the benefits of AI, on their terms, by switching between AI modes depending on the level of scheduling assistance needed.

Day to day, resource managers may want to use the assisted scheduling mode where they use AI-powered suitability scoring (considering availability, grade, location, or skills data from across the firm) to match the right resources to the right bookings.

However, for larger resourcing requirements, such as graduate intake with more standardised bookings, using a higher-level mode of AI would be more efficient. This allows the AI to do the bulk of the scheduling, leaving the resource managers to simply approve or reject the automated scheduling suggestions. Such flexibility drives more efficiency through AI, whilst leaving the control firmly in the hands of resource managers to determine when and how it’s applied.

2. Accessibility and transparency with UI improvements
UI improvements have provided further clarity on Dayshape’s AI-powered resourcing suggestions.

With different automation modes available, resource managers can review suggestions made in each mode alongside the reasoning behind the suggestion. Hence providing resource managers with greater confidence in their data-driven resourcing decisions.

3. Scalability and optimisation by design
Dayshape’s AI is built to handle scale and complexity within resource management.

Whilst resource managers are key to making the strategic decisions within resource management, they simply can’t process the same amount of data, in the same amount of time, as AI can.

Similarly, as organisations input a greater depth of datapoints into resource management systems, this increases resourcing complexity. Hence making it increasingly difficult for resource managers to optimally schedule resources (and negate clashes) without some assistance from AI.

With the ability to produce resource suggestions holistically across all resource considerations and datapoints in seconds, Dayshape’s AI provides firms with optimised scheduling at scale.

In conclusion, to benefit from AI, firms must have a twofold approach. First, build a concrete understanding of AI and second, do the due diligence on AI providers to find low risk and pragmatic ways to apply it. Doing so will create trust within the firm and pave the way for new opportunities to work cohesively with AI.  

With a flexible and transparent approach to AI, Dayshape provides firms with the ultimate ally to increase scheduling efficiencies. Available to use when needed and on your terms, discover more about Dayshape’s advanced AI functionality and improved UI.

Aug 2023

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