Is AI forcing accountants into the role of ‘system designer’?

This newsletter has touched a lot on the evolving role of accountants, including what happens when accountants become product innovators. But are these accountants-turned-product-owners just outliers - or is this part of a wider trend? 

Clearly we’re not there yet, but I truly believe that AI has the potential to disrupt our industry for the better.

Meaningful AI strategies will fundamentally change a firm’s service delivery (at some point in the future). I’m hopeful this will enable us to deliver a more human and relationship-led experience for business owners.

And, in a way, that also means the basic role of an accountant will shift from an operator (executing tasks) to a system designer role (building tech-led systems). Systems have always been key to accounting. But where traditional systems have been designed to be hybrid offline/online, our industry is transforming to become digital-first. To a certain extent, we’re system designers already, but some of those systems we’re designing are offline as well as online.

This is largely true whether firms decide to buy or build their AI solutions. Which route they take comes down to their current AI appetite; whether they see enough future value in AI to invest in talent behind it. 

It will soon(ish) be possible for a firm to expand its AI applications from admin-focused to more transformative use cases. AI for admin gives us a good foundation to grow from, helping firms work more efficiently and effectively without deep working knowledge of AI. But a firm that wants to build its own solutions will almost certainly need a team in-house with at least advanced low/no-code capabilities.

What does this mean for how we hire and train teams? Will firms need as many accountants in-house? What skills will these accountants need?

And, ultimately, would that shift be a good thing for the future of accountancy - or does it mean that for many people, their time in the industry is up?