Building AI and data strategy groups inside firms
Your people's specialized knowledge is the one thing a competitor cannot buy. What we add is the know-how to put it to work across the whole firm, rather than in the few heads that happen to hold it.
Your firm carries the responsibility on everything it signs, so the judgment behind it has to stay inside. We help you strategize and structure the internal group or teams that build your firm's capabilities.
It's that nobody owns the answer, and the people best placed to lead it have the least time to give it. In first conversations it usually looks like this.
People are already using AI across the firm, and nobody could say where or on what.
Two reports disagree on the same number, and both of them are yours.
Everyone agrees it matters. Nobody owns it.
The work changed, and nobody can say whether it got faster.
Two groups, formed inside your firm and handed over. One decides what the firm does with AI and runs it safely. The other makes sure the numbers and information underneath every decision hold up.
We stand up the centralized AI group your firm runs on, then support the work it takes on: what to use AI for, what your people are allowed to put into it, and how you know the output can be trusted.
We stand up the data and analytics group your firm runs on, then give it something to run: reliable structure underneath the numbers, reporting your partners actually use, and data the firm owns rather than rents.
Already focused on AI? Start with an AI Readiness Assessment. If you're earlier than that, a first conversation works out where your firm stands and what is worth doing first.
And most firms cannot say whether the parts that are not are paying off. Three figures below, each carrying where it came from and where it stops.
Of CPA firms said Excel is what they primarily use to pull data in assurance work. 25% still schedule in it, and 36% build their firm dashboards in it, all potential factors in limiting the upside of increased AI adoption.
About this figure: Self-reported survey of 162 member firms, skewing medium-to-large. The extraction figure covers assurance work.
CPA Firm Management Association, 2026
Of professionals say their organization tracks the return on its AI at all, and 40% do not know whether anyone measures it. Without that, a firm cannot say which of the tools it is paying for are worth keeping.
About this figure: Self-reported survey reported by Thomson Reuters.
Thomson Reuters Institute, 2026
How much likelier firms with a visible, defined AI strategy were to report revenue growth, and 3.5x more likely to get the AI benefits they were after. 22% of firms stated having a defined strategy.
About this figure: Self-reported survey reported by Thomson Reuters.
Thomson Reuters, Future of Professionals 2025
Access to the tools keeps getting cheaper. Knowing what to point them at, what to check, and how to fix them when they are wrong does not, and that is the part that stays inside your firm. Every phase below divides the work so your people end up holding it.
We establish where things actually stand today: what is already in use, what your numbers say, and how long the work you would target currently takes.
The group is named and writes down what it is for. It sits under whatever already governs these decisions at your firm, and nothing above it changes.
The group meets, decides, and records. Grounds brings the agenda and carries the research between sessions, translating it into something the firm can use.
The group meets, decides, and records on its own. You hold its baseline and a plan leadership can fund.
Begin Today
Every engagement begins the same way, working out where you actually stand today and what is worth doing first. You leave with it written down, whether or not you continue with us.
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