ERP solutions provider NetSuite dived headfirst into agentic AI, announcing a host of new solutions Thursday using semi-autonomous agents for insights, workflow and security across the entire suite.
Speaking during its SuiteConnect conference in Manhattan, Brian Chess, senior vice president of technology and AI with Oracle NetSuite, reiterated the company’s commitment to AI implementation, saying that has not changed. What has changed from last year is the nature of that AI. Specifically, AI agents.
“We’re all talking about agents. It’s a natural progression of taking advantage of what AI can offer as we become more capable,” he said.
Brian Chess, SVP of technology and AI at NetSuite
Noting that the public’s understanding of what constitutes an AI agent is still being worked out, he said he thinks of an agent as having four properties. One, people can interact back and forth with it, not in complex computer code, but natural conversational language. Two, it understands the context of a business, a workflow, a data set and more, and will continue to evolve its understanding of that context. Three, the agent can take proactive action without human prompting (but not without permission). Four, it can create plans, explore options and make judgment calls.
“Now, not every agent does all these things in equal measure, but we do think we’re seeing these characteristics shine through more and more,” said Chess.
One example that NetSuite has already introduced is NetSuite Financial Exception Management, which proactively finds and reports problems to the user without even asking. Another is NetSuite Analytics Assistant, which can generate reports and visualize data along with instructions phrased in plain language.
Another product, just released, is NetSuite Expert for Suite Answers, which provides an AI agent that delivers tailored NetSuite guidance based on an extensive catalog of NetSuite support resources. For example, users can ask how-to questions in natural language and the agent will analyze thousands of support articles to instantly deliver specific answers and actionable insights. In contrast to solely generative models, this solution has access to NetSuite’s data depository that it can reference, versus being trained on the data via retrieval augmented generation, which can sometimes lack the necessary precision. The agent, however, is contextually aware of what the user should be doing and can guide them step by step, drawing on an up-to-date set of data. While right now it mostly generates insights and answers questions, Chess said the company plans to further develop its capacities in the future.
“I think you can see how this will help your users get more out of the system, but you can also see where we’re going,” he said: “Right now what we do is let Expert guide you, but in the future it will assist you in carrying out the task.”
Another new agentic solution is NetSuite CPQ AI Assistant, which provides an AI agent that supports sellers and buyers as they configure products and services by doing things like recommending a suitable product configuration based on a natural language conversation, and providing a summary of why the options were selected.
Other new AI-related enhancements announced today include a bolstered Text Enhance feature that allows users to populate custom fields with the assistance of AI-generated suggestions for the intended format, tone and creativity level for any custom text field in NetSuite. A Prompt Management API centralizes the management and deployment of prompts used by large language models in NetSuite, allowing customers and partners to programmatically control NetSuite Text Enhance prompts and actions and integrate generative AI features into SuiteApps or custom NetSuite solutions.
Because AI has been so central to NetSuite, Chess emphasized these enhancements do not represent separate products for purchase but overall improvements to the suite as a whole, so the company won’t increase prices or otherwise charge for their use.
“We view AI as an intrinsic part of the suite. We’re building it into the foundation. There is no suite without AI, which means we also don’t charge extra for AI, even if we add it to more and more workflows. It will enhance control, agility, collaboration, productivity and [provide] tremendous value, and without it there wouldn’t be a suite. That is why it can’t be an add-on. It has to be built in, not bolted on,” he said.
Accounting for security
Considering how much sensitive financial data accountants handle on behalf of their clients, data privacy and security are especially important for accountants. This concern has led many to hesitate when it comes to implementing AI solutions at their own firm. A recent survey from Rightworks, for example, found that more than half of accounting leaders, 55%, cited data privacy as their biggest impediment to AI adoption.
On this point, Chess noted that many large public models have huge amounts of data, at least some of which is sensitive information. While there are certain guardrails to prevent people from accessing such information, he added, “if you put it into the model, make it part of building the model, it could come out of the model.” So long as the model has all of that data, there is always the possibility that someone, either accidentally or through adversarial attacks that trick the model into behaviors not originally intended, could potentially access it.
“But we build the model on a customer by customer basis, and this is important because, first, the model then understands the customer’s data, and second of all it will never cough up another customer’s data since it’s not in it,” he said.
Chess noted that incidents such as one in March 2023 where ChatGPT revealed other users’ chat histories can come from entrusting large language models to things they should not be used for.
“We have to be careful not to give the LLM the wrong role,” he said. “I would not, where we are in 2025, give an LLM root access, and we expect it will gatekeep [its data] correctly. We can let the LLM have the permission or subset of permissions that the user who made the request had, and now that LLM cannot do anything that user could not.”
The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.
The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.
In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings.
Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.
Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.
Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed.
The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.
Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition.
Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time.
“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said.
One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load.
“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai.
Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies.
“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.
However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area.
“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai.
As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales.
“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai.
While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves.
“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”