Thought Leadership

Before I became an accountant, I wanted to be an ergonomics specialist.

And I implemented this interest into an accounting company created from scratch in 2009, Epta Advisors (formerly called Szwak i Spółka Accountants), which in 2023 already employed 60 people, but thanks to consistency in digitizing processes, it increased efficiency and reduced employment to about 30 people this year.

Instead of filling in the fields of the accounting system with digits, already 12 years ago we implemented and improved the electronic documents/invoices workflow, which once entered sent data between subsequent systems and, by handling over 100 thousand invoices per month, increased the efficiency and speed of accounting by over 300%.

The next big step was the first online business intelligence report created in 2018, which enabled clients to obtain online financial reports of interest to them 24/7/365.

By improving processes, we have implemented electronic leave requests and salary strips in the payroll department, i.e. information that employees of our clients most often ask about every day.

We have shortened the process from issuing/receiving an invoice or payment to reporting these events in P&L reports, settlements or budget implementation from several dozen days to a few seconds. Customers are satisfied, our specialists have gained more time and power, and our company has an advantage over the competition and a high EBIDTA ratio.

These were three key areas, but over the last 15 years we have been gradually developing our knowledge, technology and implementing improvements that digitize subsequent processes in the work of accountants, payroll and analysts, moving from the role of calculators to advisors.

AI allows you to achieve incredible speed in the implementation of repetitive activities, which are the principle in our industry while raising the quality of this service to a very high level. Also, translating a document takes a second and allows us to internationalize our services.

The impact of AI - becoming advisors

When thinking about AI, we think with respect and appreciation that it is not worth kicking a horse, it is better to ride it, which is why we use these tools, configure them and improve them.

By becoming advisors, we have robots, AI and tools at our disposal on a daily basis, which do our current manual work, and at the same time we have time to maintain relationships with clients, because if business was made by numbers, mathematicians would be billionaires, but business is made by relationships. Our job is to count money, report exemplarily and keep this information discreet. It's a profession based on trust. Trust that we don't have in AI.

Our clients will not ask AI about their money, about plans related to it or suggestions for decisions. This is our human advantage. AI will not eat lunch with a client, play golf with them, or ask about the family's health.

Therefore, with AI in the engine of our accounting programs, we care about the development of our soft skills, listening and communication skills, as well as interests, whether culinary or sports. This is appreciated and is our advantage.