Firms With No AI Strategy 3.5x Less Likely to Find ROI

Here is a number worth sitting with: according to the Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report 2025, firms without a documented AI strategy risk falling behind their competitors within three years. Not eventually. Not someday. Three years. The report surveyed 2,275 professionals across legal, tax, accounting, audit, and compliance -- and the finding that should concern every accounting firm partner reading this is that roughly one-third of organizations currently have no significant plans for AI adoption whatsoever. That puts them on a path that the report, without much softening, describes as potential failure. The divide between firms with an AI strategy and those without is no longer theoretical. It is measurable, widening, and accelerating.

What the Gap Actually Looks Like

The Thomson Reuters data draws a sharp line between three types of organizations: those with no significant AI adoption plans (31%), those adopting AI without a strategy (43%), and those with a visible, documented AI strategy (22%). The ROI differences across those three groups are not marginal.

Firms with no adoption plans report AI-related ROI at 23%. Firms adopting informally report an ROI of 64%. Firms with a visible strategy? Eighty-one percent are already experiencing measurable benefits. That is a 3.5 times advantage over firms that haven't engaged seriously with AI planning, and it compounds. As early movers reinvest their productivity gains into better client experiences and lower operating costs, the distance between them and the laggards grows.

The report also found that firms with a visible AI strategy are nearly twice as likely to see direct revenue growth from their AI investment as firms with informal or ad hoc approaches. This is no longer an efficiency story. It is a revenue story. 

Why "We're Using It" Is Not a Strategy

The 43% of firms in the informal adoption category deserve particular attention because many believe they are ahead of the curve. They have staff using ChatGPT for drafting. Someone in the tax department found a tool they like. A few partners have experimented with AI-assisted research. That is not a strategy. That is a collection of individual habits, and the Thomson Reuters data is clear on what it produces: inconsistent results, security exposure, and a ceiling on ROI that strategic firms have already broken through.

The report describes this dynamic as the "corporate gold rush" problem. Individual prospectors find real value -- genuine efficiency gains, time saved, and improved work. But without the infrastructure of a coordinated approach, those gains stay local. They don't compound across the firm. They don't translate into client-facing advantages. And they carry risk, because employees using consumer-grade AI tools without firm guidance are handling client data outside any sanctioned security framework.

Informal adoption also creates a cultural problem. When individual AI use is inconsistent across a firm, the professionals who use it well grow frustrated with colleagues who aren't, and those who aren't feel neither supported nor accountable. The operational dysfunction that follows is predictable and avoidable.

What a Visible AI Strategy Actually Requires

The Thomson Reuters report identifies four layers that distinguish firms seeing the strongest AI returns: strategy, leadership, operations, and individual adoption. Each layer amplifies the ones below it.

At the strategy level, the requirement is specificity. A visible AI strategy is not a statement of intent. It is a documented plan that identifies which workflows AI will touch, what tools are sanctioned, how data security is maintained, what success looks like, and how productivity gains will be reinvested. Firms that build this kind of plan are 3.5 times more likely to see benefits than those without one, and departments within firms that build their own AI strategies -- aligned with but distinct from the firm's overall plan -- outperform those that simply follow general organizational guidance.

At the leadership level, modeling matters enormously. The report found that professionals whose leaders consistently demonstrate new behaviors are 1.7 times more likely to see organizational AI benefits than those whose leaders do not. Partners who use AI tools visibly, talk about what works, and set clear expectations signal to the rest of the firm that adoption is a professional obligation, not a personal preference.

Operationally, the firms seeing the most ROI are redesigning workflows rather than simply inserting AI into existing ones. That means rethinking how work is resourced, how services are priced, and what roles exist to support AI integration. About a third of firms in the study have already changed their teams' workflows and processes over the past 12 months in response to AI capabilities. Another quarter, expect to do so in the next twelve.

The Individual Layer Is Where Strategies Fail

The most underappreciated finding in the Thomson Reuters report involves the disconnect between organizational strategy and individual accountability. Two-thirds of professionals with personal AI goals are unaware of whether their firm has an AI strategy. Meanwhile, more than a third of firms with a documented AI strategy have professionals who have set no personal goals related to AI adoption.

Both gaps are expensive. A firm-level strategy that doesn't translate into individual behavior stays on paper. Individual experimentation without a strategic context remains inefficient. The firms closing both gaps -- connecting organizational vision to personal accountability at every level -- are the ones the data consistently identifies as highest performers.

The report found that professionals with personal AI adoption goals are 1.8 times more likely to see organizational benefits than those without them. Regular AI users are 2.4 times more likely to see benefits than non-regular users. These numbers suggest that the ROI conversation is not only about what firms invest in -- it's about whether that investment actually reaches the people doing the work.

For accounting firms thinking about how to build authority and visibility around their expertise, the internal story matters as much as the external one. Clients increasingly want to know not just that a firm uses AI, but that it uses it responsibly and strategically.

Three Years Is Not Much Time

The AICPA's research on technology adoption in public accounting consistently shows that firms that build deliberate technology practices outperform those that react to industry shifts after the fact. The Thomson Reuters data reinforces that pattern at a scale and specificity the profession hasn't seen before.

Three years sounds like enough time. It is not, if the firms ahead of you are already compounding their advantages. The ROI gap between strategic and informal adopters grows as strategic firms reinvest efficiency gains into better service delivery, more competitive pricing, and stronger talent retention. The accounting profession has navigated major technology shifts before—from paper to software, from desktop to cloud. The firms that moved early in each of those transitions are largely still the ones leading their markets.

An AI strategy does not need to be perfect to be valuable. The Thomson Reuters report is explicit on this point: a deliberately measured approach, aligned with organizational goals, constitutes a valid strategy. The firms most in danger are not the ones moving carefully. They are the ones not moving at all.

Build the Strategy Before the Gap Gets Wider

Accounting firms that document their AI approach, connect it to firm-wide goals, and drive adoption at every level are already pulling ahead. The 22% of firms with visible strategies are generating ROI at more than three times the rate of firms without one -- and that advantage is not standing still. It grows every quarter while the other 78% wait.

At Winsome Marketing, we help accounting firms tell the story of what makes them worth choosing—including how they are building the strategic, responsible practice clients are actively looking for. If your firm is doing the work, we can help you get credit for it.