RSM Creates a Future-Proof Engagement Ecosystem with Camunda’s AI Orchestration

Within the audit, tax, and consulting services industry, firms constantly seek ways to innovate, stay competitive, stand out against the crowd, and deliver exceptional service levels and value to their clients.

RSM US LLP, the leading US provider of assurance, tax, and consulting services, recently changed and simplified its engagement lifecycle. Their goals included:

• Enhancing process visibility

• Reducing regular administrative tasks

• Modernizing all the stages and processes of interaction with a client or customer, from the initial contact to the conclusion of services

Tom Clark, assurance digital integration leader at RSM, and Ken Koch, forensic market leader at RSM/BDO, joined us at CamundaCon NYC 2024 to speak about their transformation journey. Together, they delved into how RSM embraced Camunda to improve process visibility, composability, and audit process efficiency. In their presentation, Tom and Ken discussed how RSM revamped its engagement lifecycle using Camunda, incorporating legacy solutions and creating an engagement ecosystem for improved efficiency—from client acceptance to closure.

Resolving inefficacies within siloed infrastructures

RSM, renowned for its industry-leading services, faced a daunting challenge: its legacy process management ecosystem consisted of 26 different applications that were not effectively communicating with each other.

This fragmentation led to potential inefficiencies, such as manual data transfers and a lack of visibility into the status of thousands of active customer journeys. Auditors and staff were bogged down with administrative tasks, detracting from client-focused work. Overall, the outdated engagement lifecycle threatened productivity and scalability.

Tom Clark recognized the need for change. “The existing system was complex and cumbersome, hindering our ability to deliver the level of service we aimed for,” he explained.

Ken Koch added, “Our teams were spending significant time on tasks that could be automated, which was not the best use of their expertise.”

Streamlining end-to-end processes with Camunda

RSM’s strategic initiative was to overhaul its audit process, boost productivity, and elevate client services. The firm turned to Camunda to replace the technology-driven process with an orchestrated, process-driven approach that leverages technology for optimal customer engagement and performance.

Camunda empowers organizations to fully leverage their existing resources while facilitating strategic transformations that elevate customer and employee experiences. Camunda’s intelligent process orchestration and automation platform helps organizations:

• Overcome the limitations of legacy systems
• Drive digital transformation
• Achieve long-term success by enhancing agility, efficiency, IT/business collaboration, and scalability.

In their presentation, “RSM – Legacy to Process Orchestration Journey,” Clark and Koch discuss how implementing Camunda at RSM achieved benefits like enhanced visibility, reduced admin tasks, modernized engagement, and increased efficiency.

Enhanced visibility into engagements

Camunda Optimize provided real-time insights into active engagements, enabling centralized monitoring and management without the need for manual check-ins. This transparency allowed anyone within the organization to quickly understand the current status of any engagements.

“What we’ve done with Camunda means anyone concerned can push a button and see the current status of everything. This means they don’t have to go out to that customer team and say, Hey, what’s going on with this engagement? Where are you in these steps? Do you have issues? That’s better for us and better for our customers.” – Ken Koch, Forensic Market Leader, RSM/BDO 

Reduced administrative tasks

Automating repetitive tasks significantly reduced time spent on administrative activities, freeing RSM to focus on adding value to client interactions.

In the first four months alone, RSM saved an estimated 720,000 hours during customer engagement, translating into substantial cost savings.

“We can take all this monolithic code, 26 applications, and wrap it into a single orchestrated end-to-end engagement life cycle. In our first four months, we had 9,000 customer engagements running through Camunda, and we’re looking at 80 hours per engagement of savings.” – Tom Clark, Assurance Digital Integration Leader, RSM

Modernized engagement lifecycle

RSM restructured its engagement lifecycle with Camunda, creating a future-ready engagement ecosystem that streamlined the entire process from client acceptance to engagement closure. Data normalization, modularity, and enhanced visibility facilitated this transformation.

“If we want to use agile technology and keep pace with business demand, we need people to be agile and processes to be agile. By creating a complete vision that talks about how this impacts people, technology, and processes and how it impacts the bottom line, through that analysis, I was able to show our leadership team that with the same headcount, we can process 20% more clients. And for us, that’s huge.” – Tom Clark, Assurance Digital Integration Leader, RSM

Increased capacity, savings, and training efficiency

The adoption of Camunda had a notable impact on RSM’s operations. Automating repetitive tasks and integrating applications into a single system led to considerable time savings, translating into cost savings.

As mentioned earlier, in just the first four months after implementing Camunda, RSM saved an estimated 720,000 hours across customer engagements. Training requirements for new hires were also reduced as processes became more streamlined and less complex.

“A lot of it’s about efficiencies and time savings. Previously, developers had to learn 26 tools, and they had to know in their heads about this one, then over here that one, but now if it’s orchestrated for them, and because of this training becomes far easier in the future.” – Tom Clark, Assurance Digital Integration Leader, RSM

Savings continue to accrue as RSM embeds further efficiencies into its processes. RSM expects process orchestration integration to extend beyond customer engagement, influencing auditors’ work and supporting services like consultations and resource assignments.

The project’s success has fostered a greater willingness within the wider organization to consider further process orchestration and automation solutions across other areas of business functionality.

Continuous improvement and agility

Implementing Camunda has been a significant step in modernizing RSM’s audit process, enhancing cross-company process visibility, greatly reducing manual and administrative tasks, and significantly simplifying the engagement lifecycle. The firm has laid a strong foundation for continuous improvement and agility, enabling it to:

• Adapt to future changes in technology (such as leveraging artificial intelligence integration) and business practices (such as changes in legislation or adopting regional banking standards)
• Roll out tested composable processes and orchestration to the broader global organization
• Better serve its customers

If you would like to know more about RSM’s transformative journey to create a future-proof customer engagement ecosystem, you can watch their CamundaCon presentation right here.