Written by T-Tech | Dec 17, 2023 10:54:26 PM
Its clear automation has the power to revolutionise the UK accountancy sector, empowering accounting firms to unlock their full potential. At the recent ICAEW Annual Conference AI was a hot topic and speakers spoke of practical applications of its capability. AI is no longer conceptual. Microsoft have announced CoPilot, available for general release in the first half of next year - streamlining communication, helping to clear the “digital debt”, enhancing client experience, and automating essential tasks. But the question is: Is your firm ready to take on this next digital innovation?
There are a few key points to consider:
- Data security and compliance
- How you want AI to be used and company policies to support that
- Training now and into the future
Data security and compliance
Picture this: You open the firm’s doors to the functionality of Microsoft Copilot or a similar AI technology, this unlocks your firm to a world of opportunities but with great power comes responsibility. When using this kind of technology, you must be sure that data within your practice is appropriately locked down and that documents are only available to the correct subsets of people. Without such precautions information that is currently squirrelled away in a folder somewhere can be surfaced.
Next steps:
A readiness assessment is a manageable and affordable step, T-Tech can review this for you and advise on how to move forward.
Future proofing:
Consider a robust SharePoint and Teams enabled document management system like Intapp. A product like this sits on top of the Microsoft investment already being made and ensure controls upon folder structures, filing and document retrieval are managed and maintained.
How you want AI to be used and company policies to support that
To set the scene: Chat GPT is a freely available right now, a junior member of team seeks to improve their work by using tech and pastes a client’s legal document into Chat GPT to create a summary and write a well-crafted response to a query. The output sounds great but is it correct and the source of the response is not referenced. Chat GPT also now has this private information outside of the security of your company network. Not ideal.
Next steps:
Speak to your team and draft a simple policy on the use of publicly available AI tools. You may consider embracing this tech and train your team on how to use it safely or you could lock it down as not allow access to these tools until you are ready. Another option is to enable Bing Chat Enterprise and gain access to the power of Open Ai within the safety of your own Microsoft tenant.
Future proofing:
If you are not ready to embrace it now, being aware of what is coming is important. At the recent Ai summit at Bletchley Park, the UK was named as the 3rd biggest participant in AI business and therefore it would be prudent to not be left behind in terms of understanding and information. This will enable an informed decision on how to move forward and ensure you and your clients are not left behind.
Training now and into the future
The training conundrum: over the last few years education, recruitment strategy, graduate programs, and the future of training the upcoming professionals of the industry has been discussed. The introduction of AI is going to expedite this unsolved problem and throw current employees into the mix too.
Next steps:
Communicating the policy and vision to the wider team is good starting point. Appointing a person(s) who already have a keen interest in this space as the person to explore the opportunities would be a good way to begin, if you have such a person within the team. Perhaps consider making it an element of your next hire if not?
Future proofing:
Review all departments and consider what each function and department may look like with AI, take your findings, and build a strategy around this. Consider hiring a data or tech driven role into each team. Include continuous education and training into your development programs and engage with the networks and training communities.
What To Do Now?
You do not need to take all this on straight away but making a move in the right direction would be salient. T-Tech can help with some of the more complicated elements and an understanding of the current state of play within your organisation is a good first step. A couple of days of work can provide a data, document and security review which will assist in making an informed decision about what to do next. Take the first step of your journey now and speak to our specialists.