How to drive
new revenue with
practical automation
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Are you using AI and machine learning today?
For accounting professionals, the time for saying “change is coming” has passed. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming the way we work and how we add value to clients with practical automation, deeper insights into data, and streamlined decision making.
AI is the overarching concept of using machines to simulate human thinking and behavior, while ML is the subset of AI that allows machines to learn and take action from data based on principles of human logic.
With AI and ML, you can focus your experience and judgement on the core needs of the business without wasting time on data manipulation. These technologies are driving new opportunities for revenue, enhancing profitability, and fueling the shift to advisory services.
The only question that matters is: How will your firm adapt to the new world?
This eBook is your gateway to AI and ML for accountants.
How practical automation supports your firm
Driving impact for clients
Opening up new revenue streams
Establishing continuous financial and people planning
Scaling data-driven analytics
How automation propels accounting firms toward growth
In a world where uncertainty is the standard, accounting firms can no longer rely on traditional approaches if they intend to maintain any growth.
In fact, the old way to secure new revenue and drive growth won’t work anymore, and accounting firms must prepare for the future — today. And that starts with technology.
Most accountants already realize that automation is simply the next step in accounting evolution... as vital and necessary as embracing the calculator or the spreadsheet. (You wouldn’t spend your days performing calculations on an abacus, right?!)
But they might not realize that automation is their key to new growth, too.
The latest generation of accounting trends will allow you to stop spending your time simply “keeping up” with manual data work. Instead, you’ll get to spend your time actually using that data to create a value-focused, tech-forward firm that attracts new clients and grows your book of business.
And here’s how.
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Automation creates bandwidth
There’s no denying it: AI is faster at completing many of the tasks that your accountants accomplish every day, and it’s more effective. Imagine what growth-focused projects your staff could take on if they had more time. Perhaps your firm could expand its offering to include more value-based services like advisory or forecasting, or you could increase the total number of clients each accountant is able to support and scale by sheer volume.
Regardless of how you choose to use your newfound free time, automation will drive your firm’s revenue to new heights.
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Automation is more accurate
Human error can lead you to overlook the same error repeatedly, especially when it’s as simple as transposing a couple numbers or missing a decimal. To AI, however, those minor errors are incredibly different — and it will spot them immediately.
"High-quality AI will not only use automation to categorize but also to correct mistakes and adapt the structure for future processes."
Leveraging automation technology to improve your firm’s quality of work will produce a twofold effect on your book of business: it will strengthen your relationship with existing clients, introducing opportunities to upsell or transition them to different pricing models, and it will attract more clients looking for quality accounting. Either way, your firm will scale with your decision to implement AI.
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Automation can reduce burnout and save money
Burnout isn’t uncommon in the accounting profession, especially these days. Even experienced accountants quickly grow tired of staring at the same sets of numbers all the time — and that burnout costs money. Finding quality talent, training, and creating opportunities for professional development or advancement is hard to do when bookkeeping is a major obstacle.
But AI technology can empower employees to pursue new projects, assist in or advance toward other revenue-generating areas of the firm, and deepen client relationships. It can even remove the bookkeeping tasks that no one wants to do, thereby reducing the likelihood of expensive turnover down the road.
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Whether or not to automate isn’t the question
The question is more about how you choose to make automation work for your firm and drive new growth.
Automation and AI are already revolutionizing functions in nearly every industry, and yet this is only the beginning. These are just the technologies and trends we’ve begun to adopt as of this week, this month, or this year. And on the horizon, there’s so much more to be discovered, understood, adapted, and applied. Bringing the right automated solution into your firm can make a big difference as to how your accounting firm conducts its business, differentiates itself from the competition, and positions itself for growing your book of business.
How Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP improves risk analysis using AI
Ranked among the top 20 public accounting firms in the United States, DHG is passionate about helping clients succeed. The organization offers comprehensive assurance, tax, and advisory services to businesses worldwide. A commitment to people and innovation is at the heart of what DHG does. The team of over 2,000 professionals goes beyond offering clients personalized service and uncompromising integrity; they take a resourceful approach to problem-solving to help clients achieve their goals.
This case study walks through the due diligence, deployment, and usage of MindBridge Ai Auditor at the firm. You can read the full story here.
Testing the power of Ai Auditor gives DHG a competitive edge
Understanding that the team would have to vet MindBridge Ai Auditor and work the platform into their existing processes didn’t faze DHG. That’s because they wanted to be in the upper echelon of firms that were exploring and utilizing these new technologies. The Big Four were already sinking millions of dollars into their own proprietary platforms. Knowing they couldn’t match that spend on a custom solution, DHG saw MindBridge as a company that could help innovative firms outside the Big Four such as theirs leverage the benefits of AI technology.
“Part of the product’s appeal for us was the potential for enhanced efficiency — allowing us to redirect the time saved into more meaningful audit procedures. If we can become more efficient using this AI software, then that was something we definitely wanted to explore. But we also genuinely wanted to know how this could help us be more effective auditors. When we began working with Ai Auditor, we started with journal entry testing. In our testing of the product, we put data sets into Ai Auditor with known fraud to see if the platform would find it. Pretty consistently, it made those finds. Ai Auditor certainly does a good job highlighting that there’s risk in a specific data set compared to a similar data set in the same industry.”
After initially vetting the platform, DHG was ready to take things a step further with Ai Auditor. Roark and his team reached out to several long-standing clients and asked whether they could use their data to assess the auditing platform’s capabilities.
According to Roark, one client was not only willing to participate but felt reassured by the request: “Very early on, I had a CFO of a pretty large, privately-held company with worldwide locations say: ‘We don’t have the time and the resources to trial these types of technologies on our data. But I’m so happy to hear that my auditors do. I believe it’s my fiduciary duty to make sure that you are applying these more advanced tools to our data to help us identify where we might have issues.’”
DHG auditors spend up to a third less time on journal entry testing
Today, more clients want to hear how DHG is using MindBridge software to improve the audit process. It’s something that usually comes up in proposals. Often, clients ask, ‘What advanced technologies are you using? How do you use them? How do they make you better?’ After years of working with Ai Auditor and incorporating its use in the auditing process, DHG has a lot to share.
“MindBridge Ai Auditor helps us to understand the story of the data a little bit better. We’re able to perform a lot of different analytics on the data and see results in an easy-to-understand manner."
"So instead of running a couple of queries on millions of rows of data, pulling a few samples, and looking at individual transactions, the MindBridge software is running a myriad of tests automatically."
"As an auditor, I can focus on exploring the data trends, the risk characteristics, and the stories that are being told by the data. Since the software helps to detect data anomalies, we can redirect that time savings to evaluating the results and asking our clients more insightful questions.”
Since implementing Ai Auditor, the DHG team is not only saving time in risk assessment but they can now identify risks that might have gone undetected using traditional methods. With these experiences, users are keen to keep using the AI accounting software for more client projects.
“Once our auditors were able to use Ai Auditor a few times, they wanted to use it in even more applications. I think what gets people’s attention is how easy the software is to use from the start. For instance, one of the piloting users told me: ‘I expected that we would spend more time in the first year of using the MindBridge platform since it’s new and there’s a learning curve. Yet, we spent a third less time on a single application than the prior year.’ That’s time the audit team can deploy in other ways.”
Ai Auditor helps DHG build stronger client relationships
Critical thinking is a core competency that DHG fosters among its team. The firm understands that technology will continue to evolve, so instead of being tool-centric, they want their team to focus on what they do best — helping their clients solve problems and achieve goals including fair financial reporting and a robust audit process.
“We pride ourselves on being solutions-oriented. We want our folks thinking about how to help their private company client identify risks, ensure reliable financial reporting, protect assets, improve controls, and to enhance the overall business and operations. With Ai Auditor in our toolbelt, we’re able to ask smarter questions, better understand our clients, and identify where those critical issues might be. All of that makes for stronger audits and a stronger relationship,” explained Roark.
Today, the DHG team is having more informed and targeted conversations with their clients. That’s because they’re honing their talents and time to provide deeper insights and analysis. This is a win-win scenario for both DHG and their clients.
“We’re in an industry where time is billable and there’s a lot of demands on our team’s time. We don’t want to spend our time auditing areas of low risk. We want to spend our time auditing financial data that has a higher potential of being materially misstated.
With this user-friendly platform, all professionals, whether technologically confident or not, can easily navigate the data findings and pull reports to investigate things further. According to Roark, “One of the biggest benefits we saw with the MindBridge platform was this ‘data scientist in the box’ concept. A lot of the hard data analysis is done by the platform so the auditor can spend their time focusing on the results. No matter the person’s technological skill level, they can use Ai Auditor to gather insights.”
Moving into the future with AI
Part of what makes the platform so easy to use is the built-in training sessions. If a user needs assistance or additional guidance on a specific feature, quick video tutorials are a mouse click away. “The MindBridge platform provides that just-in-time training element that supports our users in doing different types of analysis. That’s especially helpful in those first few times of learning a specific feature or just when someone might have forgotten how to do something,” said Roark.
With the results they have experienced so far, DHG feels confident that they can use the Ai Auditor platform to help become stronger auditors. And as they continue evolving processes to strike a balance between responsible audit methodology and innovation, the firm trusts that MindBridge will be there to support them.
“We feel lucky to have aligned with a like-minded company such as MindBridge. Their team is receptive to feedback and open to having constructive discussions. And from my experience, not all vendors are like that. Just having those types of conversations with MindBridge has been invaluable to our team at DHG in adopting new AI technology,” concluded Roark.
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