Accounting
Marcum releases AskMarcum.ai tool after 18 months development
Top 25 firm Marcum announced the release of a new AI tool called AskMarcum.ai, a product from Marcum Labs, the firm’s technology incubator. The software, which has been in development for 18 months, is already being used by the firm’s professionals to assist with productivity and efficiency. Other organizations became aware of the solution and wanted a comparable one for themselves, which drove the commercialization of the once-internal product.
“AskMarcum.ai began as an internal initiative to advance the Firm’s operational efficiency. It quickly proved to be a resounding success, streamlining workflows, deepening our innovative culture, and sparking conversations among clients and peers,” said Peter Scavuzzo, CEO of Marcum Technology. “The buzz it created was undeniable; other organizations began to approach us, intrigued by its impact and looking for options to capitalize on the value for their organization. This helped us realize AskMarcum.ai’s larger potential as a solution for the broader market.”
In a later email, Scavuzo said the tool is most commonly used for rapid templating, first drafts, content pro typing, and everyday tasks such as writing emails, creating macros, and marketing ideas that help the users in their daily tasks by making them more efficient. Last year the firm actually held a contest for the best use cases by staff. Some of the winners included:
- Creating a letter template about IRS abatement.
- Translate an international reporting document into English.
- Reformat AG aging schedule from raw data – Generate a VBA code to execute.
- Provide examples of different types of transactions that would require a 754 adjustment.
- Add specific functionality to an Excel Spreadsheet.
- Breakdown complicated ASCs into digestible analogies “even a kid could understand.”
Scavuzzo said so far, in 2024, the latest AskMarcum.ai winner used the tool to build Visual Basic code for Excel to rapidly perform data analysis and automation with a complex Excel workbook for a client deliverable.
The product will be uniquely branded to each organization that uses it, allowing them to rename the platform to mirror their brand and offer a personalized experience. Designed as a foundational tool, the solution is tailored specifically to the user’s unique datasets and is hosted in their organization’s private Azure instance for security and privacy reasons. Internally, though, it also sports a transparency audit tool that allows organizations to monitor usage across the organization, which not only supports accountability but helps identify the most effective use cases, maximize the value derived from the solution, and then socialize those best use cases with their team.
AskMarcum.ai integrates within Microsoft Teams as a plugin, which will let employees use the solution within their existing collaboration and workflow. This allows the tool to be accessible through the user’s entire Microsoft platform, including full mobility. While right now the foundational product requires interaction, the product is road-mapped to eventually perform pre-set tasks proactively.
The model itself is based on Microsoft Azure Open AI’s GPT4-Turbo LLM model hosted within a private and secure Azure tenant with no alterations. Scavuzzo said he believes that with the variety of enterprise LLMs and vendors working on industry-specific LLMs and SLMs, the real investment should be in building a flexible platform that can dynamically leverage a variety of these services through inference and exceptional prompt engineering. Scavuzzo said Marcum has invested a considerable amount in terms of dollars over the last 18 months to develop this solution, most of which went towards upskilling the most technically proficient and innovative leaders and directing their time toward developing this solution. They also recruited for new, AI-specific positions to support the initiative, and the firm continues hiring in that area. Comprehensive training programs have also been implemented to ensure everyone involved is well-equipped to contribute to the project.
While the firm is not sharing its base pricing publicly, Scavuzzo said there will be a negotiated monthly base fee based on the volume of licensing purchased that will vary by organization. The variable consumption pricing that an organization will have directly with Microsoft will be based on the current pricing, investments, and licensing program the organization has with Microsoft.
Within SAP Fieldglass, Joule can recommend best-fit templates to generate job postings and statements of work with prefilled information such as the start date and the number of skilled workers needed. Joule embedded across the SAP Business Network can analyze, categorize and transform unstructured invoice rejection errors into structured, actionable insights to reduce the cost of resolving exceptions. Further planned capacities will eventually help match suppliers with new business opportunities. Within SAP Ariba, Joule will enable users to create RFPs and request help with routine inquiries and surface risks. These capabilities will also provide buying recommendations along with supplier summaries from different data sources. In addition, a sustainability scorecard from SAP Ariba helps customers make decisions that align with their organizations’ environmental, social and governance objectives.
Overall, Joule will manage 80% of the most frequently performed tasks in the SAP Ariba portfolio of intelligent spend management and business network solutions.
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
During his presentation yesterday at SAP Spend Connect Live, Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer for intelligent spend and business network at SAP, noted that the company has accounted for people’s concerns regarding security and privacy.
“SAP is dedicated to delivering best-in-class solutions infused with AI, empowering you to prioritize strategic initiatives over mundane tasks,” he said during his keynote. “We understand and hear the concerns surrounding data security when implementing AI, which is why we have made no compromises in ensuring our AI capabilities set the standard for compliance. From third-party advisory boards to adhering to the
Beyond Joule’s integration into the wider portfolio of SAP products, he also announced the upcoming release of the SAP Ariba Intake Management solution, designed to address how businesses handle employee requests and process orchestration, starting with procurement. It provides employees with a single place to go for procurement inquiries and visibility on their status. The solution collects employee requests, orchestrates processes across landscapes and applications, and provides visibility on status while shielding employees from process complexity. SAP plans to make SAP Ariba Intake Management available in the first quarter of 2025.
Swaminathan also announced that SAP Business Network will launch a new promote subscription in the first quarter with value-added features to help suppliers differentiate themselves, attract new buyers and grow their businesses. Swaminathan said the subscription will give suppliers recommendations to improve discoverability, advanced search results, supplier profile verification and network catalog APIs. With the help of generative AI tools, suppliers can load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries. The new promote subscription will help suppliers identify sales opportunities based on regional search data and use advanced insights to track business growth on the network.
He also announced a new analytics add-on with AI capabilities for SAP Fieldglass solutions, which helps procurement, vendor management and HR professionals to implement agile multichannel talent strategies. The analytics add-on for SAP Fieldglass solutions lets users review performance against over 50 external workforce key performance indicators; access global market intelligence including rates, talent supply and demand, and time-to-hire trends; and track sustainability initiatives such as spend with diverse suppliers and worker health and safety, while observing cost overruns, worker fatigue, and on- and offboarding compliance.
“With SAP Business AI as the foundation of our intelligent products, customers can improve productivity and gain insights from their spend data no matter where it sits,” said Swaminathan. “Whether it is managing cost, mitigating risk or supporting scope three emission reduction, SAP empowers companies with the right solutions for agile and effective spend management and supply chain functions.”
The Internal Revenue Service says it has processing underway on some 400,000 claims for the Employee Retention Credit, representing about $10 billion of eligible claims.
Work on the claims for small businesses and others is ongoing as the agency continues to wade through claims from the complex — and at times misused — pandemic-era credit. A significant number of the ERC claims came in during what the IRS calls “a period of aggressive marketing” by promoters, leading to a large percentage of improper, ineligible claims.
“In recent weeks, the IRS has made substantial progress in separating eligible claims from the wave of ineligible claims that have come in,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a statement, “and we continue working to refine our models to identify more eligible claims.”
The claims being processed include eligible and ineligible claims, with most being processed for approval. Checks are being mailed for eligible claims with refunds.
The ERC program increasingly became the target of aggressive marketing well after the pandemic ended. Some promoter groups called the credit by another name, such as a grant, business stimulus payment, government relief or other names. The IRS is continuing to work denials of improper claims, intensifying audits and investigating potential fraud and abuse.
Last month, the agency opened a
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