Future of Search in Professional Services Firms
Scenario: Changing Governance and Accountability
U.S. companies will drop Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP by 2016, with the largest companies switching to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) before that. Most large companies and all public companies typically employee the services of the big 4 accounting firms.
Issues will arise from one main component of IFRS which are subjective standards and interpretations of the code. At the heart of the code is a framework describes the qualitative characteristics of financial statements as being:
- Understandability
- Relevance
- Reliability
- Comparability.
The demands on search will likely increase in areas of fuzzy logic, conceptual, and translation technologies. For instance fuzzy logic will be implemented to look for likely forensic issues around insuring accurate reporting. Translation of the GAAP to IFRS reporting of the measure elements on financial statements and showing comparative transactions will force search technology into deeper areas of understanding. And over time build knowledge onto itself in an artificial intelligence learning engine.
Scenario: Search as the Virtual Person
No one can deny the demands of the changing Governance, Risk, and Compliance models will outpace the human intellect. Over time search will build models that can interpret repositories of stored financial statements and the measurements that went into the report at an instance of time. We will demand that search run proactively and “suggest” areas for inspection based on model, regulation, or other external factors.
Auditors and consultants will want to see side by side proactive search results for faster interpretation. The firms that invest in technology like this will reduce their own risk and ultimately gain market share by being able to deliver highly accurate results.
Scenario: The Information Pivot
The higher the level of the person in a firm or the practice will require them to dynamically pivot on information. Typically the information is not static information. The creates the need for real time search on multiple repositories. Ranging from CRM, Document and Contract Repositories, and other Line of Business Applications.
