Accounting engagements are complex and require the expertise of multiple teams, such as advisory and auditing. But different teams often use different tools and processes, making collaboration difficult. On top of that, teams also need to keep track of the numerous compliance regulations that are unique to each engagement.
We spoke with Marc McNicholl, Intapp’s Managing Director of Professional Services, about how AI technology can help accounting firms improve both collaboration and governance. We also explored the challenges around implementing AI tools, and how the right technology provider can ease this process.
Why is it difficult for accounting professionals to collaborate on engagements?
People have their own preferred methods of collaborating, and sometimes those methods clash.
Let’s say Team A and Team B need to work together on an engagement. Team A shares and stores information in Microsoft Teams, while Team B shares information via email and stores documents on their desktops, personal cloud drives, and separate network file shares. This can lead to version control issues, resulting in confusion and errors.
For example, someone from Team B pulls a document from their personal drive and begins to make edits, not knowing that Team A previously uploaded a more recent version of that document in Microsoft Teams. Or, someone from Team A uses outdated client information that they found in their Teams channel, forgetting that Team B emailed them the updated information last week.
Because of this poor collaboration, both teams may unknowingly send inaccurate information to the client, potentially damaging the relationship. And even if the teams manage to catch these errors, they’ll still need to spend extra hours aligning their documents. This lowers the time to value for clients, and ultimately hurts the firm’s reputation.
What security and compliance issues do accounting firms face?
Clients trust their firms to protect sensitive information from cyber threats and data breaches, which is why your firm must ensure its collaborative platform is secure with robust encryption. What’s more, you also need to be aware of internal security threats.
Strong permissions and access controls must be implemented throughout your systems to ensure only the right professionals can access certain data. Without these permissions, employees with conflicts of interest may be able to access confidential data, leading to costly fines and potential legal issues.
Accounting firm professionals also need to remain compliant with regulations like GDPR and AML laws. All data sharing and communication practices must adhere to legal standards as well as transparency and data subject rights.
How can AI help accounting firms address these issues?
When multiple teams are collaborating on various engagements, it can be difficult to efficiently perform client due diligence and conflict management. Without an automated solution to uphold security and regulatory requirements throughout the engagement lifecycle, professionals must manually review everything. This time-consuming and increases the risk of human error.
AI automates client due diligence and conflict management, ensuring that teams adhere to GDPR, AML, and other regulations and legal standards throughout the engagement lifecycle. The software can analyze vast amounts of data and identify potential compliance risks. In turn, teams remain compliant as they collaborate.
AI also significantly enhances security, compliance, and collaboration by automating data protection processes, upholding access controls, and using advanced encryption to provide an additional layer of defense for client data. AI can even detect and mitigate cyber threats like phishing and ransomware in real-time.
Plus, accounting professionals can use AI to improve information sharing and communication. For example, your teams can create secure, AI-enabled workspaces where they can easily access, organize, and collaborate all in one place. This helps maintain transparency throughout the collaboration process and reduce the risk of misunderstandings and errors.
Why are some professionals worried about adopting AI tools?
One of the biggest fears that professionals have is that AI will eliminate their jobs. After all, AI can analyze extensive amounts of information from across databases much faster than a human can. And it can even automate manual tasks like data entry.
However, although AI can gather and enter data, it lacks the wisdom needed to apply that data in a relevant way for your clients. For example, an AI tool can analyze financial statements to reveal trends, ratios, and anomalies, but it can’t interpret that data within the context of the client. Humans, on the other hand, understand their clients’ situations, and can use their own expertise — coupled with AI-driven insights — to provide strategic advice and handle complex issues.
Ultimately, AI is a tool to help employees, not replace them. And the sooner you adopt AI, the sooner you’ll become more efficient in your role.
How can accounting firms ease the AI implementation process?
As your accounting firm takes on more staff, clients, and data, you’ll need to find a collaboration system that’s powerful enough to accommodate them all. Many firms have chosen Microsoft 365 because of the numerous benefits and capabilities it offers, including AI-powered features, robust security, and real-time collaboration and co-authoring.
However, adopting a new system can feel overwhelming. It’s not unlike moving into a new house, where you must unpack your numerous belongings and meticulously place each of them in the right room and right spot. So, just as you would need movers to help you unload and unpack items in your new home, your firm will need a tech provider to help transfer and organize all your firm’s data in your new unified solution.
Tools like Intapp Workspaces and Intapp Documents help Microsoft 365 users organize their data through engagement-oriented workspaces, standardized templates, and systematized structures across Microsoft 365 and your firm’s own systems. This way, the right team members can easily find and manage the right information within a single source of truth, allowing them to collaborate more effectively.
Accounting firms can also improve collaboration with Intapp Walls for Copilot. Intapp Walls for Copilot lets firms control which data Microsoft Copilot has access to, so confidential information isn’t inadvertently shared with the wrong people. The solution also automatically corrects unauthorized modifications, so professionals can work more securely with one another.
You can also rely on our Intapp Certified Implementation Partners to help your firm deploy its new Intapp solutions. Our expert partners will provide tools and methods to ease the change management process, accelerate time to market, and set your professionals up for success.
Firms need a single system where their professionals can easily connect, collaborate, and consolidate data. Schedule a demo to learn how Intapp Workspaces, Intapp Documents, and Intapp Walls for Copilot can help your professionals work together more securely and effectively.
Read the previous blog post of this series: How to fix “silent killers” of growth, innovation, and client delivery with accountant collaboration tools