Split into two streams of ‘AI Trailblazer’ and ‘Sustainability Champion’, the first regional winners were announced during PrimeGlobal’s dynamic ‘MegaWeek’ conference in Texas, where over 100 professionals met to collaborate and share insights with world-leading experts. The impact of advancing AI on the evolving profession featured as a priority discussion throughout.

With an independent judging panel, key criteria for the AI awards included creativity, increases in revenue growth or cost savings, and opportunities to enter new markets. Forming partnerships and potential scalability also featured along with use of metrics to assess impact.

In selecting Pinion, judges were impressed by a compelling business case, strategic AI implementation, and a marketable product that enhances internal efficiencies.

Pinion’s digital journey to AI trailblazer

In 2022, Pinion launched an ambitious transformation, guided by the purpose statement, ‘Enrich global resources by revolutionising information and insights’.

At the heart of Pinion’s transformation has been its commitment to becoming ‘digital first’, moving beyond the traditional firm model to shape a future where data interconnectivity and AI tools are seamlessly embedded into daily operations.

AI-Enabled Document Extraction

Pinion currently utilises trained models to extract data from documents commonly used in the accounting industry. Expanding the range of document types processed through these models is a key component of their near-term strategy to reduce repetitive human data entry and increase automation in workflows.

Pinion’s subsidiary, Robot Accounts, provides AI-driven accounting automations that transform data processing for clients, especially in agriculture. Launched in 2019, with machine learning experts Matt Powell and Josh Kinabrew, Robot Accounts began with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for invoice and document extraction.

Today, it automates tasks like bill coding, inventory management, and bank reconciliations, delivering data quality and speed that's difficult to achieve manually. Initially focused on agriculture, where it helps farmers analyse field-level profitability, Robot Accounts has grown over 100% annually and is expanding to serve diverse CAS practices globally, aligning with Pinion’s digital-first model.

Pinion AI: Empowering Firmwide Engagement with Generative AI

In January 2024, Pinion developed Pinion AI, an internal web application leveraging GPT-4 through Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, securely deployed within the firm’s environment.

Following extensive testing and soft launches with small teams, Pinion AI was rolled out firmwide in April 2024. Since then, Pinion has continued to train users and expand potential use cases for generative AI within its accounting and consulting services. Usage has steadily increased, with employee engagement reaching 45% and totalling 7,000 conversations in the first month after launch.

To further drive engagement and highlight employee-led applications, Pinion launched a firmwide contest in May 2024, encouraging users to share their most effective prompts.

Across Pinion's client-facing and operational teams, it is already seeing broad adoption of generative AI, applying it to a range of tasks. For example, Pinion AI assists in drafting content for internal messaging, sales materials, and personalised communications, enhancing consistency and efficiency across communication channels. Additionally, the tool blends accounting expertise with language generation, supporting tasks like crafting footnotes for audits and even helping troubleshoot complex technical tasks, such as creating Excel formulas, PowerBI queries, and automation flows in PowerAutomate.

Pinion's current efforts are focused on developing more tailored use cases for generative AI tools. One of these tools is designed to interpret trust documents, enabling practitioners to quickly query objective elements with links back to the source document, significantly reducing the manual work involved in reading and annotating.

An interactive AI-driven chat feature is also being developed for the company handbook, providing employees with quick, accurate responses to their inquiries while reducing demands on internal support teams.

Platform-Specific AI

Pinion regularly assesses ‘build vs. buy’ decisions as vendors integrate AI into their platforms. By monitoring, testing, and adopting these tools, Pinion enhances its workflows and plans for continued expansion. Key vendors include Dayshape, an AI-driven planning and scheduling system, and Mindbridge, which provides AI-powered risk intelligence for audits.

Off-the-shelf (Microsoft Copilot & other vendors) approaches to AI adoption represent some of the quicker gains to be had within the AI space. However, as Pinion is uniquely situated with an industry focus in agriculture, it creates the opportunity for the development of industry-specific applications and insights for AI.

Building a Data-Driven Future

The future will see more self-managed AI applications focused on Pinion’s firm and client data. To create this future, Pinion is investing in standardised, digitised data collection, an expanded data warehouse, and system upgrades to ensure future data connectivity. With existing data properly structured, predictive model value will increase significantly.

As AI tools become more available and cost-effective, Pinion will make ongoing investments in human capital, software, and change management to keep pace. Moving beyond traditional compliance models, Pinion aims to deliver unique, industry-specific insights to clients.

Alex Breitinger, Chief Insights Officer at Pinion, said