Futurecast 2033: The Impact of AI on the Professions
Intapp is a Business Reporter client.
Generative AI took off in late 2022 and captured our collective imagination. Leaders of organizations of all types and sizes are racing to keep up, wondering: What opportunities will it bring? What should we be doing about it now? How can we manage the risks? And how will it impact our staff?
This last question is particularly relevant for professional and financial services firms, since their “product” is their partners’ expertise and human intelligence. To help company leaders navigate this uncertain future, Intapp recently held its Future of Work Summit. We invited innovators from accounting, consulting, legal, investment banking and private equity firms to explore the impact of AI on their professions. Below, you’ll find some of the insights and challenges they shared, along with advice on how your firm can adopt and benefit from this emerging technology.
New roles, organizational structures and business models
When asked to “futurecast” 2033, participants’ visions varied based on their firm’s unique circumstances. Some predicted that career pathways in their fields will shift from specialization to generalization, as practice-, topic- and industry-specific information becomes more centralized in knowledge management systems that can be easily accessed by conversational queries. Others imagined these systems leveraging applied AI to create standard deliverables so partners can spend more time on high-value work. In both scenarios, emerging technology will profoundly impact professionals’ responsibilities and daily routines, and the skills they need to succeed.
All leaders predicted that their firms’ structures will evolve in an AI-influenced world—from breaking down departmental silos to supporting collaborative teams focused on client outcomes and relationships. Forward-thinking leaders are leveraging this technology, not to replace their professionals, but to empower them to create more client-centric business models.
AI enhances, not replaces, employees
The company leaders we convened all recognized AI’s potential to reduce their employees’ manual tasks while improving productivity and client service. For professional and financial services firms, applied AI technology can:
- Automate manual tasks: AI can provide zero-entry solutions, such as keeping contact records updated in a CRM without requiring busy partners to manually enter data. It can also pull information from calendars to auto-populate time systems, saving staff countless hours of repetitive work while more accurately capturing data. In addition, applied AI can scan new client onboarding documents and guidelines, flagging areas of regulatory concern and providing early alerts of possible conflicts.
Simplify the search for information: Whether reviewing case precedents, regulations for a particular jurisdiction, corporate family trees or past financials, professionals spend a lot of time on research. AI tools can conduct research via conversational queries or voice prompts, shrinking the time required.
Manage knowledge: By auto-tagging and organizing documents, emails, meeting minutes and messages around a specific client, opportunity or topic, AI allows professionals to quickly find the information they’re looking for to do their work, and can summarize the most salient points across pieces of content.
Create templates for standard documents: Once properly trained, AI can generate drafts for the review of simple documents such as RFP responses, standard contracts or investor notifications. This allows staff to respond more quickly to prospects, clients or investors.
Recommend next steps: Applied AI solutions can aid professionals and improve outcomes by reminding individuals of actions requiring their attention. For example, technology can alert a partner if they have not reached out to a key client in three months; assign a list of action items after a meeting has taken place; or outline the tasks in a specific process, such as onboarding a new client.
As one summit participant put it, “We look forward to AI getting rid of all of the monotonous, repetitive work that nobody likes doing so we can focus on relationships and better serving our clients.”
Barriers to success
Evolution is rarely an easy process. In our experience, advising more than 2,300 professional and financial services firms worldwide, there are common barriers that firms need to address to navigate to a future where AI can empower staff to better serve clients.
The first is culture. Some firms may inadvertently send mixed messages when it comes to innovation. For example, a firm may recognize and incentivize partners based on individual performance, which can reinforce silos and discourage company-wide collaboration. These traditional practices should be carefully reconsidered to ensure that they align with an AI-empowered future where client relationships and outcomes take center stage.
Data integrity is another potential obstacle. To take advantage of AI models, firms need centralized, clean, complete and standardized data. Yet many firms use disparate point solutions or lack sound data input and governance policies. Without a solid data strategy, AI models cannot be properly trained to generate the intelligence professionals need.
Not surprisingly, a firm’s technology investments will impact how effectively AI can be applied. Generic software solutions that fail to accommodate the unique workflows, data and regulations of professional and financial services firms won’t adequately support busy professionals. Without tailored capabilities, they will still have to rely on manual processes to accomplish their work, reducing the impact that applied AI can make on their productivity.
And finally, talent can also be a barrier to success. Professionals will need more technical skills, such as prompt engineering, to learn how to ask large language models (LLMs) for the right information. As with any new technology, and likely more so, change management that shows professionals how they’ll benefit will be critical to success. Firms will need to adapt their recruiting processes and professional development plans to ensure that staff have the skills needed for the future.
No matter what your firm’s 2033 futurecast looks like, it’s important to recognize that you don’t need to get there on your own. There’s an ecosystem of trusted advisors intimately familiar with applied AI technology, as well as the nuances of your industry, who can provide expert guidance to help you develop an AI strategy, overcome barriers to adoption and reach your goals.
We left our summit in London, and many meetings since, energized about the possibilities for a thoughtful AI strategy that will drive a quantum shift in the productivity of the firms we serve. We are excited and ready to play our role in helping our clients and the market break new ground.
Discover how applied AI is transforming professional and financial services firms.
This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.
Image: Courtesy of Intapp
