There are myriad software solutions touting some form of artificial intelligence in their code, some of which are quite useful to accountants, but Joe Woodard — head of Woodard Events which runs the Scaling New Heights conference — believes we’re about to break into the next evolution, and not a moment too soon.
Today, he said, we can see the increasing sophistication of software intelligence in many areas, such as optical character recognition. While this technology has been around for decades, he noted that in recent years its capacities have dramatically increased. Not only can computers recognize text in a document, more and more they are also capable of understanding its context and knowing how to process it. This goes beyond simply recognizing what’s a gas bill and what’s meals and entertainment. He said programs today can look at a document and determine the tax year, the type of return and its relevance to other bookkeeping concerns, among other capacities. In this respect, he said, these advances have greatly improved workflow at firms.
“It can route the document to workflow systems, even though it’s just a document system with no workflow attached. Products … will contextually route, by nature, to certain folders. What I really like is not just when it’s automated folder routing, I like when its embedded in the workflow in its proper context so if I work on that 1040 and wait for a basis statement, not only does the basis statement from the client drop right into the workflow, my workflow solution also tells me I can move forward with that step in my office. This is out there, not brand new, but people just don’t know it’s super-exciting technology,” he said.
The rise of cloud computing, especially cloud-based suites like Microsoft 365, have enabled this development as it greatly reduces the cost of accessing these tools; in the immediate term at least, getting a subscription is a lot less expensive than buying the whole package and installing it on your network.
As exciting as the present is, though, Woodard believes the future will be even more so because developers will start finding answers to solutions that, today, remain just out of reach. One example he brought up was “touchless automation of the bookkeeping process.” While people like to talk about it a lot, he said, the truth is that even companies that have built their entire brand identities on automation still need at least some human intervention.
“We like to say we understand it, but in truth even corporations where that’s their entire vision … have made it clear we’re only a double-digit percentage to that goal. The rest is done by human beings. And we’re talking about companies funded into the hundreds of millions in order to create [full] automation,” he said.
Given that there are some firms that are almost completely automated and others that are barely there at all, he estimated that, on average, the profession is about halfway to this goal. Once it gets closer to 100%, firms will be able to really unlock the power of automation, with the computer being able to truly handle the routine work at a firm with much less supervision from a human.
And what will happen when we go further than that? While conceding this is far away, Woodard said we’ll eventually see that same context-reading we see in optical character recognition today applied to actual business insights. Computers will not only be able to read and understand the data, they will interpret it to create genuinely good business advice based on that information.
“I would like to see computers do more of what business coaches currently have to do. A computer can analyze input. A computer has a really hard time interpreting multiple pieces of data across multiple sectors of a business — like operations, financial, management and technology — in order to create a set of actions a business must perform. Now, fortunately, that’s job security for quite some time for the business coaching community because it will be a while before AI gets that level of complexity, but to put it succinctly, when AI can create actionable management advice, not just actionable management data points, then the machines will have taken a big step forward,” he said.
This story is part of an Accounting Today series called “The Frontier,” where we explore the cutting edge of accounting technology through conversations with thought leaders across the country, who will share with us their observations, hopes, concerns and even a few predictions here and there. We’ll see you at the Frontier.
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