3 articles
Last week the joke was that your client's agent could talk to your firm's agent and clear the busywork overnight. That's right — for the friction. But today your advisory relationship is largely a byproduct of all that transactional contact, and automating it blindly severs the thing advisory grows from. Here's how to tell the contact you should automate from the contact that is the whole business.
Every system in your client's business is becoming something their AI can reach and act on — their bank, their payroll, their card processor. Every one except the firm that's supposed to be the most intelligent of the lot. Here's what it looks like when an accounting firm designs for the agent, not just the person — and why you start with the contact nobody enjoyed anyway.
The KPIs that built successful accounting firms — utilization, AHR, profit per partner — were designed for a world where humans do all the work. When AI becomes a production participant, those metrics aren't wrong. They're just no longer enough. Here are three metrics I think matter now — and I want you to challenge me on every one of them.
