Case study: BDO Services Limited, Digital Technology Leaders Awards finalist

Savings estimated at £92 million

Financial services firm BDO Services was dealing with high demands on staff time, limiting their work on high-value tasks. To address the situation, BDO built its own AI platform called Personas: not only aiming to free up staff time, but helping colleagues stay ahead of an everchanging technological landscape by democratising AI.

What is Personas?

Personas is a secure internal AI platform designed and built by BDO to augment employees and boost productivity.

Click here to watch the Personas video.

Using the latest Azure OpenAI models, Personas will make day-to-day tasks more efficient and free up time for people to provide more complex, strategic advice that clients and businesses need.

BDO says Personas will support a wide range of tasks from drafting reports and new content to analysing documents and finding ways to improve efficiencies.

One of its main features is the ability to take on the style and specialism of each user, using custom personas to refine prompts and receive outputs tailored to the individual and purpose. It has embedded BDO voice capabilities, ensuring brand guidelines around language, tone of voice and writing style can be reflected in all outputs.

Built using Microsoft AI technology, Personas operates in a secure BDO environment to ensure confidentiality and compliance of data. It is being rolled out to the firm's 8,000 people, with extensive support and training available to all staff.

Dan Francis, Chief Innovation Officer & Partner, says: "Stuart championed our people-centric approach early on, and was the reason we had buy-in from senior leaders. From there, he supported our experts in getting the right controls, governance and approvals in place too."

But to truly make effective AI available to all, the team needed to first give colleagues the tools to make the most of it – without putting blockers such as mandatory training in the way.

Stuart Walters, CIO & Partner: "Personas is a safe and secure way to interface with OpenAI's cloud. The focus of our communications was on prompting it effectively and getting the most out of it. It's given each colleague a few hours back – a huge saving across our workforce."

Dan believes that the huge uptake of Personas was made possible by Stuart's sponsorship and leadership, explaining: "It's a huge benefit for people, the business and regulators, too – an example of how AI can be delivered in our sector.

"It also shows how we've gone from a project-based to a product focused function that directly contributes to the success of the business. We're co-creating products and managing them from cradle to grave. That's a mantra that Stuart has instilled in us."

Personas was born out of BDO Labs, the firm's innovation platform powered by the ideas of employees across all areas of the business to accelerate the development of digital products and services.

Personas in numbers:

  1. 7,099 active users of an 8,000-person workforce
  2. 4,500 monthly active users
  3. Personas, on average, saves around 25,000 hours each month.
  4. Based on our charge out rate, we estimate the cost saving to be around £92 million since launched

BDO Services is a finalist in Computing’s Digital Technology Leaders Awards.

Stuart Walters is the CIO & Partner, BDO LLP, UK. With over 20 years in leading technology teams, Stuart focuses on transforming IT from a traditional support function to a proactive driver of business growth. His leadership has turned BDO's IT function into a hub of innovation, significantly enhancing services for 8,000 UK colleagues and 40,000 global clients. His most recent accomplishments include the development of BDO's AI platform, Personas, which is used by 80% of colleagues. Outside of his professional life, Stuart is known for his authenticity and inclusivity, sharing his personal journey, including the challenges he faced after being diagnosed as neurodivergent at 40.