Completed Economics & Business Computing & AI

The Development of an Artificial Intelligence Recommender System for Advisory Service Provision at Scale

Funder UKRI
Recipient organisation Fluidly Limited
Funding £1.4M
Period Apr 2019 — Jun 2021

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Small accountancy firms are drowning in data from thousands of clients and need a way to turn that flood of numbers into useful advice without hiring an army of analysts. The problem is straightforward: cloud accounting software now generates real-time financial data for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but most accountancy firms still rely on slow, manual compliance work—producing reports on what already happened rather than advising on what to do next. Analysing that data for each client individually is too time-consuming and expensive to do at scale. This project builds a web-based tool called the Client Advisory Insight Engine (CAIE). It automatically monitors financial performance across an entire client portfolio, flags clients based on key metrics, and uses artificial intelligence to recommend specific advisory actions. Accountants then know which client to call and what to discuss, without sifting through raw data themselves. If it works, CAIE could let small accountancy firms offer affordable, proactive financial advice to hundreds or thousands of SME clients—advice that currently only large companies with dedicated finance teams receive. That could improve financial decision-making and business health across the small business sector, which forms the backbone of the UK economy.

View original technical description
"As data technologies and machine learning are increasingly being applied to accountancy software, more and more traditional accountancy functions are becoming automated; from bookkeeping to reconciliations and reports. The current challenge for accountancy companies is how to utilise technology and the deeper data insight capabilities on offer to create new opportunities to engage with customers and to open new market channels -- to move from a compliance-based reporting service to an advisory service adding value by providing actionable strategic advice to improve client's financial health and decision making. The analysis of data is time-consuming and requires new skill sets. The challenge in offering an advisory service across the client base (which may run to thousands of SME clients) is how to analyse the oceans of client data now available in real time, directly from cloud servers. How can timely strategic insight and advice for clients be provided in a cost-effective way for the accountancy firms that is affordable for SMEs? This project will develop a Client Advisory Insight Engine (CAIE), a web-based client engagement solution to enable resource efficient remote monitoring of SME clients' financial performance across an Accountancy firm's client portfolio. CAIE prioritises clients based on key financial performance metrics, produced automatically and in real time from a client's cloud accounting data. CAIE utilises AI to recommend advisory actions for accountants to open timely advisory conversations with their clients. CAIE enables a cost-effective advisory service at scale."

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Continuity Grant for The Development of an Artificial Intelligence Recommender System for Advisory Service Provision at Scale
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Original classification

Collaborative R&D

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