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DIGITAL AND AIIN VIEW


Katie Barker, associate director, Pierce business advisory and accountancy group


We began exploring AI by reviewing our internal processes and identifying areas we could systemise.


Using Power Apps, we’re replicating some of these processes to free up admin time, allowing us to focus more on client communication and service. We’re also reinvesting that time into improving other systems.


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From a client perspective, we’ve seen major shifts as AI becomes embedded in the Cloud software now common across the industry.


Our focus is on staying up to date so we can support clients who want to make the most of these tools. It’s also opening up new revenue streams, as we advise businesses on the app stacks that can benefit them.


There are industry specific apps that are really using AI to massively speed up processes. Investing in that just to smooth the finance function might halve someone’s workload. In an SME that’s freeing up a huge amount of time to spend on more valuable services.


There is still hesitation, because people are afraid of change. So, it’s educating them to see that the security is there, the safety is there.


From an accounting perspective it is about utilising the Cloud-based accounting software, using all the features within that and not being afraid of really trying.


So, utilise the machine learning and all the integration and make sure you have got real time data available to you and the reports are accurate. Just have that confidence that the data that is at your fingertips now is allowing you to make those business decisions.


AI is changing the role of an accountant to become more strategic and it is opening up new roles. We’re developing a Cloud team, with roles that weren’t there even five years ago.


Tony Garner, managing director, Viva PR


We’re a public relations agency and if you look back ten or 15 years our website would have said we create content for you. We’re experts at taking really complex ideas and making them simple.


We’ve got to learn quickly what AI can do for us but also where the threats are coming from. We need to understand the whole picture.


As a relatively small agency, we’re looking at how we can use it to be more productive but also how can we stay one step ahead of the clients. Because we’re not operating in a bubble, we know clients are all using AI as well.


We’ve had one client that has taken press release writing in-house, they’re using ChatGPT and then sending it to us to send out to the trade media, and it’s terrible. It is AI slop and we have to re-write it.


That may seem quite ‘doomy’ but the flip side is that it is really exciting, we are in a land of opportunity.


Generative Engine Optimisation, GEO, has become the buzz phrase in our industry and we see this as the biggest opportunity for our agency.


The Large Language Models (LLMs) are getting their information from traditional media and social media and the content that’s in there. So, there is a strong argument being made that to surface properly in the LLMs you need a really good PR approach. We’re creating GEO audits for businesses to work out how they have been found by the LLMS.


When it comes to the tools becoming available it is constant – by the time this goes to print we’ll be on to something else.


From our industry’s perspective AI is both a major threat and an opportunity. Our agency will have to transform.


We’ve come so far, so fast, that it’s hard to imagine what the world will look like in five years, but we know we’ll be on the front foot, ready to change and adapt.


Lewis McCallum, director at VARS Technology


We specialise in preventing fuel loss for petrol stations. We recover nearly £3m a year for the forecourts that we protect. It is a growing issue in the industry.


So, naturally that’s where we started looking at AI, asking how it could assist us with that, and in a loose sense we’ve been using AI since we started.


We provide an ANPR system which recognises numberplates, and we use that to see if that vehicle has been involved in an incident previously and, if it has, we alert the staff and say, ‘you know, you might not want to fuel them but it’s your decision’.


That has been really successful but it has pushed the problem to someone else and into the store rather than on the forecourt.


So, lately, we’ve been working on a facial recognition platform which does the same thing as ANPR, but inside the store. And we’re seeing some major successes with that.


Externally we use AI quite a lot. Internally, we’re actually new to it, we’re still dipping our toes into how AI can help us do what we do.


We’ve got an in-house software team, so we build a lot of what we do ourselves, and we’ve been trialling the use of Copilot to help them write codes. Productivity has had an uplift; it has helped them become quicker and to diagnose issues faster.


On the other hand, there are ‘hallucinations’. You’ll be using it to write code and it will put stuff in that you know is right. You’ll review it, it’ll be fine, and then out of the blue you’ll just get a whole load of slop that means absolutely nothing.


So, we’ve taken a step back and we’re currently assessing whether the uplift in productivity beats the need to review it more intensely at that stage.


AI is not necessarily about replacing people’s jobs, it’s more about how it will effect change in those roles.


If your business deals with information, knowledge, data, communications,


then AI is fundamentally going to change the way you do that


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