John O’Connell Quoted in Advisor Perspectives by VettaFi: The Productivity Paradox: Why AI Is Making Advisors Busier

John O’Connell was quoted in this Advisor Perspectives by VettaFi article on how AI is being paraded as the best timesaving solution — promising to streamline workflows and free up capacity for advisors to focus on higher-value work — but in reality, AI is intensifying work, not reducing it. He believes that, “At best, AI tools can reduce the overtime spent by advisory firm team members catching up on paperwork.”

John provides a step-by-step guide to understanding the cost of administrative tasks and the savings to the firm by using AI tools: “Take the fully loaded costs (salary and benefits) of the team member completing that tasks, divide by 2080 billable hours in a year, multiply that hourly rate by the amount of time to complete administrative tasks, and you have a baseline cost for administrative tasks. Then use AI to reduce the time to complete the same tasks. Measure the time for the human in the loop, multiply that by the fully loaded hourly rate, and you have the new task cost. Subtract this new cost from the original and you have a savings in hours and dollars. Then you can account for the cost for the AI tool and you have a savings to the firm.”