5 tips for a successful AI implementation

1. Understand your firm's needs

Before you begin researching AI solutions, you must first understand the needs of your teams. Meet with stakeholders from across your firm, learn about the challenges their teams face, and gather their specific goals and potential use cases that the solution will address. Then, consider how these goals and use cases affect the firm as a whole.

For example, a law firm might learn that their lawyers are frustrated by how long their time submissions take each week. You would then want to consider: How many non-billable hours do lawyers spend on time submissions each week? How much revenue is potentially lost as a result?

Or an accounting firm's auditing team might reveal that it needs to improve internal collaboration and communication. Questions to consider would include: How many errors have occurred because of poor internal communication? And how has it slowed down engagement work or damaged client relationships?

2. Evaluate vendors

Once you understand the problems your teams are facing, you can begin searching for providers who can meet your firm's specific needs. Make sure the AI vendor offers top-tier security and scalable architecture to support your firm as it grows. And if your firm works in a highly regulated industry, you should hire a provider with expertise in that particular industry rather than a generic vendor.

Once you've identified potential vendors and narrowed down your list, your firm's technical experts and business stakeholders can evaluate the potential solutions to determine the best fit. To maximize adoption and flatten the learning curve, ensure the AI tool is easy to use and has the features and capabilities your teams need to fulfill their predefined use cases.

3. Clean your firm's data

AI solutions use machine learning to understand your firm's data and apply that understanding to improve your firm's workflows. The software can then effectively automate tasks like data entry, and quickly provide the insights your professionals need to make data-informed decisions.

However, without high-quality data, your AI tools can't provide high-quality support. That's why it's crucial to clean your data before implementing any new AI technology.

Review your firm's existing data for completeness and accuracy, removing any duplicative or irrelevant information from your data set and adding any missing fields. You should also make sure your firm has data structures in place to enable clean, consistent data. Standardized data is critical to helping your professionals generate quality outputs.

It's also a good idea to store your data within a single source of truth, as your AI solution will likely struggle to consolidate information that's spread out across disjointed systems. For example, imagine you have a client's contact information stored within your customer relationship management software. You also have other important financial information about that client stored in your financial management system. If those systems aren't integrated, the AI won't be able to pull both data sets, and the client profile it creates will be incomplete.

When all your data is stored within a centralized location, on the other hand, AI software can easily locate it. It can then provide all the information your professionals need on whatever client, company, or engagement they're working on.

4. Create a change management plan

When introducing any new technology to your teams, it's important to clearly communicate the value the new solution will bring. If your teams understand how your firm's new AI tool will support their needs and goals, they'll be more motivated to adopt the product quickly. So, your firm must consider change management from Day One in its implementation plan for the AI tool.

Of course, no matter how advanced and user-friendly your new AI solution may be, there will always be team members who are resistant to change. To help promote higher adoption rates, we recommend rolling out your new product in phases.

Start with a small group of early adopters who are excited for the new tool and will advocate for it. These champions will help build interest around the solution, and they can address questions and concerns from any remaining skeptics. Then, as you begin to roll out the tool to the larger firm, early adopters can assist with peer trainings - leading to a smoother, quicker implementation process.

It's also important to maintain transparency throughout the rollout process. Inform your teams of any updates, and keep track of any issues that may arise so you can resolve them as quickly as possible.

Some tech providers offer implementation services to help your firm manage this complex process. Gain key insights and learn best practices from these experts to ensure a successful deployment.

5. Monitor and promote success

The AI implementation journey doesn't end after deployment. Your leaders will need to continuously monitor your AI solution's performance against your firm's predefined metrics, and ensure that the tool is helping your professionals consistently meet their goals and use cases. For example, has your firm accelerated its billing cycle and reduced billing errors? Are professionals spending less time on administrative tasks?

Collect user feedback so your firm leaders can identify any issues and adjust processes as necessary. You should also monitor the data that the API uses, as changes in data patterns can affect machine learning models and lead to errors. And you should regularly check that the solution is up to date in terms of security and compliance regulations.

As your firm grows, additional use cases and requirements will need to be addressed. That's why it's so important to choose an AI vendor that continually updates and improves its products. Work with your AI provider's account management team and customer success team to learn how the solution's updates and new capabilities can meet your firm's new needs. This helps ensure your firm gets the maximum return for its investment.

Ready to invest in AI? Schedule a demo to learn how Intapp and its AI-powered solutions can support your firm.