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As I speak with leaders across the industry about artificial intelligence, I question how much firms value AI features and how often we forget about the impact we want it to have on our business and client relationships. Adopting the technology must be a methodical process for firms seeking to create a sustainable AI impact. First, firm leaders must ask themselves, 'Who do we want to help?’
The answer should always be the client. To achieve that, firms must genuinely care about the advisor’s day-to-day. Advisors are directly connected to the client, and the more time they have to meet with those clients, offering smart and intentional guidance, the more business growth you will help them generate.
But a solution that merely saves time on administrative tasks will quickly become stale as the business grows. Success lies in determining how the AI tool you are implementing will have a lasting effect on the advisor’s workday routine.
AI’s Domino Effect
Let’s think about it as a domino effect. The first domino positions AI as a time-saving tool, allowing advisors to spend more time strengthening client relationships. The next domino is growth — and here is where most firms fail to look into the future. Growth demands more efficient workflows to sustain it. Simply shaving time off admin work won’t be enough.
AI has been framed as an efficiency booster, and I agree. So far, it has saved time by generating summaries and insights, helping advisors skip the hours-long task of reviewing meeting notes and action items. With the introduction of Generative AI, its use has become more accessible. Unlike previous machine learning tools, advisors can use AI without needing a data science background. But we must be realistic: The amount of time AI can save you reaches a limit. Firms must be prepared to take AI to the next level by turning insights into actions.
The next step in evolving the modern advisory firm is to move beyond simple notetaking and meeting summaries into a truly intelligent operational system. Advisors today need more than data to save time; they need dynamic workflows that adapt as their business needs change. AI should visualize new workflows and help the advisor refine them in real time. Imagine a system that engages the advisor before a meeting with the exact preparation needed, then automatically summarizes the meeting, identifies next steps, and triggers follow-up actions — all in alignment with the firm’s predefined workflows.
Those workflows, built with natural language, are then matched to the right client segment, activating the appropriate services and scheduling the necessary meetings. As the cycle continues, the system closes the loop by analyzing past actions, client sentiment, and expected outcomes, proactively surfacing the next best conversation to have. This is how we shift from reactive processes to an intelligent, adaptive, and client-centric engine that proactively saves time and drives stronger relationships.
Adjust AI to Fit Advisor Needs
If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that genuine conversations lead to strong, lifelong relationships, and that drives business growth. In order to successfully leverage AI to support advisors in a meaningful way, we must make the tool adapt to them, not the other way around.
As firms continue to figure out how to integrate AI into their current system, any resource must be multifaceted enough to sustain each domino trigger, from basic time saving to supporting a truly personalized follow-up to creating complex workflows as their book of business grows. That is the difference between an AI tool that quickly runs its course and one that creates a real impact on our industry in the next five years.
Adrian Johnstone is the CEO of Practifi.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
