Crowe LLP is a public accounting, consulting, and technology firm that uses its deep industry expertise to provide audit, tax, and consulting services to public and private entities. With more than 6,000 professionals, the firm tailors its solutions and services to many industries, including the tower industry. “We live and breathe the tower industry, and we are investing in products specifically for this vertical,” says Luis Lopez Garay, partner in consulting at Crowe.
Crowe has significant experience integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into accounting and operational processes. “We’ve been developing AI solutions for nine years,” says Thomas Callaghan, managing director in data science at Crowe. “Certainly, the generative AI explosion has increased the ability and capabilities of Crowe solutions.”
AI has set the gold standard for accounting tools, according to Lopez Garay, and he believes any company that does not adopt the technology will quickly fall behind. “Right now, there is an opportunity to be an early adopter in the tower industry and get ahead of the competition,” he says. “These tools are here and available, but companies need to act now.”
Crowe has taken advantage of advancements in AI by developing the Crowe Tower Accelerator. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365™, Crowe Tower Accelerator is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that uses AI to eliminate manual processes that can slow down tower lease management.
“Our target customers for Crowe Tower Accelerator are tower companies that want to streamline their operations, grow their tower count, and resolve complexities in their finance and operations,” Lopez Garay explained.
How AI Works
Callaghan explains that by using computational power and algorithms to simulate human intelligence since the 1950s, AI has slowly changed the way we process data; that is, until recently. The introduction of generative AI has unlocked new application areas for AI and lowered the barrier of entry for everyday AI use. It has revolutionized natural language processing and optimization through the use of large language models and machine learning.
“Generative AI and large language models allow for a chatbot that can respond in very human-like ways,” Callaghan says. “But large language models can generate more than text. They also produce images, videos, and voice.”
The Challenge
Using AI, Crowe Tower Accelerator assists tower companies with one of the biggest challenges they face: manual processes that lead to a lack of quality data. This deficiency is particularly pertinent when it comes to tracking lease contracts, paying vendors and invoicing customers.
Inaccurate data can lead to ambiguity regarding lease expirations, space availability, equipment upgrades and tenant invoicing, explains Lopez Garay.
Plus, tower companies spend significant time processing lease contracts. Reading one lease contract might take three or four hours, says Lopez Garay. With a high lease volume, those hours add up. Paying vendors and invoicing customers can also be tedious and time consuming.
“One reason AI is transformative is that it drastically reduces difficult, inefficient, and, in some cases, ‘soul-sucking’ work,” Callaghan says. “It accelerates and often automates the work that nobody wants to do and frees people up to do what they are best at – being creative, asking the right questions, and engaging with their data.”
Lease Automation
Because lease administration systems are commonly separate from ERP systems, data is manually sent from one system to another before tower companies generate invoices, which potentially can lead to disjointed outcomes.
AI can provide tower companies with more accurate data in less time through lease automation, explains Lopez Garay. With AI, companies can extract the appropriate lease data in a matter of minutes and translate it with higher accuracy than a human could.
“The new language models allow tower companies to extract data from their lease contracts via AI with lower costs, more speed, and increased accuracy,” Lopez Garay says. “High-quality data has a positive downstream impact on operations, accounting, and billing.”
Invoice Automation
Crowe Tower Accelerator uses AI to automate both incoming and outgoing invoices.
Information from incoming invoices is automatically extracted, read, and sent to the tower company’s ERP system. Information from leases is used to automatically bill tenants on the tower.
“This process provides tremendous time savings and efficiency gains for the accounting department,” Lopez Garay says. “Because of that increased efficiency, tower companies can grow their portfolios and revenue while maintaining similar workforce numbers.”
Historically, companies that want to expand need to onboard more people to do more manual work just to keep up, according to Lopez Garay. “That’s the secret sauce of AI; it’s a huge opportunity to streamline the invoice process. Having tight control on your operating expenses is paramount to growth.”
A More Efficient Financial Future
From a finance insight perspective, tower companies are using AI to automate bank reconciliation. Microsoft has released several features that allow tower companies to reconcile different data sources.
“The ability to take data from the bank, see it and reconcile it with the ERP is something that would take hours for an accountant to do. Now it can be done in minutes with AI,” Callaghan says.
By integrating artificial intelligence, tower companies can take advantage of its potential to better serve tenants and operate more efficiently, the Crowe team explains. “In the future, AI could help tower companies be more profitable because it can help them be faster and better at their internal operations,” says Lopez Garay. But AI won’t wait, warns Lopez Garay. He encourages industry leaders to embrace change and the digital transformation now so that they can reap the full business benefits.
To learn more about Crowe please visit here or reach out to Luis Lopez Garay at [email protected].
Microsoft and Dynamics 365 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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