AI for Accountants

Are you sick of hearing how AI is going to change the world yet? I know I see it everywhere I look on social media, especially from people selling tickets to events or their consulting. It reminds me of the boom of the internet in the 2000s when anything dot-com was exploding or when crypto was booming and everyone was telling me to buy it.?

But just because it's everywhere and we don't want to pay attention to it, doesn't mean it's not real and that we can ignore it. I remember my managers at Sensis telling me that social media was a fad and wouldn't amount to anything...Luckily I didn't listen to them.

I wish I had listened to the Bitcoin fanatic who messaged me on Facebook in 2017 but that's another story.?

So how will?AI impact professional services and especially our Accounting friends who are this month's industry of focus? Well unfortunately/fortunately a lot; it depends on if you ignore it or embrace?the changes ahead.?

It's obvious there will be significant changes in processing information, speeding up and reducing the cost of routine tasks and analysis of data. Pretty much all the things the internet revolution of a few decades?ago promised to deliver but didn't.?

I'm not an AI expert so I will not tell you all the new fancy tools and gadgets. But I will offer some tips on how to raise the level of your advice so that you can lean into more consulting for your clients and less processing of their data for compliance.

Working with a lot of accountants over the years I have seen?many try to move into advisory work but most struggle to gain real traction. This is because they were doing it under the current structure of billable?hours and didn't have the freedom to set up new processes and products. The system restricted their businesses because they tried to operate a consulting business like an accounting business and they are not the same.?

Tip one

So the first tip is to carve off time and resources to operate on a different?model without the burden of billable hours.?

Tip two

The second tip is that there?is a greater need for?sales and marketing to gain consulting clients as they don't have to do anything. With Accounting, you have reporting and compliance requirements?making businesses?work with you. Not so with consulting. So you need to get used to selling the value.?

Tip three

The third tip is to create new products.?Changing your key advisory services into products that a customer can see value in and are easy to communicate. That provides an opportunity to charge for value and not time with potentially higher prices than the standard per-hour Accounting work.?

Tip four

The final tip is to institute value-based pricing which allows the freedom of time to work on marketing and sales to get the customers through the funnel and form trust with the new consulting department.??

Moving from Accounting to consulting or advisory requires a change of thinking for most people. There is higher risk and investment to set up the new business and Accountants are normally risk averse. But with the AI tide making its way slowly but surely to all practices, this is one way to offset that risk.

I have worked on a few of these opportunities in different professional services firms and would be happy to share some of those learnings with my clients. Just book a time with me via your account manager to discuss your situation in more detail.

Cheers Andrew

PS if you have a new digital coin that is about to explode, send me a message!?