That’s where Microsoft Copilot helps. Copilot is a generative AI assistant for Microsoft 365 that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your firm’s own data. Users simply type in the information they’re looking for, and Copilot will pull all relevant data from across your various Microsoft 365 applications to generate a response.

With Copilot, your teams no longer have to manually search across each individual management system for data — giving them more time to work on engagements and support their clients. But there’s still a key concern that teams need to watch out for: oversharing data.

Without the right permissions and tools in place, firms that use Copilot risk oversharing sensitive data. We’ll explore how you can prevent Copilot from sharing confidential information with your professionals — so your teams can securely and confidently work on their engagements.

The problem: Inadvertently sharing confidential data

Setting permissions within your client/engagement structures is crucial to protecting your firm’s reputation and client relationships. Imagine, for example, that Client A found out you shared some of its confidential data with Client B, a rival company. Not only would Client A likely terminate business with your firm, they might sue as well, depending on the nature of the data that was shared.

Clients need to know that their sensitive information is secure, and that only professionals assigned to their engagements can access that data. If permissions and walls aren’t established within your data systems, your professionals risk noncompliance, conflicts of interest, and insider trading.

Unfortunately, many firms still struggle with permissions management. And for firms using Copilot, the risk of unauthorized access is exacerbated.

Previously, even if someone could access restricted data, they would often be unaware that that data even existed. So there was a lower risk of professionals accessing and sharing this information.

But Copilot can’t recognize when a firm has incorrect permissions in place, or when one of your professionals has access to the wrong client/engagement structure. It will simply provide the data that the permissions structure allows.

To compound the problem, Copilot doesn’t tell users what data was pulled from which structure: It simply provides as much relevant information as possible. This means your professionals may be using and sharing confidential information without even realizing it.

The solution: Securing your systems with Intapp Walls for Copilot

To ensure Copilot doesn’t share sensitive data, you need to secure your firm’s multiple proprietary systems and ensure that permissions settings are correctly implemented. Then, you can be confident that the permissions that Copilot reads are correct and up to date.

But what’s the best way to implement these walls? And how can you update them as permissions change?

Potentially, your IT team could go through every one of your data management systems and manually implement permissions — a long, arduous process that IT would have to repeat every time your firm brings on a new engagement, client, or staff member.

There’s a much simpler way: using Intapp Walls for Copilot to uphold and update your permissions.

Intapp Walls for Copilot lets your risk team easily review and manage the data that Copilot indexes and accesses. Your risk professionals can write up, implement, and edit permissions across Microsoft 365 and

other systems — all in one place. And they can easily track and update permissions for your voluminous set of client/engagement structures — saving them valuable time and effort.

Intapp Walls for Copilot applies policies across Microsoft 365 using each application’s native security controls, which Copilot adheres to. The software also serves as the authoritative source of permissions and uses built-in monitoring to prevent unauthorized modifications. This means that professionals can’t change permissions in any management system themselves.

Intapp Walls for Copilot also offers the Oversharing Risk Assessment feature, which evaluates your firm’s sites to highlight potential oversharing risks. For example, the feature will mark a site as high-risk if it contains sensitive information and is accessible to a high number of people within your firm. This feature helps your professionals quickly determine which permissions need strengthening, and promotes better security across all systems.

Work more efficiently and securely

Professionals need to be able to efficiently collaborate on client engagements without fear of oversharing data. By combining Microsoft Copilot and Intapp Walls for Copilot, your professionals can quickly access the data they need while adhering to your firm’s permissions and security policies.

To further promote security, your firm can also leverage our Intapp Collaboration products, which help properly store and organize any incoming data within your client/engagement models. Intapp Collaboration products — which include Intapp Documents and Intapp Workspaces — also help automate and maintain security policies across Microsoft 365, allowing your teams to safely and confidently collaborate within their workspaces. Protect your clients’ sensitive information — and your firm’s reputation. Schedule a demo to learn more about Intapp Walls for Copilot.

How relationship signals support consistent outreach

Preventing key professional relationships from cooling is hard when teams don’t have the time or tools to keep tabs on who they’ve spoken to and when.

With relationship signals, professionals don’t have to worry about whether they’re neglecting important contacts. If there has been no interaction within a specified time frame, they will see a prompt in their feed to reach out.

The relationship intelligence feed also supports consistent outreach by providing contact and company updates that encourage interaction. For instance, if a team member sees that a key contact has been promoted, they can start composing an email to congratulate them with just one click.

Professionals can also mine relationship signals for information that can be used to strengthen connections and stay top of mind with important contacts. For example, if a professional sees a news alert about a fund that’s of interest to a high-priority contact, they can take the opportunity to send that contact a quick note sharing the information.

How relationship signals simplify meeting preparation

Relationship signals also help professionals lead more productive engagements with prospective and existing clients via one-click access to meeting briefs. These briefs provide key information on attendees, previous interactions, talking points, and prior meeting outcomes, along with company news and relevant documentation.

Because everything is accessible from the relationship intelligence feed, professionals can focus on reviewing important information instead of spending valuable time gathering it from multiple systems and sources.

After meetings are over, the feed will prompt professionals to log meeting notes and follow up with attendees so nothing falls through the cracks.

How relationship signals support Activator behaviors

Relationship signals also support adoption of “Activator” behaviors that have been shown to increase the average partner-led firm’s revenue by up to 32%. These behaviors were highlighted in a study designed to uncover what makes top-performing business developers different from their peers.

The study revealed that the most successful business development professionals use an Activator approach that includes three key behaviors:

• Committing consistent time and effort to business development
• Connecting with others
• Creating opportunities to proactively engage with clients

Relationship signals help professionals adopt these behaviors — and accelerate your firm’s growth — by providing actionable insights that make it easy for them to consistently engage with their networks, nurture important connections, and discover new opportunities.

Empower your team to work faster and smarter with relationship signals

The success of your firm hinges upon its relationships — but your professionals may not have the time or tools to manage them efficiently or effectively.

Relationship signals transform relationship management by providing the targeted, actionable intelligence your professionals need to build meaningful connections that lead to profitable opportunities. By delivering the right information at the right time, relationship signals empower your team to work faster and smarter than ever before.

Learn more about relationship signals and other Intapp Assist for DealCloud features that boost productivity and efficiency.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — May 28, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals in advisory, legal, and capital markets firms, today announced that the Intapp DealCloud platform has been awarded a 2024 CRM Excellence Award.

The 25^th annual CRM Excellence Award was presented by CUSTOMER  magazine and TMC, a global, integrated media company. The 2024 CRM Excellence Award-winning companies have been chosen on the basis of their product or service’s ability to expand the customer relationship to become all -encompassing, covering the entire enterprise and the entire customer lifecycle. Each CRM Excellence Award winner has demonstrated the improvements their products have made in their clients’ businesses.

“We’re thrilled that Intapp DealCloud has been honored as a top CRM by TMC and CUSTOMER Magazine,” said Erin Guinan, General Manager of DealCloud at Intapp. “This recognition exemplifies our dedication to delivering user-friendly, secure tools that apply AI where professionals need it most, letting them focus on strategic work instead of manual tasks.”

DealCloud provides firms with a single destination for professionals to find and reference communications, workflows, and other data relating to client pursuits and engagements. Access to collective firm intelligence helps teams strengthen relationships, accurately track and forecast deals and pipeline, and accelerate execution. Centralizing engagement data and professionals’ daily activities within DealCloud provides new, actionable insights into client trends and industry developments.

DealCloud also integrates AI technology and automation into everyday workflows to deliver actionable insights and AI assistance. Automated data capture and signature scraping technology help firms build and manage a comprehensive view of relationships with clients, prospects, and other contacts. DealCloud’s AI capabilities help professionals analyze data quickly and accurately, and make more informed decisions based on real-time insights, market trends, and existing firm knowledge. New generative AI features available in Intapp Assist for DealCloud generate deal, company, and meeting summaries. These features also create relevant, personalized, and targeted email outreach, and deliver key insights and actionable suggestions on contacts.

“The CRM Excellence Award honors Intapp for being a true CRM partner to its clients,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO and Group Editor-in-Chief at TMC. “Intapp has demonstrated to the editors of CUSTOMER magazine that DealCloud improved the processes of its clients’ businesses by streamlining and facilitating the flow of information.”

To learn how Intapp DealCloud brings generative AI to the daily work of professionals so they can focus on strategic work instead of manual tasks, visit intapp.com/dealcloud/ai. 

About Intapp

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

So will generative AI negatively affect law firm profits? Not necessarily.

Since staff will be able to work more efficiently, AI may indeed lower bills to corporate clients. However, AI may also attract new clients and create new business opportunities.

In fact, the survey revealed that 70% of Am Law 200 law firm leaders believe AI solutions will enable new work product for clients.

Consistent with this optimism, 53% of Am Law 200 firms have purchased generative AI tools, and 45% are already using them for legal work.

But to get the most out of this technology — without creating any ethical risks — law firms must ensure they don’t overlook two key factors: data structuring and permissions changes.

Tag your data and ensure correct permissions setup

For generative AI tools to effectively read and understand your data, your data must be defined and organized. Without structured data, it will be difficult to train your AI solution, and the results that the AI generates will be missing key information specific to your firm. There’s also the risk that the AI will surface information that’s behind an ethical wall.

For example, one firm informed us about an issue it experienced while testing Microsoft Copilot, a popular generative AI solution. Because the firm hadn’t set its permissions correctly, Copilot was surfacing protected information.

To avoid oversharing confidential information, your data must be tagged to indicate what client and matter it pertains to. Moreover, your firm must have permissions set across all applications. Intapp Workspaces supports both of these critical functions.

Leverage technology that supports data structure, organization, and compliance

Intapp Workspaces is designed to help laws firms organize and structure their data with identifying information that helps AI read it. The solution assigns client and matter codes to matter teams in Microsoft Teams, as well as on SharePoint sites.

Once your firm has the right client and matter structure in place, it can use Intapp Walls to apply permissions rules to Teams and SharePoint for Copilot to follow. This way, Copilot won’t pull data from sources that a requestor doesn’t have access to. Intapp Walls for Copilot also offers deployment dashboards that let professionals easily visualize and control all the data sources Copilot can access.

Using the Intapp solutions, your firm can add structure and context to your data, allowing Copilot to generate more worthwhile responses to user prompts. These solutions prevent your professionals from accidentally oversharing, promote compliance with your information security requirements, and maintain client confidentiality and trust.

Prepare for AI with Intapp

Whether you’re new to Intapp or already a client, we invite you to contact us to learn how we can help you assess your firm’s AI readiness. We’ll evaluate your systems to determine whether your data is properly structured, and whether you have an effective information governance system in place.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — May 21, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals at advisory, capital markets, and legal firms, today announced that U.S. Realty Advisors (USRA) has selected Intapp DealCloud as its deal management platform. The New York City–based firm will use DealCloud and its AI capabilities to improve pipeline and knowledge management.

Leading strategic change

“We’re on a mission to uplevel our internal technology solutions with partners who are committed to keeping us on the cutting edge for the long term,” said Ryan Fitzgerald, Director of Investments and Head of Credit at USRA. “With DealCloud, we finally have a system that is purpose-built to facilitate complex real estate deal structures, improves the firm’s knowledge management abilities, and incorporates AI to minimize manual tasks and maximize key insights for the investment team.”

Addressing transaction pipeline and asset management

With Intapp DealCloud, USRA’s investment team can find and reference deals, pipeline, communications, and owned assets within a single destination. Pipeline and property visuals will also help USRA professionals accelerate data discovery, strengthen relationships, accurately track and forecast pipeline, and accelerate execution. Additionally, a unified view of related properties and activities will improve firmwide transparency, while keeping investments organized and connected.

USRA will use Intapp Assist for DealCloud, which integrates AI technology and automation into everyday workflows to deliver actionable insights and AI assistance. USRA’s deal professionals can analyze data quickly and accurately, and make more informed decisions based on real-time insights, market trends, and existing firm knowledge. While the AI features help professionals focus on strategic work instead of manual tasks, they also enrich firms’ stores of knowledge and intelligence.

Multiplying success with Intapp

“We’re excited to work with U.S. Realty Advisors, one of New York’s leading commercial real estate firms, to modernize its technology offerings and better support professionals,” said Erin Guinan, General Manager of DealCloud at Intapp. “Centralizing data in DealCloud will improve the firm’s knowledge management abilities, while AI capabilities will minimize manual tasks and maximize key insights.”

About Intapp 

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

About U.S. Realty Advisors

U.S. Realty Advisors is a 35-year-old investment management firm with more than $6.4 billion AUM. The firm has a proven track record of delivering value to corporations and investors by investing in and managing single tenant net leased real estate through sale-leasebacks, build-to-suits, and net leased acquisitions.

With so many solutions on the market — many of them with overlapping capabilities — it may seem difficult to choose the best products for your law firm’s needs. This task is particularly challenging because the marketing around these products is often vague about how the AI solutions work, where they pull information from, and how often they’re updated.

As you do the tough work of evaluating the various features of different solutions, it’s also critical to assess how these solutions may impact your data.

Here are four of the most important questions you should ask vendors about how their AI solutions use your data.

1. How does your AI solution use our law firm’s data?

This is a question that’s likely already top of mind for you, and it’s one that some AI solutions vendors address in their sales and marketing materials. But you’ll likely still need to ask about the details.

Some AI solutions may not have direct access to your firm’s data, but they will nevertheless gather data from your firm every time one of your professionals types in a prompt. Or, if the solution allows your team members to upload files, it will naturally have access to those files as well. Key questions you need to ask include:

• How will the solution use that data?
• Will your data inform the AI in a way that benefits other users?
• Is there any risk that case matter information that you disclose in a prompt or file could be shared with users outside your firm?
• Could information one of your lawyers enters be shared with other lawyers inside your firm who shouldn’t have access to that specific information? (More about this risk later on.)

2. Does your AI solution capitalize on our firm-specific data?

Solution providers are well aware of your concerns about your firm data being used by their AI, and they’ll likely emphasize that their solutions don’t access your firm’s underlying data.

But AI solutions that in fact access and rely on all your firm’s data have significant advantages over solutions that don’t access your data.

For example, imagine one of your firm’s lawyers asks a legal AI solution this question: “What’s a good due diligence checklist for reviewing a business acquisition?” A solution that doesn’t have access to your firm-specific data is going to generate a general answer to this query. But your firm may have its own specific approach to due diligence that you would want your associate to use instead.

Likewise, if a lawyer uses an AI solution to draft a brief, and the AI solution can’t access your firm’s data, the resulting brief may lack specific, useful language and analysis that your firm has created in related cases.

For reasons such as these, purchasing an AI solution that isn’t capitalizing on your firm-specific expertise, experience, and insights probably isn’t the best choice.

Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Viva Topics avoid these pitfalls by drawing and learning from your firm’s own data. Microsoft Copilot provides answers and outputs that capitalize on your firm’s strengths and prior work product. And the AI in Microsoft Viva Topics pulls from your firm’s work to create topics, such as matters your firm has handled, and how your firm handles a particular type of matter (like a merger).

In addition, Microsoft Viva Topics surfaces insights without any direct prompting. That is, as your firm’s professionals chat on Microsoft Teams or create documents in Word, Viva Topics will suggest relevant information that informs what they’re working on.

You can learn more about the capabilities of Microsoft Viva Topics in the below video:

3. If your AI solution has access to all my law firm’s data, how does my data need to be structured so that your solution can effectively understand it?

AI tools that use and learn from your firm’s data offer powerful advantages. But these solutions will only achieve these benefits if they can make sense of your data. That’s why you should ask your prospective AI solution vendors how your data must be structured for their AI to interpret it.

When it comes to Microsoft Copilot and Viva Topics, the answer is clear: For these tools to operate effectively on top of your data, all your data must be in Microsoft SharePoint, and your data must be identified by client and matter codes. These codes give the AI the context it needs to distinguish between different matters and clients. Intapp Workspaces assigns these codes to your data so that Microsoft Copilot and Viva Topics can read it.

4. Will your AI solution recognize our firm’s ethical walls and avoid breaching them?

Even if your AI solution can tell the difference between different matters, there’s still the risk that an AI solution will surface information behind an ethical wall to a team member who shouldn’t see it.

Ask your candidate vendors whether and how their solution avoids this possibility.

Microsoft Copilot and Viva Topics won’t surface information a user isn’t permitted to see. Given this, it’s critical that your firm’s permissions are correctly set up. You also need a fail-safe in place in case one of your lawyers tries to give another firm member access to particular data without realizing that second attorney shouldn’t have access.

Intapp Walls enforces permissions across all applications, including Microsoft Copilot and Viva Topics. For example, if a team member tries to add another firm member who shouldn’t have access to the team, Intapp Walls alerts the team member of the issue.

Need help structuring and protecting your data for AI?

Once you’ve settled on an AI solution for your law firm, Intapp solutions are available to help you effectively deploy it. If the solution you choose capitalizes on your firm’s data, Intapp Workspaces structures your data so that your AI solution can understand it and provide valuable, accurate insights. With Intapp Walls, you can also set and automatically enforce your permissions so that you avoid unintended breaches of ethical walls. Schedule a demo to learn more.

Intapp announces the addition of three key members of its Industry Solutions team: Tom Koehler, Rudy Saad, and Laura Saklad. Led byPresident of Industries Ben Harrison, the Industry Solutions team embodies Intapp’s commitment to applying an intimate understanding of the unique needs of its client industries to the development of its vertical AI solutions.  

By including seasoned industry practitioners with backgrounds in its client markets, Intapp’s Industry Solutions team has built a center of expertise in each vertical market it serves – accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real estate. Decades of specialized experience inform an understanding of the nuances of each practice group and its professionals’ day-to-day experiences. The team applies that knowledge to Intapp’s product strategy, helping to configure solutions that fit the exact needs or specifications of each market.

“We’ve been serving these markets for a long time, and we care deeply about our client firms and their professionals’ day-to-day,” said Harrison. “We continue to invest in industry talent and have built a team of market leaders and practitioners who have walked in our clients’ shoes. This team help us better serve our clients with software built exactly to suit their needs.”

This approach is exemplified by the individual market best practices included in Intapp’s pre-populated industry blueprints. These blueprints provide specific Intapp DealCloud configurations that suit a range of application needs for each type of firm we serve. Industry blueprints reduce time-to-value and total-cost-of-ownership for our clients by minimizing the need for customization, and industry-specific features support higher user adoption and satisfaction rates.  

New Industry Solutions team members bring a combined 80 years of industry experience to Intapp:

Tom Koehler will lead the accounting and consulting industries at Intapp. He joins from KPMG, where he was a Partner and served as Chief Business Technology Officer for KPMG Netherlands. At KPMG, Tom drove the firm’s digital transformation, managed strategic technology investments, and enabled new AI capabilities. He also led the Global Citizen Developer Program, empowering business functions to develop and deploy business solutions rapidly. With over 20 years of C-suite experience, Tom brings extensive leadership and industry expertise to his new role at Intapp.

Rudy Saad will lead the private capital markets and alternative asset industries at Intapp. He joins the company from Investcorp, a $50 billion global alternative investor, where he served most recently as Partner and Managing Director based in London. Recognizing the immense potential of innovation in private market operations, he also led the development of a FinTech platform at Investcorp. Rudy has more than two decades of experience in private equity and wider private markets, and more than 10 years of investing experience; from deal origination and execution, to post-acquisition value creation and exit. Additionally, he has more than 10 years of fundraising experience; from strategy and capital formation, to fund closings, secondaries, and co-investments.

Laura Saklad, will lead the legal industry at Intapp. She joins the company from Orrick, where she served most recently as Chief Operations Officer. In her 20 years with the firm, she held numerous positions including Chief Administrative Officer, Executive Director and Chief Talent Officer. In these roles she helped drive strategies and process reengineering to accelerate management effectiveness, team engagement, and profitability. By connecting people, processes, and data, she helped shape and execute the firm’s strategies to deliver distinctive value to the tech, finance, and energy and infrastructure sectors.

Tom, Rudy, and Laura join original Industry Solutions group members Brian Bissonette and Frank Spadafora:

Brian, who leads investment banking at Intapp, previously founded and sold a venture-backed software-as-a-service company that served clients in the investment banking and private equity industries. Prior to that he spent 14 years as an investment banker at Bank of America, originating and executing M&A and capital markets transactions in the US and Europe.

Frank, who leads real estate and real assets at Intapp, previously spent 13 years at Cushman & Wakefield as VP of Investor Services Technology. In that role he specialized in digital transformation, data and analytics, property technology and emerging technologies, and solution design and delivery. Prior to Cushman & Wakefield, Frank spent eight years as a commercial appraiser focused on multi-family and senior housing valuation. He also serves as an advisory board member for StateBook International, a provider of integrated location intelligence.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — May 15, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals at advisory, capital markets, and legal firms, announces that Am Law 200 firm Jackson Walker selected Intapp’s compliant timekeeping solution to advance the firm’s timekeeping practices. The software uses Applied AI to automate time capture and compliance with client requirements, leading to improved client satisfaction.

Leading change

“When evaluating new timekeeping software, we knew we wanted to go beyond just finding a modern, stable, cloud-based solution to also gain a forward-looking partner with an innovative solution we could grow with,” said Mark BeMent, Chief Information Officer at Jackson Walker. “We found that mix with Intapp. With their focus on AI and deep understanding of how people, processes, and data need to work in concert, Intapp will help us meet our commitment to using the best technology to serve our clients.”

Modernizing timekeeping and automating compliance

Intapp Time gives Jackson Walker’s partners and professionals a modern way to record and submit complete accounts of the time they spend on each matter. Using passive capture and applied AI, Intapp Time lets professionals easily recreate their days and adhere to client requirements. By including Intapp Terms, Jackson Walker will have a fully integrated and compliance-based time entry solution. Intapp Terms provides AI-assisted categorization and centralized storage of key client requirements to help professionals more easily identify, manage, and adhere to client terms at the point of time entry. 

A focus on compliant timekeeping will help Jackson Walker meet client billing expectations, provide prompt and accurate billing, and reduce errors that could require corrections down the line. Firm leaders will also be able to better evaluate engagement resources and tracked time against budget to optimize client service. 

Multiplying success with Intapp

“We’re excited to work with Jackson Walker to support improved compliance and client service with precise time data,” said Chris Kraft, General Manager of Operations and Finance Solutions at Intapp. “Using AI-powered data capture, Intapp Time combined with Intapp Terms will let Jackson Walker’s lawyers spend more time on important client matters and less time manually entering data.”  

About Intapp 

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

About Jackson Walker
Since Jackson Walker’s founding in 1887, its attorneys have represented some of the most influential companies and business leaders in the world. Today, the firm remains firmly rooted in Texas while serving clients around the globe. With more than 500 attorneys, Jackson Walker is the largest firm in Texas and has been recognized by Law360 as a “Texas Powerhouse” and an “elite law firm” that regularly provides counsel to industry-leading clients on highly complex matters ranging from millions to billions. To learn more, visit jw.com, and connect with Jackson Walker on LinkedIn.

Reuters – May 14, 2024

Making business development mastery a reality in your law firm

However, there are signs that things may start to turn around in the second half of this year. If inflation eases and interest rates continue to go down, new opportunities are expected to emerge for investors.

But competition for these opportunities will be fierce, and first-mover advantage will be critical. In a market where timing is everything, your team needs the agility to move quickly. Using old, disjointed technology to manage your pipeline, deals, and relationships won’t cut it — and that includes spreadsheets and siloed systems.

Securing a first-mover advantage requires a real estate CRM platform that’s built to meet the needs of investors. A purpose-built platform helps you source and win the most profitable deals by providing complete visibility into firmwide intelligence, market trends, and pipeline activity. All data — internal and external — is accessible from one location, enabling your team to access the critical insights needed to uncover new opportunities, accelerate deal flow, and nurture relationships.

Here are three key ways a real estate CRM provides you with a competitive edge.

AI-powered relationship management

The shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic radically disrupted traditional, in-person relationship management. Technologies such as videoconferencing and instant messaging became professionals’ preferred way to connect with brokers, property managers, and other stakeholders during lockdown — and not much has changed since then.

In many ways, this shift has made relationship management easier and more cost-efficient. Investors no longer need to drive to meetings or book pricey flights to meet stakeholders in person when they can just chat via video.  

However, most of your professionals still face a huge challenge: navigating the sheer number and complexity of relationships involved in any transaction. Staying on top of who they need to engage with, and which colleagues have interacted with their contacts and when, is no easy feat — unless your firm has a real estate CRM platform.

CRM platforms like Intapp DealCloud that are built for real estate investors are designed to help your team efficiently manage and nurture complex, multi-directional relationships. Dashboards with relationship intelligence from proprietary and third-party sources enable your investors to prioritize outreach, view firmwide interactions with connections, and discover new contacts.

For example, relationship scores based on interaction frequency let investors know which relationships require attention, so they don’t lose touch with important contacts. They also help investors determine the best engagement strategy for new opportunities by providing insights into which brokers have the best relationships with target sellers.

Your professionals can simplify relationship management even further with Intapp Assist for DealCloud, which uses AI and automation to deliver actionable insights and assistance while they work. For example, AI-driven relationship signals provide users with a relationship intelligence feed featuring real-time network updates, upcoming meeting details, and contact follow-up reminders.

Centralized data and asset management

Discovering new opportunities before competitors and moving them through the pipeline as quickly as possible requires having the right data at the right time. But when your data is scattered throughout multiple systems — and team members are working from different locations — it’s difficult if not impossible for them to get the exact information they need, exactly when they need it.

If you centralize everything in one platform, however, your team always has the real-time insights required to take advantage of time-sensitive opportunities. They’re also able to optimize asset management with all property details in one place. And they can reinvest the time they used to spend gathering information into more high-value, revenue-generating activities.

With DealCloud, all data related to properties, fundraising, deals, and relationships is accessible from one location, so your investors always have the latest information and insights. The platform also helps them improve decision-making and discover new opportunities by integrating your proprietary data with market intelligence from over a dozen third parties including Preqin, Esri, and Cherre.

In addition, your investors can save time and simplify data management with document ingestion services that automatically extract key data from offering memorandums (OMs), or investment memorandums (IMs). The extracted data is reviewed by human eyes for accuracy, and once it’s validated, it can be integrated with other information or used to build proprietary datasets.

Map-based discovery

Information is power — even more so when competition is tough. With real estate CRM platforms like DealCloud, investors can used map-based discovery to gain valuable insights into the status and geographic location of each deal. And, if they choose to revisit deals they previously passed over, they can retrieve a map that marks their locations and allows them to drill down into all asset details.

Users can also get a bird’s-eye view of a specific geographical region by taking advantage of DealCloud’s integration with Esri. This integration enables investors to visualize U.S. geological data attributes including total population, occupancy, and median income for any market.

Secure first-mover advantage with a real estate CRM

CRE firms need to put systems and processes in place now so they can move quickly when the market starts to pick up. Getting to the table before competitors requires real estate CRM solutions that provide a first-mover advantage by arming investors with relationship intelligence, centralized access to data, and real-time insights.

Using a solution like DealCloud that’s built just for real estate investors ensures you’re positioned for success as the market continues to evolve. Request a demo now to learn more about how Intapp DealCloud can benefit your firm.  

Palo Alto, Calif., May 2, 2024 –– Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered software for professionals at advisory, legal, and capital markets firms, today announced that it has acquired Transform Data International (TDI). TDI is exclusively focused on delivering easy-to-use digital workplaces, based on Microsoft 365 applications, for professional services firms.

Transform Data International is a longtime Intapp partner that builds and implements enterprise collaboration technology. The company has developed its own portfolio of software add-ons for Intapp Collaboration solutions, which it delivers to clients in more than 15 countries. TDI’s Workhub solution provides a familiar, pre-integrated user interface that helps professionals manage everyday tasks and supports modern ways of working.

“We’re committed to helping professionals improve efficiency and productivity with technology, while maintaining compliance with the unique user and regulatory requirements their firms are subject to,” said Pat Archbold, General Manager of the Collaboration business unit at Intapp. “Bringing together Intapp’s solutions and TDI’s domain expertise will optimize clients’ work within Microsoft applications, facilitating collaboration and laying the groundwork for the use of more advanced AI tools like Copilot.

Intapp welcomes the TDI team, who are experienced collaboration specialists with deep expertise in designing modern architectures and software implementation. This team includes sales, services, research and development, engineering, and client support specialists.

“Professionals are often overloaded by the influx of information coming to them in all different forms, so it’s essential to provide a collaboration tool with a user experience that facilitates productivity,” said Walter Henrard, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Transform Data International. “Our team of dedicated experts are excited to join Intapp to enrich and deliver the collaboration offerings accountants, advisors, and lawyers rely on daily.”

About Intapp

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

According to a 2024 survey of executives in corporate legal departments at Fortune 1000 companies, 68% of in-house counsel said they approve of their outside counsel using generative AI tools on their company’s legal work. Why? Because 80% of these executives anticipate that AI tools will reduce their outside counsel bills.

But whether generative AI will decrease, increase, or have no substantial effect on law firm profits remains to be seen.

The efficiency gains that generative AI produces may actually result in lower bills to corporate clients — but, at the same time, create new business opportunities. In fact, the survey above found that 70% of Am Law 200 law firm leaders believe AI solutions will enable new work product for clients.

Consistent with this optimism, 53% of Am Law 200 firms have purchased generative AI tools, and 45% are using them for legal work.

But getting the most out of this technology — without creating any ethical risks — depends upon data structuring and permissions changes that firms sometimes overlook.

Why structured data is the key to safe, effective use of generative AI at law firms

For generative AI tools to effectively read and understand your data, your data must be structured — that is, defined and organized in a specific way. Without this structure, it will be difficult to train your AI solution, and the results it generates will be missing information or not specific to your firm.

But there’s an additional reason that law firms in particular must have organized data. If your data isn’t identified in a way that’s clear to the AI, there’s a risk that the AI will surface information that is behind an ethical wall.

To avoid this outcome, your data must be tagged to indicate what client and matter it pertains to. Moreover, your firm must have permissions set across all applications.

Firms without structure and permissions in place have already seen problems arise during testing of AI solutions. For example, one firm informed Intapp about an issue they experienced while testing Microsoft Copilot, which for most law firms is the most natural generative AI choice. As the firm was piloting the solution, they discovered that it surfaced protected information because the firm hadn’t set their permissions correctly.

How to structure your firm’s data and ensure permissions are set correctly for AI

How can your firm most easily achieve structured data, set with appropriate permissions, so you can take advantage of generative AI?

Intapp Workspaces software is specifically designed to enable laws firms to organize and structure their data with identifying information that helps AI read it. In particular, Intapp Workspaces assigns client and matter codes to teams and SharePoint sites.

If you combine Intapp Workspaces with Intapp Walls, you’ll also ensure that Microsoft Copilot doesn’t pull from sources that a requestor doesn’t have permission to access. Microsoft Copilot communicates with Intapp Walls to check whether a user can access particular files and data points.

It’s not enough to have only one of these solutions. For Intapp Walls to correctly apply its policies to the right client and matter teams in Microsoft SharePoint and Teams, Intapp Walls needs to know which Microsoft data corresponds to which clients and matters. Intapp Workspaces solves this problem by facilitating consistent application of client-matter metadata in Microsoft 365.

Likewise, having Intapp Workspaces alone without Intapp Walls will enable structured data, but your permissions won’t be set correctly and automatically enforced across all your applications. As a result, Microsoft Copilot may surface information behind an ethical wall.

Prepare for AI by partnering with Intapp

Whether you’re an Intapp client or new to Intapp, schedule a demo to learn how we can help you assess your readiness for AI. We’ll evaluate your systems to determine whether your data is properly structured and whether you have an effective information governance system in place.

Today’s corporate development professionals need to act quickly to successfully bid on and negotiate deals. They also need accurate, up-to-date data to build and maintain relationships with private company owners and executives.

With the right deal management software, your corporate development teams can better showcase your firm’s value. Learn which key features and functions your transaction and business development professionals need to thrive in today’s competitive environment.

Improve deal management with custom workflows

Many firms have small corporate development teams — or even just one person — to manage the M&A process. These people often keep all the process information in their heads or on their desktops. But what happens when that information needs to be shared with corporate leadership or with new members of the corporate development team?

When information is inaccessible or disjointed, simple tasks like seeing which deals are at which stage can be arduous. And revisiting deals can prove to be impossible if there’s been turnover at the company or the deals have become stale or lost. Corporate development teams need a centralized system where they can easily track and manage this vital information, so they can quickly determine how best to move forward with a current or potential deal.

Corporate development deal management software can provide transaction professionals and their colleagues with key insights about their deal flow and relationships. Users can configure notifications and tasks to encourage ownership and accountability. And leading corporate acquirers can even visualize key deadlines and meetings in a calendar view for the deal team and C-suite to see.

With all this information readily available in one place, your corporate development team can confidently accelerate workflows and improve the M&A process.

Track and document complex business relationships

In addition to directly managing their relationships with CEOs and other executives, it’s important for your corporate development professionals to stay up to date with other deal sources. With deal management software, transaction professionals can easily view which bankers, brokers, advisors, and other intermediaries the corporation has sourced deals from over time. They can also view how many deals were sourced and which strategy those deals align with.

Corporate development teams can also use deal management software to alert team members about how long it’s been since they’ve talked to or had a meeting with a key relationship. They can also can leverage the software’s relationship intelligence to calculate the strength of the connections between both individuals and firms — without conducting time-consuming research. This lets professionals quickly determine the best next steps to strengthen or maintain key relationships.

Put data into action

Information is only valuable if it can be applied — which is why corporate acquirers must leverage private company and transaction data to inform their decision-making. This data allows even the most niche firms to search for potential acquisition targets by sector, subsector, complex industry services, solutions, and other parameters.

Corporate development teams often don’t have robust databases of their own, and must rely on third parties to provide them with data. Your firm should seek out a partner that offers integrations with PrivCo, FactSet, Preqin, PitchBook, and other industry-specific data providers.

Upgrade the deal-making process

Although competition for high-quality assets is intense, the right deal management solution will help your corporate development team achieve better outcomes. These systems, combined with the power of proprietary and third-party data, make it possible for your corporate acquirers to better compete against similar companies, private equity buyers, and other entities.

Schedule a demo to learn more about Intapp DealCloud and our deal management software for corporate development teams.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — April 23, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals in advisory, legal, and capital markets firms, announces that law firm EMW has selected Intapp Time to modernize its timekeeping practices. This strategic decision underscores EMW’s commitment to helping its partners and professionals work more efficiently through the use of cloud software.

Leading change

As EMW continues to grow both organically and by acquisition, its leaders are continually seeking ways to ensure solid performance for both new and tenured professionals. They recognized that improving the firm’s time recording capabilities would allow their professionals to capture time more precisely and with less effort. Additionally, EMW’s leaders were eager to move to a cloud solution in accordance with the firm’s cloud-first policy.

“Time is central to the delivery of profitable client services, so it’s tremendously important that it is recorded accurately,” said James Geary, Managing Partner at EMW. “However, it’s gotten much more complicated as our days are filled with research, writing, phone and video calls, and emails for multiple clients. With all that multitasking, it becomes incredibly difficult to track in the moment — and even harder to reconstruct the work at the end of the day, let alone the week or month.”

Lee Kilner, IT Director at EMW, added: “We have always worked hard to ensure our professionals understand the value and importance of time recording to our business by providing education, aligning our strategy, and even setting policies against it. With Intapp Time, we’ll align our cultural work with the right technology to facilitate — and, where possible, automate — accurate time collection.”

Modernizing timekeeping

Intapp Time gives EMW’s partners and professionals a modern way to record and submit complete accounts of the time they spend on each matter. Using passive time capture and Applied AI, the firm’s professionals can easily recreate their days, adhere to client requirements, and minimize missed and under-recorded effort.

Precise time tracking supports compliance, simplifies budgeting and billing processes, and fosters increased collaboration and transparency with clients. It also lets EMW leaders evaluate engagement resources and tracked time against budget to optimize utilization and profitability. 

Multiplying success with Intapp

EMW worked closely with the Intapp Implementation Services team, which takes an iterative, user-centric approach to solution deployment that aligns to each firm’s unique business needs. Together, Intapp and EMW were able to complete the implementation on time and significantly under budget.

EMW’s IT leadership recognized the importance of keeping the scope well-defined to meet the desired timeline and achieve a successful implementation. Additionally, conducting training sessions with fee earners before switching to Intapp Time led to a 95% adoption rate starting on week one.

“We’re excited to work with EMW to provide a modern approach to timekeeping that leverages AI-powered data capture,” said Chris Kraft, General Manager of Operations and Finance Solutions at Intapp. “Intapp Time lets EMW’s lawyers focus on important client matters, provide timelier and more accurate billing, and reduce time spent on administrative tasks.”

Looking ahead

EMW is in the process of implementing a connected data strategy and is increasingly turning to the Intapp platform for technology support. In the coming months, the firm plans to implement Intapp Documents and Intapp Workspaces. EMW is also evaluating a wider Intapp solution set that would cover other aspects of business operations.

About Intapp 

Intapp helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific solutions to drive new growth and multiply opportunity. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

About EMW

EMW is a law firm with offices in London, Gatwick, Milton Keynes, Northampton, and Brighton offering a full portfolio of legal services to U.K. based and global companies as well as entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals. Our clients include SMEs, household names, financial institutions, and public sector bodies. We’re pragmatic and focus on the key issues. We take the time to understand the things that are important to our clients and their business and we tailor our service accordingly. There’s no “one size fits all” at EMW.

For professionals across advisory, legal, and capital markets firms, the rise of new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) has redefined day-to-day workflows, enabling firms to make smarter decisions and find new opportunities. At the same time, generative AI makes your life and your teams’ lives easier.

Discover how your firm can enjoy these advantages with Intapp Assist for DealCloud, which integrates generative AI technology and automation into your existing workflows.

Intapp Assist for DealCloud: Generative AI features that power business development and reduce manual work

Intapp Assist for DealCloud gives you four new AI-powered features that support your business development and day-to-day work:

• Relationship signals
• Contextual email outreach
• Summaries
• Entry-form content generation

Relationship signals make it easier to keep key relationships warm

Relationship signals deliver key insights and actionable suggestions for contacts and events via an AI-driven relationship intelligence feed.

“Just like the algorithm in your favorite social media platform looks at what you’re reading and engaging with, the relationship signals feature looks at who you’re reaching out to and talking to and suggests actions you can take,” explains Emanuel Mesa, an Intapp Industry Cloud Architect. “For example, it can suggest reaching out to a cooling contact, or provide to-dos for upcoming meetings.”

These suggestions are helpful because many busy professionals may not always have the time to make business development a part of their daily routine.

“Relationship signals make business development easier for everyone,” Mesa says. “Most days, you log into your computer and simply start working on your deal, matter, or engagement. But relationship signals bring you this other information that you can spend 5 or 10 minutes reviewing and acting on, so that you can grow your firm’s practice.”

For example, the generative AI built into the relationship signals feed notifies team members when new executives join the companies in their networks — letting your professionals know who to connect with to grow their networks.

The relationship signals feed informs your team about other market events as well — such as when important contacts change roles or move to different companies, or when a company is acquired or receives new funding. Staying informed about these kinds of market events helps your teams identify time-sensitive opportunities and anticipate their targets’ needs.

Relationship signals help you prepare for client meetings

The relationship signals feed also informs your professionals about relevant details before client meetings, helping them engage with clients more effectively on business opportunities. These details could include recent deals, company news, relationship intelligence, and prior interactions and outcomes.

The company news insights, drawn from Intapp partner Owler, are personalized for each user based on the companies that user is connected to. Intapp’s relationship intelligence AI automatically discovers these companies by scraping contacts from users’ Microsoft Outlook messages.

The relationship signals feed highlights which contacts and companies your professionals should follow up with, providing timely reminders and valuable context. The feed also shows users relevant news from their contact companies, saving them the time and effort of visiting each company’s site to search for updates.

Relationship signals help you adopt rainmaker behaviors

By preparing you for meetings and prompting other user actions, relationship signals help your professionals adopt key Activator rainmaker behaviors. The value of the Activator business-development approach was identified by the Rainmaker Genome Project, a quantitative study designed to uncover what makes top-performing business developers different from their peers. Produced by Intapp and DCM Insights, the study revealed that adopting Activator behaviors can increase the average partner’s revenue generation by up to 32%.

Activators show three key behaviors:

• Committing time and effort to consistent business development

• Connecting with others, both in person and online, to work to grow their networks

• Creating opportunities to proactively engage with clients on potential new business opportunities

Relationship signals make each of these behaviors easier to execute.

Generative AI-assisted email outreach and summaries save your professionals valuable time and increase engagement

After relationship signals nudge your professionals to email particular contacts and add notes from their meetings, two additional generative AI tools in Intapp Assist for DealCloud support these tasks.

Contextual email outreach can generate drafts of your emails, including emails to contacts. When a user fills in the recipient in a draft email message, Intapp Assist provides a personalized summary around recent interactions with that recipient, information about who at your firm has a relationship with the recipient, and relevant news to help you customize your message. As a result, your professionals won’t have to sift through various emails and applications to find this information.

Moreover, Intapp Assist can incorporate this information into an AI-generated draft of the message. For example, if the recipient has previously interacted with a colleague at your firm, the AI-drafted message may reference that connection: “Lindsay Edwards suggested I contact you.” These personalized touches can result in better engagement.  

Likewise, your users can use the summaries function to generate summaries of meetings, deals, and more. The summaries feature distills information into digestible bite-sized lists and generates key insights for deals or matters, client activity, and account details. This feature will save you and your team the time and trouble of manually parsing data to glean key findings.

Work more efficiently with narrative generation

Intapp Assist offers another key time-saver in DealCloud: entry-form content generation. This feature uses generative AI to fill in data fields — such as meeting summaries, follow-up notes, client and contact profiles, professional bios, and deal overviews — in DealCloud’s platform, saving your professionals the time and effort required to manually add information and data.

In addition to saving users time, the content generation feature means that users never have to face a blank page (or entry-form, in this case). Intapp Assist instead generates an initial draft that users can react to and edit.

Interested in using generative AI to support your day-to-day work and business development efforts?

Embracing AI is no longer an option — it is a necessity for financial and professional services firms looking to succeed in competitive landscapes. With integrated workflows, valuable relationship intelligence, and configurable reports, DealCloud provides real-time insights so your teams can make better, faster decisions.

Watch this on-demand webinar to see Intapp Assist in action and learn how Intapp DealCloud can optimize your everyday workflows and business development activities.

Reuters – April 22, 2024

Active relationship management: the new imperative for law firms

Law firms that use Intapp Time and Intapp Billstream can now take advantage of new features that further improve time capture, billing, and client and firm compliance. Below, we look at these features and how they help your firm precisely capture all its time and accelerate revenue collection.

Accelerate collection by discovering captured but unreleased time

A new feature in both Intapp Billstream and Intapp Time helps your time and billing administrators see when your lawyers and other timekeepers have captured time that they haven’t yet finalized and “released” to the financial management system.

With visibility into this unreleased time, your admins can follow up with reminders to complete the time entry and transmit it to your firm’s financial management system. By accelerating this process, your firm can invoice for completed work sooner.

With Intapp Time, users can also view unreleased time that is not compliant with client or firm requirements. This detail will inform how admins follow up with the timekeepers and help establish future best practices.

Reduce system switching by generating PDFs within Intapp Billstream

Intapp Billstream users can now generate PDF previews of their proforma bills, so they no longer need to log into their FMS to preview them. Intapp Billstream admins can also print the proformas for lawyers who prefer paper reviews.  

Record time more precisely with Adobe tab capture

With the latest update, Intapp Time can now record time spent on tasks in Adobe Acrobat more precisely. For example, if a lawyer has multiple tabs open within Adobe Acrobat, Intapp Time captures how much time they spend in each tab. So, if they spend 36 minutes reviewing one contract in a tab, and 42 minutes reviewing a different agreement in a second tab, Intapp Time will accurately record the time spent on these two separate matters. The software then uses AI to populate the time narrative for each tab and activity.

Accurately capture details about Microsoft Teams meetings

At a time when virtual meetings have become the norm, Intapp Time’s updated integration with Microsoft Teams now captures virtual meeting details directly into Intapp Time. This feature accurately records the duration and title of each meeting as well as the meeting participants, creating draft time entries that are more detailed and accurate than those captured from Microsoft Outlook appointments. This integration not only saves time but also ensures that you capture every billable minute spent in virtual meetings.

Share time entries for billing consistency

Another new feature that further improves timekeeping for meetings is the ability to share time entries with other users. For example, if three lawyers attend a meeting with the client, one of the lawyers can create the time entry for that meeting and share that entry with the other two lawyers. As a result, when your firm bills the client for each lawyer’s time at a meeting, the client sees that each lawyer reports a consistent total time and narrative for the meeting.

Give your users an intuitive system that works with your FMS

These new and existing features add up to an intuitive user experience — one that makes it easy for your firm’s professionals to work together to get accurate bills out the door. Moreover, our cloud-based solutions don’t put any additional strain on your firm’s financial management system (FMS).

Your firm can test out these solutions’ new features and experience their benefits by contacting us below.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — April 17, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals in advisory, legal, and capital markets firms, today announced that private equity-focused financial and technology consulting firm Accordion has selected Intapp DealCloud as its relationship management platform.

Leading change

“As we looked to foster strategic growth, we knew we needed an enterprise-wide relationship management platform that aligns with the complex web of relationships and workflows our partners navigate daily,” said Nick Leopard, CEO and Founder at Accordion. “Intapp deeply understands what it takes to win new business in our market and has infused that understanding into the way Intapp DealCloud functions.”

Modernizing business development

With DealCloud, Accordion will have a single destination for its professionals to find and reference communications, workflows, and other data relating to client pursuits and engagements. Access to collective firm intelligence helps teams strengthen relationships, accurately track and forecast pipeline, and accelerate execution. Centralizing engagement data and Accordion’s daily activities will also provide new, actionable insights into client trends and industry developments.

Building on The Rainmaker Genome Project research, DealCloud will help Accordion professionals adopt an Activator mindset, giving them a competitive edge in managing client relationships and growing the business. Access to valuable relationship intelligence will foster key Activator behaviors: consistently dedicating time to business development, building a robust network, and staying connected with contacts via a cadence of timely, relevant outreach. Additionally, the DealCloud Activator experience will simplify the complex process of client interaction by providing tools and guidance for prioritizing outreach, building networks, and understanding client needs.

Multiplying success with Intapp

“We are excited to work with Accordion as they accelerate their growth efforts and prioritize creating an Activator culture,” said Ben Harrison, President, Industries at Intapp. “Centralizing engagement data in Intapp DealCloud will help the firm support its professionals as they forge deeper client relationships, and set the right behaviors as they work to grow the business.”

About Intapp 

Intapp helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific solutions to drive new growth and multiply opportunity. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

About Accordion

Accordion is a private equity-focused financial and technology consulting firm. Rooted in a heritage of serving the office of the CFO, Accordion works at the intersection of sponsors and management teams to maximize value. The firm’s services span the entire CFO function – including operational and technical accounting, strategic financial planning and analysis, CFO-related technology, transaction execution, interim leadership, and turnaround & restructuring solutions. Across all of Accordion’s services, clients are supported by deep expertise in data & analytics, CFO-specific technology and finance-led transformations. Accordion is headquartered in New York with eleven offices around the globe. For more information, please visit https://www.accordion.com/

LegalTech News – April 9, 2024

Lawyers Say Technology Improves Employee Satisfaction. So Why Are Firms Slow to Modernize?

Accounting Today – April 9, 2024

59% of accountants use AI to save about 30 hours a week

Law360 – April 9, 2024

Legal Lags Behind Other Professionals Using AI

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Knowledge workers across accounting, consulting, private capital, and law are eager to leverage AI technology to automate manual tasks, work more efficiently, and derive greater career satisfaction. Firms have incentive to equip their professionals with the AI tools and training necessary to increase their productivity, help them achieve performance goals, and ensure their retention. These findings and more are revealed in the 2024 Technology Perceptions study released today by Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals in advisory, legal, and capital markets firms.

The survey of more than 800 fee earners in the U.S. and U.K. was designed and executed to help inform and support Intapp’s Intelligence Applied strategy. Its purpose is to provide insight into how professionals believe AI will enhance their work performance, and what AI technologies are most needed to help firms remain competitive. The results showed that less than half (45%) of survey respondents rate their firms as highly tech-savvy. And while 91% expressed a desire to use AI in their day-to-day work, only 48% currently leverage the technology.

“Professionals take technology into consideration when deciding which firm is right for them, expecting at least the level of AI-enabled technology they use in their personal lives,” said Ben Harrison, President of Industries at Intapp. “They know AI and other advanced technologies have the power to transform business operations and create a competitive edge, and they expect it to help them improve collaboration, automate tasks, and support knowledge management on a daily basis.”

Growing interest in AI

Many professionals have already seen the benefits of advanced tools in their own personal lives.

• 77% of survey respondents agreed that technology makes them more productive in their personal lives
• 59% responded that they already use AI technologies in their personal lives, including voice queries, data entry, data summarization, document generation, and recommendations (such as when to schedule an appointment)

Naturally, many professionals want to use AI technology in the workplace, like they do at home. This is especially true for assisting them with data entry and content generation:

• 79% say they want to use AI for data-entry tasks such as pulling CRM and contact information from emails
• 76% express interest in AI data summarization, such as automatically creating minutes or action items from a meeting transcript
• 73% would like to use AI for document generation, such as drafting standard contracts, proposals, or investor notifications

AI, automation, and integration optimism

The survey reveals that most professionals are optimistic about the benefits of AI — both to themselves as professionals and to their firms in general.

• 61% believe AI will allow them to focus on delivering higher-level work for clients
• 59% think that AI will make their firm more competitive
• 53% expect AI to improve their work/life balance

One of the most anticipated benefits of AI technology is the automation of time-consuming administrative work that takes professionals away from conducting projects, preparing for and attending meetings, and communicating with clients.

• Professionals estimate that nearly 40% of their work is comprised of manual tasks that could be automated
• By automating manual tasks via AI-powered solutions, respondents believe they can save an average of 25 hours a week

Higher employee performance, retention, and satisfaction

“Firm leadership may be surprised to learn just howmuch of an impact technology has on employee satisfaction and retention rates,” said Harrison. “Yet the survey response connects a lack of effective technology with the risk of losing talent.”

The satisfaction and retention rates at high-tech firms were much higher than those at moderate- and low-tech firms.

• 81% of respondents from high-tech firms stated they were highly satisfied at their job vs. 50% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 77% were highly likely to recommend their firm as a place to work vs. 49% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 80% said they were highly likely to stay at their firm for at least the next two years vs. 56% at moderate- and low-tech firms

This significant gap may stem from how supported professionals feel at their firms in terms of achieving goals. At high-tech firms, most organizational and personal career goals had very high success rates.

• 80% felt successful in developing expertise in the field vs. 49% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 76% felt successful in developing deep client relationships and working efficiently vs. 40% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 75% felt successful at creating strong value/better outcomes for clients vs. 47% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 75% felt successful at developing skills not taught in school vs. 44% at moderate- and low-tech firms
• 69% felt successful at both increasing their personal income and getting promoted vs. 39% and 40% respectively at moderate- and low-tech firms

To learn more, see the full survey results and read the research report here: intapp.com/2024-tech-perceptions-survey.

About the study

The Intapp survey was conducted by Rockbridge Research among 800 fee earners in the U.S. and U.K. across four verticals: accounting, consulting, capital markets (investment banking and private equity), and legal. Results were collected between September 25 and October 6, 2023 using an email invitation and online survey. Quotas were set to ensure representative and statistically significant numbers across the four verticals and geographic locations. The margin of error for results is +/- 3.2 in total at the 95% confidence level.

About Intapp Intapp helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific solutions to drive new growth and multiply opportunity. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

Palo Alto, Calif., April 3, 2024 — Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA), a leading global provider of AI-powered solutions for professionals at advisory, capital markets, and legal firms, today announced that its Intapp DealCloud platform was named Best Fundraising Solution at the Private Equity Wire European Awards 2024. Chosen by industry voters, these awards recognize excellence among European fund managers and service providers, and highlight the achievements of leaders and innovators in a dynamic industry.

Nominees for the service provider category were selected through a pre-poll of more than 200 European-based general partners and other key industry participants. This year, more than 35,000 Private Equity Wire readers voted to determine the winners, which were announced and celebrated at a gala on February 7 in London.

“We’re delighted to be named the winner of the Private Equity Wire European Awards 2024 Best Fundraising Solution,” said Amit Lalwani, Head of Global Business Development for Intapp DealCloud. “It is a strong validation of Intapp DealCloud’s ability to help fundraisers and investor relations (IR) professionals engage with their investor base with the best information at their fingertips — which makes them more competitive in tough markets.”

Lalwani shares more about how DealCloud, and its Applied AI capabilities, empower fundraising efforts in a video interview with Private Equity Wire.

DealCloud provides a single-source pipeline management, relationship intelligence, and CRM platform that powers the dealmaking processes from strategy to origination to execution. It offers fully configurable solutions built for the complex relationships and day-to-day needs of the most demanding investment professionals. With DealCloud, firms can harness their proprietary and third-party data, allowing dealmakers and professionals to focus their efforts on originating better deals, accelerating execution, and building relationships.

To learn how Intapp DealCloud helps firms successfully source and close deals and achieve long-term success, visit intapp.com/dealcloud.

About Intapp

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

In this post, we’ll explore the ways Microsoft Copilot can benefit your firm and how you can prevent oversharing, promote security, and maintain client trust.

What is Microsoft Copilot and why does it matter to me?

Microsoft Copilot is a generative AI assistant available in Microsoft 365. Unlike ChatGPT, Copilot lets professionals generate responses that combine the power of large language models (LLMs) with your firm’s own data — all while using everyday apps like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook.

Microsoft Copilot has the potential to truly transform how your professionals work, especially in terms of knowledge sharing and content creation — both of which are central to service delivery. With Copilot, your teams can easily interact with their applications and data across devices in a more natural, familiar, and consistent way.

The oversharing problem

Despite the many benefits of Microsoft Copilot, there are a few immediate compliance challenges that firms must overcome to confidently deploy it. First and foremost is the oversharing problem.

Because Microsoft Copilot references your firm’s own data — including documents, emails, and chats — you need to ensure that the software complies with your data privacy, security, and confidentiality obligations. After all, you wouldn’t want your professionals to, say, send prompts that generate responses with highly sensitive, confidential information they shouldn’t have access to.

Since your client engagement teams will likely change members over time, your firm needs to be able to manage complex, frequently changing permissions across your applications and data sources. Otherwise, your firm increases the risk of sensitive information being overshared.

Confidently deploying Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot adheres to the security permissions you apply — which is why your firm’s policies and permissions must always remain up to date. But what’s the most efficient and reliable way to apply and maintain these permissions across all your engagements, SharePoint sites, and Teams channels?

Intapp Walls for Copilot is a centralized confidentiality control solution that lets you manage access to your firm’s confidential information and documents across Microsoft 365. The solution ensures that Microsoft Copilot won’t send users any generative AI responses that include information they shouldn’t have access to.  

Intapp Walls for Copilot is an exciting development that helps capital markets, legal, and advisory firms both leverage the generative AI power of Microsoft Copilot and further preserve the deep trust with their clients.

Donald Kossmann, Vice President of Copilot at Microsoft

Intapp Walls for Copilot also offers Copilot-specific dashboards and features that provide administrators with greater visibility into their Copilot deployment. Administrators can easily view and control which Microsoft SharePoint sites are being indexed and accessed by Copilot, and they can identify and address risks stemming from high collaboration areas or misfiled documents.

With the right measures in place, your firm can confidently deploy Microsoft Copilot and prevent oversharing while maintaining client confidentiality and trust. Contact us to learn more about how Intapp Walls for Copilot can help harness the generative AI of Microsoft Copilot for your firm.

That’s why data silos and communication breakdowns are “silent killers.”

When different service lines within a firm operate as separate entities and use their own systems, collaboration suffers. Critical information needed by other teams is communicated slowly, ineffectively, or not at all.

In a competitive market where every advantage counts, this silently kills a firm’s ability to grow, innovate, and meet client expectations.

We spoke with Marc McNicholl, Intapp’s Managing Director of Professional Services, to better understand the collaboration and communication challenges accounting firms face — and how an accountant collaboration tool can help overcome them.

Why do so many accounting firms have data silos, and how can firms fix them — along with the collaboration and communication issues they cause?

Marc McNicholl: At many accounting firms, audit, tax, advisory, and other service lines operate independently of one another and prefer different ways of working. So the audit team will buy software that meets their needs, for example, then the tax and advisory teams will each purchase different solutions aligned with how they like to work.

Collaboration and communication between service lines winds up suffering because information is stored in siloed systems that only fellow team members can access. People end up sharing information via email, which is not ideal because emails can easily be missed.

Email also causes problems because professionals can locally edit documents they’ve received. This creates new versions that other colleagues might not be aware of — either because those edited documents remain on someone’s desktop, or because they’re uploaded to siloed repositories. As a result, professionals can end up using outdated or inaccurate information to make important decisions and service clients.

The most impactful way to improve accountant document management is to standardize on an accounting collaboration tool that breaks down data silos while supporting how firms work. Solutions like Intapp Workspaces — which connect Microsoft 365 applications like Microsoft Teams with other systems — make collaboration easy while allowing each service line to work the way it wants to.

These tools eliminate versioning problems and accelerate the engagement lifecycle by making all information accessible from one place: Professionals can collaborate on all documents within a single location, and quickly find what they need without wading through emails, chats, and multiple internal systems.

What other issues impede collaboration and communication, and how can accountancies solve them?

MM: Delayed workspace provisioning also makes effective collaboration challenging. There’s typically a delay between when an engagement is won and when a collaborative workspace is created for it in an application like Microsoft Teams.

This is because IT has to get involved — someone has to submit a ticket to IT requesting the workspace. It takes time for IT to fulfill the request, and many professionals will start working on things during that waiting period. As a result, information is siloed right off the bat.

Using collaboration solutions that automatically create workspaces with the proper access permissions eliminates the lag time that often drives users to store documents locally and share information via email.

Another issue is user adoption. Even if a firm provides collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or SharePoint, not everyone is going to use them all the time — especially if the culture doesn’t encourage open dialogue. Every person has different preferences, and if knowledge sharing isn’t a firmwide priority, many people will stick predominantly to using email or other tools they’re more comfortable with.

To ensure maximum user adoption, firms should look for technology solutions that are built specifically to meet the needs of accounting firms. With Intapp Workspaces, for example, Microsoft Teams becomes a collaboration hub with engagement-centric workspaces and workflows tailored to each department’s requirements.

Fostering a culture of openness is also critical for improving technology adoption. Firms should actively encourage teams to share information. Promoting an Activator mindset, which includes connecting with colleagues and creating value through collaboration, can also go a long way towards building an open culture.

Educating professionals on why collaboration is critical — and how to do it effectively — also improves adoption by demonstrating that knowledge sharing is a firm priority.

What are the biggest impacts of fixing collaboration and communication issues?

MM: The way professionals collaborate and communicate impacts every aspect of the business, so when firms fix their issues, it can have a substantial impact.

Take business development. When teams are trying to win new business, they want to leverage the best examples of the firm’s previous work. If they have visibility into everything that’s been done firmwide, they can put their best food forward and mitigate the risk of losing business to another firm.

Client satisfaction and retention are other areas that are significantly impacted by addressing collaboration and communication problems. Clients today have sky-high expectations — everything has to be fast and accurate. When everything is in one place, professionals can quickly find the data needed to complete audits and other projects instead of waiting on colleagues to track down information for them. This accelerates the engagement lifecycle — and ultimately leads to happier clients.

Many firms offer the same services, so if firms can differentiate themselves by providing an exceptional experience, clients will be more likely to stick around.

Also, firms that address collaboration issues by providing one “source of truth” for all data have a complete picture of firm performance. It’s no longer challenging for managing partners to figure out if the firm is improving, or just treading water. It also provides the accurate insights and intelligence they need to confidently make strategic decisions that support growth and other firm objectives.

The accounting firms that get the most benefit from fixing collaboration and communication issues are those that make data from all internal systems available from one centralized repository — regardless of where it resides. For instance, with Intapp Workspaces, information from practice management, billing, and other internal systems is easily accessible from Microsoft Teams. 

Can siloed data and ineffective communication have an impact on compliance?

MM: Yes, absolutely. Compliance with data retention policies is an especially big problem when professionals store documents on their local desktops. If the proper retention policies aren’t assigned to these documents, people wind up having access to them long after retention periods expire.

If you’re in the EU, this situation can potentially result in non-compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 5(1)(e), which states personal data should be kept only for as long as it’s needed for the purposes for which it was processed. Violations of this regulation can result in substantial penalties, with less severe violations subject to fines of up to €10 million, or 2% of a company’s worldwide annual revenue – whichever is higher.

In addition, professionals who rely too heavily on channels like Microsoft Outlook may miss email communications about new policies or regulatory changes —accidentally exposing their firms to compliance risk.

Firms can mitigate compliance risk by implementing accounting collaboration tools that automate and maintain their security and governance standards. Features that support lifecycle management are especially important. Intapp Workspaces, for example, will automatically archive information and apply the proper retention policies after an engagement is complete.

Data silos and poor communication can erode even the best-run firm’s competitive advantage by silently killing growth, innovation, and client delivery. Taking steps to support frictionless collaboration and knowledge sharing is critical to ensuring your firm’s future success.

Schedule a demo to learn how Intapp Workspaces can help your firm achieve its full potential by enabling effortless collaboration and communication.

Leading strategic change

“As a part of our firmwide growth strategy, we encourage our attorneys to deepen their relationships with current clients while effectively nurturing their networks to source new business,” said Tom Smanik, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Warner. “DealCloud will help us facilitate these growth efforts by providing relationship management, intelligence, and outreach capabilities in one platform that’s easy for our attorneys to use.”

Addressing client relationship management

With Intapp DealCloud, Warner will have a single destination for its professionals to find and reference communications, workflows, and other data relating to client matters and engagements. Automated data capture and signature-scraping technology will help the firm build and manage a comprehensive view of its relationships with clients, prospects, and other contacts. By centralizing engagement data, Warner’s daily activities will provide new, actionable insights into client trends and industry developments.

Warner will use DealCloud’s legal industry blueprint, which is preconfigured specifically for law firms. The blueprint includes key features like automated contact management, relationship intelligence, opportunity tracking, and marketing capabilities. Using Intapp’s industry blueprint and templated data migration process will accelerate Warner’s legacy Customer Relationship Management replacement, leading to faster time to value.

Multiplying success with Intapp

Warner is a longtime client currently using Intapp Time, which uses AI to accurately capture billable and nonbillable work. Additionally, the firm is adding Intapp Compliance solution to thoroughly evaluate new business, onboard clients quickly, manage access to sensitive matters, and monitor relationships for compliance throughout the client lifecycle.

Through Intapp integrations, DealCloud will serve as a centralized hub of trusted data for Warner, bringing client and prospect data together with risk, compliance, and operational information. By simplifying access to this integrated data, Warner will enable a more targeted approach to pursuing new business while streamlining client intake and onboarding.

“We are excited to further our work with Warner as the firm prioritizes better connecting its people, data, and processes,” said Lavinia Calvert, Vice President Legal Industry Group at Intapp. “Centralizing client data in DealCloud will help the firm improve its knowledge management abilities and support its attorneys as they deepen their relationships with clients.”

About Intapp 

Intapp software helps professionals unlock their teams’ knowledge, relationships, and operational insights to increase value for their firms. Using the power of Applied AI, we make firm and market intelligence easy to find, understand, and use. With Intapp’s portfolio of vertical SaaS solutions, professionals can apply their collective expertise to make smarter decisions, manage risk, and increase competitive advantage. The world’s top firms — across accounting, consulting, investment banking, legal, private capital, and real assets — trust Intapp’s industry-specific platform and solutions to modernize and drive new growth. For more information, visit intapp.com and connect with us on X, formerly Twitter (@intapp) and LinkedIn. 

About Warner Norcross + Judd LLP

By providing discerning and proactive legal advice, Warner Norcross + Judd LLP builds a better partnership with our clients. One of Michigan’s largest law firms, Warner is focused on providing the best legal solutions and exceptional client service to organizations throughout the world. Connect with the firm on wnj.com, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

The most successful firms have shown great discipline around how they triage and manage their deal pipelines and are now taking that further. Once processes are running well, forward-thinking managers are exploring how they can use third-party data and ChatGPT-like functionality to summarize deal intelligence and make people more efficient.

The Drawdown – March 20, 2024

Going digital

At many firms, employee trade pre-clearance is still a resource-intensive affair requiring manual verification, paperwork, and coordination with compliance officers. The result: increased compliance risk and lost productivity.

That’s because, like any manual process, it’s subject to human error — information may be miskeyed, misinterpreted, or accidentally overlooked. The lack of real-time monitoring also makes it difficult to identify potential regulatory issues as they arise. Not to mention, slow approvals can cause employees to miss out on time-sensitive trading opportunities.

Below we explore how your firm can issue timely approvals and reduce compliance risk with technology that automates the employee trade pre-clearance process. We’ll also share what to look for when selecting a technology solution.

Ensure fast, compliant trade pre-clearance

Employee trade pre-clearance doesn’t have to be a lengthy process. Technology solutions that automate trade pre-clearance, such as Intapp Employee Compliance, make it faster and easier for your firm to approve employee trades while adhering to compliance requirements. These solutions provide numerous benefits:

• Accelerated approval processes: Automating the employee trade pre-clearance workflow accelerates the processing time for trading requests — saving compliance officers time and enabling employees to take advantage of favorable market conditions.
• Increased productivity: Replacing tedious manual processes with automation lets compliance officers and other employees focus their efforts on strategic priorities.

• Reduced compliance risk: Real-time monitoring helps firms ensure consistent enforcement of internal policies and external regulatory requirements, while alerts about potential violations help compliance officers address issues quickly.
• Enhanced accuracy and reliability: Automation supports an accurate, reliable pre-clearance process that minimizes oversights, miscalculations, and misinterpretation of trading activities.

Improve ease, speed, and accuracy with solutions built to meet your firm’s needs

While choosing the right employee pre-trade clearance solution might feel daunting at first, you can narrow the field by refining your search to solutions with these critical features:

• Configurability: Adapt quickly to policy and regulatory changes with a system that can be easily tailored to align with your firm’s specific compliance requirements, rules, and policies.

• Comprehensive reporting: Simplify internal audits and support regulatory compliance with an auditable system of record of all employee trading activity.
• An intuitive interface: Make it easier for employees to submit trade approval requests — and for compliance officers to manage them — with personalized dashboards and role-based reports that highlight outstanding tasks and potential compliance concerns.

Gain a competitive advantage

Relying on manual processes to ensure that employee stock trades comply with internal policies and regulatory requirements is inefficient and risky. With competition getting tougher and regulations increasing in complexity, it’s also becoming unsustainable.

Automating trade pre-clearance not only improves employee satisfaction by accelerating approvals — it also increases productivity, reduces compliance risk, and enables you to operate efficiently in a market where every advantage counts.

Schedule a demo of Intapp Employee Compliance today to learn more about what automating trade pre-clearance can do for your firm.

Last year, the accounting industry faced significant new regulatory challenges — and this year is shaping up to be no different. Firms are grappling with how to comply with new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) auditing standards, meet personal independence and financial interest requirements amid record growth, and more.  

Below we explore the regulatory changes and trends that will have a significant impact on accounting firm compliance this year — and what your firm needs to do now to be prepared. 

2024 regulatory changes and trends 

New PCAOB auditing standards 

The PCAOB currently requires accounting firms that audit more than 500 public companies to use automated financial interest independence solutions. However, the PCAOB’s proposed new quality control standard, QC 1000, lowers that threshold to firms that audit more than 100 public companies. The new standard will likely be finalized this year — and firms that fail to meet it risk regulatory action, reputational damage, and even loss of business.  

Firms that are impacted by QC 1000, but haven’t yet deployed a compliant solution, need to take action now so they aren’t left scrambling at the last minute. 

Heightened regulatory scrutiny 

Since Erica Williams was appointed Chairperson of the PCAOB in 2021, regulatory scrutiny has increased substantially. In 2023, the PCAOB imposed more than $20 million in penalties — a jump of almost 200% from 2022. It also levied fines of $2 million or more in five different enforcement actions — an all-time high.  

Addressing gaps and inefficiencies in existing independence processes should be an urgent priority, not least because the PCAOB is likely to continue increasing its investigation and enforcement actions. In a recent statement, Chairperson Williams confirmed that the board is “just getting started.” 

Accelerated growth

Accounting firms, particularly larger ones, are experiencing significant growth — mainly due to factors including an increased focus on advisory services and M&A. According to Accounting Today, average combined revenue growth at the top 100 firms has quadrupled year over year, reaching 18.5%. 

Ensuring compliance with independence-related requirements becomes substantially more complex and time-consuming as firms take on new clients and markets. The manual compliance processes that many firms use become unsustainable as they grow, requiring them to transition to scalable, automated processes that can meet evolving business needs. 

Increased awareness of process shortcomings

As growth accelerates and quality control standards intensify, accounting firm leaders are paying increasing attention to just how burdensome their manual compliance processes really are. More than ever, we’re hearing from firm executives that their partners are frustrated with the amount of time that independence attestations take away from billable work.  

And, of course, if a firm gets audited by the PCAOB, its leaders will be even more unhappy, since they’ll likely spend a month or more compiling the required documentation. And the only thing they typically have to show for all their effort is an email trail of attestations. Unfortunately, this isn’t always sufficient for auditors, who fail them for not having sound independence processes.  

These issues are driving more and more firms to look for new solutions that support rigorous compliance monitoring and enforcement processes while minimizing the need for manual work. 

How to prepare for 2024 and beyond 

The common thread through all these changes and trends is the need for automated, scalable financial interest independence solutions. Implementing these solutions is the most important thing your firm can do right now to be prepared for new PCAOB auditing standards, heightened regulatory scrutiny, and future growth. 

A note to smaller firm leaders: If your firm audits less than 100 companies, it might be tempting to think this doesn’t apply to you, since QC 1000 doesn’t require you to use a financial interest system. However, clinging to antiquated, error-prone manual processes that tie up billable time will still hurt your top and bottom lines and impair your ability to keep up with the competition.  

Regardless of your firm’s size, your financial interest independence solution should have four key features to effectively mitigate compliance risk as regulations and business needs evolve: 

1. Automated impairment detection: Your solution should use automation to find independence impairments — before regulators do. Solutions such as Intapp Employee Compliance automatically capture personal investment and financial interest information, then proactively alert risk teams about potential impairments so nothing falls through the cracks. These capabilities let compliance teams focus on addressing violations, instead of poring through documentation searching for them.  
2. Flexibility: As the old adage goes, the only constant is change. To prepare for anything that comes your firm’s way — regulatory or otherwise — you need a financial interest solution that can be easily reconfigured to suit new needs and requirements. For example, you should be able to quickly modify your independence attestation workflows and questions to align with policy changes.  
3. Customizable reports: If an auditor comes knocking, the last thing you’ll want to do is spend weeks tracking down documentation. To avoid this situation, make sure you can quickly generate reports that can be configured as needed using custom filters and criteria. Using a solution built specifically for accounting firms, like Intapp Employee Compliance, will also demonstrate to regulators that you have a rigorous process for meeting personal independence and financial interest requirements. 
4. Painless policy enforcement: Compliance professionals should have access to dashboards and reports that provide visibility into who needs to do what, and by when. If documentation is overdue, automated alerts should “chase” offenders so your compliance teams don’t have to. To further ease your enforcement burden, your solution should be able to automatically approve, deny, or block trade requests in accordance with your firm’s policies and restricted entity list. 

The right technology partner makes all the difference 

The process of selecting and deploying an automated financial interest independence solution might seem daunting — but it doesn’t have to be. Choosing a technology partner like Intapp — which offers compliance solutions built specifically for accounting firms and brings extensive industry expertise — can make things much easier. 

Schedule a demo of Intapp Employee Compliance to learn how we can help your firm be ready for what’s to come in 2024 and beyond.