As Artificial intelligence (AI) looms large over businesses, leaving many owners concerned over where it may take them in the future, Emerald Business Advisers director Valerie Rowe-Mitchell is helping her clients meet the challenge head-on.
Valerie and her team of experienced accounting advisers are as aware as any of their clients of the threats and opportunities AI brings. “We believe conventional accounting services will drop away rapidly in coming years as AI takes over manual tasks. It has prompted us to look carefully at where we are heading and where our clients’ businesses are heading as the technology accelerates,” she says.
Valerie is working intensely to move towards delivering ongoing strategical advice and training, all to help clients get the most out of this radical change in the business landscape now upon so many businesses, including her own. “By taking our clients on the new path, educating and training them on the opportunities and skills technological revolution offers, we can see our relationship with clients continuing far beyond what it would be simply offering conventional accounting services,” she says.
Emerald has grown strongly over the post-covid period, with Valerie’s experienced team now including two qualified accountants and a broad spectrum of business clients from across the Bay of Plenty. “The vast majority of entrepreneurial clients who started small businesses from ideas they had over covid are still there and still with us, with their efforts taking them onwards and upwards, which has been very rewarding to witness and be part of.”
Clients from all business types seek advice on choosing from the myriad of digital tools and apps available to business owners to help streamline and add efficiencies to all aspects of business operations. “We want to help ensure our clients become more tech-savvy. We tell them it is not that a machine will replace them or their business, the risk is in being replaced by another person or business who knows how to use the AI to their advantage – we want to make sure that will be them.”
