AI is such a hot topic in the accounting profession right now. And, whatever your views on it, there’s a general acceptance that it’s going to have an impact on how work gets done, particularly compliance work.

But what about your clients? Are they taking advantage of the productivity gains that AI brings?

You might be surprised by the findings from some British Chambers of Commerce research:

• 43% of SMEs have no plans to use AI technology
• only 25% of SMEs are currently using AI
• B2C businesses are even less likely to adopt AI, with 50% saying they have no plans to adopt it.

But on the other hand:

• 42% of companies say they believe AI will increase their productivity overall, while almost none (2%) expect it to cause a decrease. 

What’s going on?

If these businesses can see the potential, why aren’t they using it, or at least trying it out?

I recently met up with an old friend who gave me a hint at the answer. He’s a brilliant computer programmer and a real geek (in the nicest possible way), so you’d think he’d be all over this new tech, wouldn’t you?

But he told me he’s too busy to even take a look at it. I’m sure he knows how much potential it has, but he just doesn’t have the time to invest in making it work for him.

I worry that my friend may get left behind if he can’t see how to make use of the technology, especially in his field.

How many of your clients are in the same situation? How many of them risk being left behind by their competitors who will put in the time?

An opportunity for you

If you’re like most of the accountants I speak to, you’ve at least dabbled with AI. Maybe you’ve just asked ChatGPT to write an email for you or maybe you’re already using it to analyse data, summarise meetings, automate routine tasks or process invoices.

Either way, you’ve now got some idea of the huge potential it has for saving time and boosting productivity. But if your clients haven’t experimented – and those statistics suggest that 75% haven’t – they perhaps don’t understand how it could benefit them.

Another survey by the Office of National Statistics looked at the reasons why SMEs haven’t adopted AI. The top three barriers were:

• difficulty identifying business use cases
• lack of expertise
• cost.

Do those sound familiar? Whatever level of AI you’re implementing it’s likely that you had the same concerns too. And even if you just use it to write emails, you now understand the benefits for your firm.

Which gives you a big opportunity for helping your clients to do the same.

‘But I’m not an AI expert!’

You don’t have to be an AI expert or to pretend that you are.

In a recent online session with AVN members and Accountants KnowHow Club subscribers, one of the participating accountants said this:

‘I think that what accountants can learn through adopting AI in their own business could actually become an extension of advisory. Accountancy businesses aren't unique in the way that we want to streamline our processes; our clients are facing the same sort of pressures. So, if you've got some practical experience of implementing AI in your own business, it seems a missed opportunity not to turn that experience into an extra string to our bow.’

Which makes such a lot of sense.

You only have to be one step ahead of your client to make this work. The key, as ever, is to ask the right questions.

What are their pain points? What’s taking up more time than it should? What’s frustrating them?

Here’s just one example of how they – and you – could use AI in a way that’s very simple but very powerful.

After meeting a prospective new client/customer send them a summary of all the key points. It helps you to stay at the top of the prospect’s mind and emphasises your thoroughness and professionalism. If your meeting is online, Zoom for example, just upload the transcript into ChatGPT, Claude or another of the AI platforms. As a prompt, try one of these:

• Summarise the key decisions and action items from this meeting transcript.
• Based on these discussion points, create an agenda for our next meeting.
• Extract the main concerns raised during the prospect meeting for follow-up.

(If your meeting is in person, just ask if it’s OK to record on your phone and then create a transcript from the recording.)

Something that would take you hours to do yourself, AI can create in seconds. Try it yourself and then try it out with your clients. As that accountant said, AI gives you another string to your bow, so why not use it?

In October I’m presenting a new webinar series on AI for accountants. It’s called Understand, Embrace and Deploy AI in your Accounting Firm and I’ll be covering everything from the basics – using it to enhance productivity, customer experience, engaging your team, automating processes etc – right up to how to create agents and tools that will absolutely transform your firm. If you want to keep ahead of the curve on this, I hope you’ll join me.

Shane Lukas: AVN – The Accountants’ Network