Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly accelerating – and with it, the accounting and finance sphere is evolving. Siegfried professionals are staying ahead of the curve. Across the country, our people are embracing, adopting, and leveraging AI as a tool for enhancing productivity, efficiency, accuracy, creativity, collaboration, and, ultimately, client value. Explore how five of our Professional Resources have taken the initiative with AI in various industries and project types, elevating the Siegfried client experience through digital agility.
Streamlining and increasing strategic capabilities at a leading AI company
Client: Leading global AI research and deployment company
How Louis Elevated with AI: Data organization, tracker/file building, technical accounting and financial reporting research, meeting notes and summarization
Louis, Associate Manager in Silicon Valley, has long been curious about AI and its potential to transform accounting and finance. This passion blossomed into action and results while engaged on a high-growth, frontier AI organization. Surrounded by finance professionals who embraced AI tools for enhanced productivity, Louis took his interest to the next level, adopting the technology as both a thought partner and coworker in a rapidly evolving environment.
Louis was initially deployed to the client’s compute and infrastructure accounting team, where he assisted with the accounting and finance needs of their single largest expense – AI compute, comprising the computational resources that power both continued research and deployed products. This required complex accounting under ASC 842 to manage the company’s leased supercomputing cloud data centers. On a lean team grappling with explosive growth, Louis wore many hats, ranging from technical accounting to financial reporting and SOX and IPO readiness.
To successfully handle the client’s diverse and changing needs, Louis leveraged generative AI daily to assist with research and task automation, improving deliverable quality and saving time for more critical priorities.
“I treat AI as a virtual associate or offshore resource,” said Louis. “Having it produce a first draft acts as an incredible productivity multiplier. I’m always asking myself how AI can help with any task!”
AI proved to be useful for turning meeting notes into deliverable drafts, as well as an incredible technical accounting and financial reporting research tool – providing detailed, comprehensive information with great speed. Louis also found AI’s voice integration feature to be a handy brainstorming partner during long commutes.
Louis further utilized generative AI to map data from the client’s many, individual compute lease contract files into a consolidated tracker. Between iterative prompt engineering and review, Louis, supported by AI, assembled a file in 45 minutes that would have taken four to eight hours of manual effort.
“At Siegfried, we are very focused on improving our digital agility and building our bigger futures. As Siegfried SEALs, we’re in a strong position to adopt AI – we’ve already mastered foundational delegation skills and gained proficiency with other software,” Louis explained. “AI enhances the value we bring to our clients, to our own lives, and to those around us.”
Enhancing research, drafting, and brainstorming in the retail sector
Client: Private global luxury retail and real estate company
How Javen Elevated with AI: Technical accounting and GAAP research, drafting technical memos and white papers, strategic brainstorming
Javen, Director & National Technical Leader in Chicago, has deeply experienced generative AI’s value in three ways – research, drafting, and brainstorming. When engaged as the Director of Financial Reporting and Technical Accounting in a complex environment, he brought AI’s value to the forefront, bolstering his success at a multi-brand luxury retail client.
Javen relied on AI as a launching pad for performing the specific technical accounting and GAAP research required of his role. The client dealt with unique areas spanning many different accounting sections, including leases and litigation matters, as well as fair value measurement and purchase accounting. Generative AI served as a convenient, and fast-moving, starting point for reviewing relevant literature, commentaries, and guidance notes. Javen leveraged AI’s summaries and overviews to jumpstart deeper research, saving time by quickly obtaining a baseline level of knowledge.
Additionally, Javen prompted AI with questions for strategic brainstorming, understanding different perspectives when debates surrounding the best approach arose.
“If you’re going into a conversation with different groups, or even higher-level executive calls, where there’s a topic that could be debated, consulting AI could source relevant, useful context and arguments – supported by industry best practices – for one direction or another,” Javen explained.
When it came time to articulate his findings, Javen continued to utilize AI as a useful tool – organizing technical memos and white papers in an ideal way for sharing.
“Siegfried professionals don’t always have direct experience with their clients’ industries and project types – we have to be more resourceful,” said Javen. “AI is just another tool for us to be resourceful. It’s very powerful in navigating unfamiliar situations.”
An agent of productivity and efficiency at a Fortune 500 tech company
Client: Fortune 500 global technology company
How Max Elevated with AI: Benchmarking analysis, creating standard operating procedures (SOPs)
When Max, Senior Manager in New York, was deployed to a technology client in the heart of Silicon Valley’s AI industry, he couldn’t help but explore AI’s untapped potential. While his client was at the forefront of the AI movement – boasting best-in-class engineering of liquid cooling data servers – they had yet to implement the technology throughout the company’s accounting and finance operations. Max seized the opportunity to leverage generative AI as his personal productivity and efficiency agent, elevating his client work.
Engaged within the client’s SEC reporting team under the Vice President of Technical Accounting, SEC Reporting, and Global SOX compliance, Max assisted with the filing of a 10-K and the coordination of their 10-Q filing, as well as with their quarterly and year-end processes. After the 10-K filing, the client’s focus shifted to enhancing their financial statement disclosures. As part of this process, he began using AI to support his benchmarking analyses – understanding how the client’s peers publicly disclosed statements of cash flows, balance sheet line items, new accounting pronouncements, and other key financial statement disclosures – insights that guided internal disclosure decisions.
The client was also disclosing Adjusted EBIDTA for the first time. Max used AI to quickly identify how other public companies in their industry had disclosed EBIDTA as a non-GAAP measure, which also supported the development of a standardized benchmarking template. The templates that Max created were easily scalable and aided in similar analyses down the line.
“AI helps me to be more productive and improves the quality of my work. It enables me to deliver results efficiently and offers frameworks that I can adapt and apply across different areas,” shared Max.
Max took this same approach to creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for key business processes – utilizing AI to make the documentation clearer, cleaner, and more readable, as well as creating streamlined templates for future use. Max further explored AI at the intersection of personal and professional interaction, consulting AI as a thought partner to navigate team dynamics and approach problems or roadblocks.
“At a high level, AI can be a really powerful tool for providing direction,” continued Max. “Not only does AI allow me to complete my work more efficiently, but I can do it at a higher quality. As Siegfried professionals, AI elevates the value that we provide to our clients.”
Creating clarity and comprehensive solutions at a telecom company
Client: Internet and telecommunications service provider
How Zach Elevated with AI: Internal audit and control implementation, project management
When a telecommunications client spun off from a larger entity, Zach, Senior Manager & Team Leader in Denver, stepped in to assist the newly formed internal audit team. Reporting to the Director of Internal Audit and SOX, Zach dove into problem areas, developed recommendations, and implemented solutions. He was then leveraged by the client’s customer financial services teams – who were experiencing turnover and needed organizational clarity – to provide investigational accounting, project management, and process improvement support.
Zach saw great returns in employing generative AI in his initial internal audit capacity. When an accounting error resulted in the need for a new review control, Zach prompted AI to draft a control description, generate review checklists for the control owner, and brainstorm common pitfalls of this control implementation within the telecommunications industry. Providing supporting documentation upfront to a new control owner significantly reduced errors and remediation efforts.
“From a control perspective, AI is really beneficial for layering in industry-specific data, but more broadly, it helps with the language, terminology, and accounting nuances of industries you may not have experience in,” Zach explained. “In the past, I would have needed someone from the company to spend time and explain – AI streamlines and allows for greater strategic focus.”
Zach additionally elevated his project management by leveraging AI as a thought partner when kicking off a large, cross-functional effort. As Zach worked on solving challenging, recurring problems as an external professional, AI provided a sounding board to ensure that he was solving the right problems, the right way, with the best communication strategy.
“Project management is challenging. It involves motivating 40 to 50 people to move in the right direction, communicating efficiently and clearly so that everyone understands goals and status, and overcoming challenges. AI helps you stay organized and aligned.”
Organizing data for executive-level insights in private equity
Client: Leading global alternative investment firm
How Alexander Elevated with AI: Data consolidation and standardization, business and market insights
On an engagement spanning several years and diverse business areas within an alternative investment firm, Alexander, Senior Manager & Relationship Team Leader in Florida, found the key to better focus and better insights – the use of AI. In roles across valuations, fund accounting, and system implementations, Alexander continually consulted AI for transforming complex data and processes into helpful and actionable executive-level takeaways.
When working with valuations, Alexander created a prompt to sort through data in an efficient and effective way, and he collaborated with fund heads and operating partners to do the same for inventory analysis. He prompted generative AI to perform comparisons on quarterly data for regulatory and internal reporting purposes, allowing fund heads to identify trends and solutions.
Continuing to reduce manual effort through generative AI, Alexander built a vendor spend matrix that streamlined data from over 150 portfolio companies. This provided insights that helped the Chief Technology Officer to look at spend strategically. Alexander then partnered with UiPath to explore agentic AI, creating an automation to collect, review, and compare all audited financial statements.
“When you’re dealing with massive amounts of data, AI is an incredible tool for organizing that data and getting your analysis started, rather than spending too much time spinning your wheels,” said Alexander.
Alexander further supported strategic direction by utilizing AI to compare company values against market research, but he also found AI useful on a smaller scale. On a daily basis, he employed AI for work proofing and, leveraging AI’s speech functionality, enhancing interactions and presentations.
“AI can help you not only provide insights that executives care about but also work through how to best present those insights,” Alexander explained. “People have short-term attention spans; leveraging AI helps me tailor my communication to become more engaging and relevant to certain audiences.”
Alexander even proposed the adoption of two new AI tools – one which connects to Outlook to draft responses and book meetings and another which provides private equity deal sourcing.
“AI can help you do things differently and better, which results in different and better outcomes. With AI, I do my job better and faster, delivering on my unique value as a Siegfried professional.”
