C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Elena Emma Of BooXkeeping On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans
An Interview With Kieran Powell
AI is great for efficiency. If you’re trying to increase efficiency, anything AI-oriented is beneficial. However, AI is not always great for effectiveness. When exploring effectiveness, I recommend a combination of humans and AI. There are AI tools that can assist with this, but they cannot achieve it on their own.
Aartificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Elena Emma.
Elena Emma is a Co-Founder of BooXkeeping, and a professor, coach, consultant, and writer. Her professional experience includes over 15 years in the role of consulting Chief Financial Officer and Chief People Officer for fast-growth startups.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’m a co-founder of BooXkeeping. We have been operating for 13 years. I have several degrees, the first two being in accounting and tax many years ago. That’s how bookkeeping specifically started as an idea. I live in Barcelona. I teach in business schools and run a couple of digital projects, and fundraising for my incubator, on top of bookkeeping. While I’m looking after the books, I’m also involved in speaking engagements.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I am not sure if it was a mistake but it was definitely a frustrating silly situation that I find funny now. I was going for an interview for this consulting gig, which I really needed at the time because I realized, once again, that I can’t work full-time for anyone. I’m sitting there — we’re sitting outside — and he says, “Let’s switch our seats. It’s not comfortable here.” We are in San Diego; it’s very bright, and the sun is now directly in my face. We’re sitting outside having coffee, and I’m thinking, as a 20-something-year-old woman — not yet the most confident or mature — that I probably look ugly as hell because the sun is glaring on me. You can see all the imperfections on my face. I don’t even remember what I was talking about because the sun is just crazy.
We finish the interview, and I walk away thinking the gig is never going to happen. But, to my surprise, he called me for a second interview. I think, “That’s weird.” I come in for the second interview — it’s in a high-rise, like the 30th floor in San Diego, a nice, cute office — I come in, and it has big windows. We sit down, start a conversation, and the sun comes up and is in my face again. I’m sitting there thinking, “One time is an accident, two times is a pattern. What the hell is going on here?” Again, I was so preoccupied that the interviewer would see all of my imperfections, that I walked away from there not remembering a single word I said in that interview. I only remember thinking, “What did I look like?”
Long story short, it ended up being almost a five- or seven-year engagement with the fast-growth startup, which was a completely unexpected outcome because each time I thought, “No, it’s not going to happen.” But it did.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are in the franchising stage right now. We have our core office, our flagship location. We have a flexible approach that we’ve been using for a while, and it’s consistent and steady. We’ve been changing who is doing what and taking it to the next level. That’s exciting and represents our next level of growth, but what’s even more exciting is that although we’ve been franchising for a few years, we’re finally starting to gain momentum. We’re not reaching our goals completely, but we’re starting to catch on little by little.
We’re currently transitioning one director to fully take over franchising. She will also be in charge of designing our training program, which we have wanted to do for over seven years. This has been on hold because we had no resources, no time and no capacity for it. I’m extremely excited because part of the idea is to create a set of cartoons for training. I can’t share too much about it, but it’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It’s probably not going to happen for another year, but we are finally putting the resources in place and aligning everything so that we can make it happen within a year. I’m super excited.
I’ve also wanted to introduce programs for financial literacy for a very long time. I’ve wanted to create a training program for middle and high school students ever since my oldest was in middle school, which was about 10 years ago. With this transition, we might finally be able to launch this program as well, which I believe will really make a difference in the world.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?
In what we do, a variation of AI has been present since the beginning, ever since QuickBooks and similar software started existing. These programs took over the T-accounts that were manually done before my time, and I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. When these software programs took over, everyone wondered if accounting was finished. Of course, that didn’t happen. Then QuickBooks downloads and accompanying apps began to emerge, showing progress in our field. Some level of AI has always existed because the work we do is quite manual, repetitive and trainable. You would think this is a perfect task for AI, which is true, but we’re still not at the stage where AI can fully understand the nuances of spending, especially in the startup world, such as how people spend, for what reason and the variety of places involved.
The challenge has always been technology versus logic. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve been integrating software with accounting systems, such as linking ERP systems, which handle inventory and other functions, to accounting systems. The biggest challenge has always been the accounting reports because those who create software don’t have accounting in mind — they only cover the basics. Accountants don’t understand software language, so they don’t communicate effectively. The integrations don’t really integrate properly. This remains a challenge because there’s still a human aspect in understanding what goes where and what makes sense. The technology available to us is getting better, but are they ever going to replace bookkeepers? Unfortunately, I think at some point, yes. Maybe not fully for CPAs and advisory roles, but for bookkeepers, I believe 80% of the work could eventually be replaced by AI. I also hope the world will adapt to these innovations, and laws and practices will adjust accordingly.
We are experimenting with AI all the time. We’ve always embraced technology, bringing new tools into place, trying new systems and creating sharing systems so our clients can get fast service. This constant experimentation is both a blessing and a pillar for us and our operations.
Can you share a specific instance where AI initially seemed like the optimal solution but ultimately proved less effective than human intervention? What did this experience teach you about the limitations of AI in your field?
When we talk about AI, what do we really mean? About seven years ago — maybe six — we wanted to use Google Voice for onboarding. We decided to create our own tool because I had tried it elsewhere, and it seemed like a good idea for a different context. So, I sent out my team and said, “People, listen. This would be really helpful for us. We should be able to do this.” We designed it, created it, got someone to implement it for us and started using it with our clients. However, they felt there was a lack of human touch because they had to type their responses, and there were a lot of questions.
Accounting makes people uncomfortable. It’s a subject that causes anxiety. We thought that filling out forms would relieve this anxiety, but often it had the opposite effect. Busy entrepreneurs have many things to do, and the process must be easy. Many of them don’t know all the details offhand. Google Voice wasn’t effective enough for our needs. If it didn’t hear you correctly, the frustration was unhelpful during onboarding. The number of questions we had to ask and confirm from a human side wasn’t working for us.
We leveled it. We didn’t abandon it completely; we just adjusted our approach. There’s been some discussion about bringing it back now that the technology is more advanced, but we haven’t reintroduced it yet.
How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?
Our company culture is something I can talk about for hours, but to summarize, even though we’re very technical in what we do, our entire company is very human-centric. It’s part of our company culture to focus on people. We have customers who are very human-centric as well. The principles of how we do business and live within the company are all about people, even if the technical work we do might seem otherwise. However, the outcomes of our work are ultimately about people. We make exceptions and adjustments based on the feedback and actions of small startup owners. There’s a lot of communication involved, so we start with a human-centered approach.
Having said that, I believe, and I try to convey this to my students and my company, that as long as we have a soul, AI doesn’t stand a chance. We don’t fully understand what a soul consists of or how to replicate it, so AI doesn’t stand a chance.
From day one, we’ve been very aware of technological advancements and capacities. We nurture what we can — the human soul — within our company and with our clients.
Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?
We do this day in and day out. We’ve been in business for 13 years, so we’ve seen technological advancements in accounting as we grew. I remember when QuickBooks couldn’t handle proper inventory, and I would complain about it. Now, QuickBooks Enterprise does amazing things; it’s incredible. There were times when integrations were not possible, but eventually, integrations with QuickBooks Online became easier and easier. There are many examples like that when things became a lot simpler.
We continually train ourselves to see what other technology is available, what new advancements exist and how we can integrate them into our work. This is also one of the reasons we’ve been successful with our hiring practices. We hire younger individuals with little to no experience, right out of college or still in college. We’ve always been tech-oriented — though not necessarily tech-driven — and we found that the younger generation can be trained better to use technology the way we want, compared to experienced bookkeepers who know accounting better. You might think it should be the other way around, but from a hiring perspective, we found that younger people adapt to technology more gracefully and work well with what we want to achieve.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?
1. Efficiency
2. Effectiveness
3. Quality control
4. Needs control
5. Communication
AI is great for efficiency. If you’re trying to increase efficiency, anything AI-oriented is beneficial. However, AI is not always great for effectiveness. When exploring effectiveness, I recommend a combination of humans and AI. There are AI tools that can assist with this, but they cannot achieve it on their own.
What AI really takes over from us is the data gathering — simplification of categories, clustering, categorization and segmentation. These tasks used to take a lot of time because they were significant undertakings, especially before the advent of the internet and AI. That part should be delegated to AI. However, quality control should still be done by humans, especially in accounting. AI doesn’t know the difference in quality, so human oversight is crucial. Quality control and communication are more about effectiveness than efficiency.
I believe communication should still be done by humans. Lately, I’ve found myself disassociating from social media like LinkedIn. Previously, people posted about their lives, but now it’s clear that AI generates much of the content. This reduces my interest because I’m curious about genuine human experiences, even with imperfect language. I’m in an environment where several languages are spoken, and so mistakes are the norm. I’d rather see imperfect, authentic content than AI-generated, algorithm-approved posts that lack a human touch.
If the goal is a human imprint, AI should be used as a starting point, a research resource and a tool — a helper, but nothing more. It should be a minor aid rather than the main approach.
Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?
When it comes to operations, anything AI-driven is definitely beneficial. Our work is very technical, simple in a way and easily explainable, so AI can handle a lot of it. However, there’s still a significant amount of high-level analytical work that needs to be done by humans. While AI handles data gathering now, complex thinking still requires human input because it involves various interactions and considerations. AI can mimic these, but it can’t truly replicate them; it can fake it, but not master it.
Perhaps my view is a bit archaic, as I still believe in human’s capability for certain complexities. In our case, anything related to production and operations will increasingly be handled by AI, especially from a data processing perspective. However, anything involving interactions with our employees and their development and customers will remain human-centric.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Where do I start? Which one? A few years ago, I did a Change.org post to gather signatures for a change in financial literacy education. I even wrote out what should be taught. I strongly believe in this.
At that time, we were three or four years into bookkeeping, and our son was in middle school. The kid was trying to sell candy in school for a little profit after Halloween. He asked me to invest in packaging to create candy bundles, then repackaged it (without opening the candy) and happily went off to school to make his first money. The principal of the school called me two hours later saying that my son violated the rules because money making is prohibited in the school. The kid was crushed. As an entrepreneur myself, I wasn’t satisfied with the school’s attitude. I believe we should teach kids about money as early as possible so they know how to earn, spend, balance a checkbook and develop a healthy relationship with money.
Out of frustration in my son’s situation, I started a movement for financial literacy for kids. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time, resources or energy to take it forward. But if I could start one now given the accounting background of this conversation, it would definitely be about financial literacy. I think financial literacy is an absolutely necessary life skill that we are taking too lightly. We then wonder why our lives or the lives of our children aren’t working out financially the way they should. What is nurtured, grows.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I have a public YouTube channel and Instagram profile. It’s at ElenaEmmaMagic and is focused on everything that I believe in. You can also keep up with everything we are doing at BooXkeeping.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Elena Emma Of BooXkeeping On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.