The AI Question Changed, But Firms Are Missing It
- Marc T Staut, Shareholder
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Every accounting firm leader I talk to right now is asking a version of the same question: “What are we actually getting from AI?”
The data backs up that sentiment. Inside Public Accounting’s latest Data Dive on IT spending found that more than 70% of firms increased their AI budgets over the past year, but 44% report no measurable impact from those investments.
In other words, nearly half of firms can't point to any evidence that their AI investment paid off.
That's the question firm leaders are missing right now. You got the budget approved, partners signed off and team members started using the tools. So what do you have to show for it?
For years, our advice to firms centered on adopting the tools and building the habit. Most firms have done that work. Firms of all sizes now use AI tools, and team members employ them during a normal week without thinking twice. Adoption isn’t the hard part anymore.
Now, measurement is the hard part, and few firms do it.
Why you can’t answer the ROI question
When a firm rolls out a new AI tool, almost nobody stops to answer a basic question first: how long did this task take before the tool existed? Without that baseline, you have nothing to compare against six months later, when a partner asks how the investment is paying off.
The honest answer amounts to “it feels faster.” At that point, the tool functions as a glorified search engine. It might be helping, but you have no way to prove it, and that makes the next budget request a hard sell.
In most cases, the technology exceeds expectations. The failure came earlier, when you skipped defining what success looks like before the purchase order went through.
Building the next generation of metrics
This conversation is happening inside our Managing Partner Circle this year. Firms in that community track a familiar set of metrics every year, including realization and utilization. Those numbers still matter, but on their own they no longer capture the return on investment (ROI) of a firm's AI investment.
We're building a session for our next meeting to help members define the next generation of metrics built specifically to measure what AI gives back to a firm.
Consider working through those new metrics now, before you approve the next tool.
Start with capacity returned. If a task used to take three hours and now takes one, your firm recovered two hours. But where did those two hours go? Ideally, they’ll go toward billable work, advisory conversations and business development rather than disappearing into email and meetings.
Realization still applies, but to a new kind of time. If the recovered hours convert into billable work, measure that the way you always have. If a team member spends that time on something you don't invoice directly, apply your standard billable rate to it anyway. That gives you a legitimate dollar figure for capacity you got back, even without a line item on an invoice.
Client outcomes count too. Faster review cycles, quicker turnaround on deliverables, and fewer errors caught after the fact are also returns on an AI investment, even if accounting for them takes more work than reading a report.
This is a leadership discipline, not an IT task
Measurement isn’t an IT project. It’s a leadership discipline, and it has to start before the next tool purchase, not after. The ROI calculator inside the Boomer Knowledge Network (BKN) walks through the same framework in more detail.
Firms that build this discipline over the next six to twelve months will get the most value out of what they've already bought. Everyone else will keep asking whether AI works without ever building the evidence to answer the question.
Do you want to connect with other Managing Partners in the accounting profession to improve performance and grow your firm?
The Boomer Managing Partner Circle is a peer group of Managing Partners from successful and growing firms. Apply now to gain a network of trusted peers to call on as you shape your firm for the future.
Marc Staut is the Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at Boomer Consulting, Inc., where he helps CPA firms build people-first technology strategies that fuel firm-wide innovation. Known for his widely followed “What’s in Your Bag?” series and a background that spans just about every role in an IT department, Marc brings empathy, humor and deep tech insight wherever he goes, from client engagements to national conferences.
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