Artificial Intelligence for Audit, Forensic Accounting, and Valuation

CHAPTER 16Client Management

AN AUDIT OR FORENSIC ACCOUNTING firm must pay close attention to sales and client satisfaction. AI technologies allow for tremendous capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM). This chapter provides a general introduction to the CRM and sales management capabilities. Since regulatory requirements vary by country, readers are expected to understand which of the capabilities discussed are approved in the areas where the firm operates.

Note that the advent of intelligent automation may change the business models of the audit firm and may impact the regulatory environment. We discussed the four business models of legacy auditor, ad hoc enabler, temporary connector model, and PC permanent embedding model. Each one of those models will introduce different sales paths. In a traditional audit, the sale to the audit committee and the board could be sufficient to qualify as an audit partner. As audit firms introduce new audit models and deploy technology in audit, new gatekeepers will be introduced in the sales process. These gatekeepers could be the IT departments, the data science departments, or other leaders who must provide information, access, and link to the internal systems and data. Deployment of new technology implies that the audit firm will move away from sample‐based manual audits and move toward population‐based continuous audit.

As mentioned before, technology‐centric continuous audit introduces an element of invasiveness that has ...