Taking AI to Production in Your Firm

From clever pilot to dependable system – build, test and run AI your firm can rely on.

Many firms stall after a successful AI pilot. Scaling it means answering harder questions: how do we build tools around our own data, how do we know the AI is right often enough, who owns it, and what happens when it fails? Meanwhile, AI coding agents such as OpenAI Codex and Claude Code have made building internal tools dramatically faster and cheaper.

This intermediate-to-advanced, detail-based session shows firm leaders what it takes to run AI in production. Nick Beaugeard demonstrates using Codex and Claude Code to build a small internal accounting tool on the OpenAI and Claude APIs, then covers testing and evaluation, security, monitoring, cost control and governance. You’ll leave with a production-readiness checklist and a realistic view of build-versus-buy.

What You’ll Learn:

• What “production” means for AI: reliability, security, ownership and support

• Live demonstration: building an internal tool with OpenAI Codex and Claude Code

• Using the OpenAI and Claude APIs with firm data – privacy, data residency and retention

• Evaluating AI accuracy with test sets before and after go-live

• Monitoring, logging, cost control and incident handling

• Build, buy or partner: making the call and managing vendors

Working familiarity with ChatGPT or Claude is assumed; sessions 1 and 2 are recommended. Coding experience is helpful but not required.

This is session 3 of a three-part series taking Australian accounting firms from experimenting with AI to running it in production. Each session stands alone, but attendees get the most value by attending all three.

See the other sessions here:
Part 1: AI In Practice – From Playing to Planning
Part 2: Building AI Workflows for Accounting Firms

For Subscribers:

Part 1: AI in Practice – From Playing to Planning
Part 2: Building AI Workflows for Accounting Firms

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this session, attendees will:

1. Define production readiness for AI

• Apply a checklist covering accuracy, security, privacy, ownership and support

2. Understand AI-assisted software development

• Recognise how Codex and Claude Code accelerate internal tool building, and their limits

3. Evaluate AI accuracy systematically

• Design test sets and acceptance thresholds for accounting use cases

4. Manage risk and governance

• Address data residency, retention, access control and audit logging for client data

5. Control cost and operations

• Estimate API costs and set up monitoring and incident response

6. Make build, buy or partner decisions

• Assess options against firm capability, risk appetite and total cost

Suited to:

This session is designed for accounting firms ready to scale AI beyond pilots, from mid-tier practices to larger firms with in-house IT or innovation teams:

• Partners, Directors & COOs

• IT, Innovation & Digital Transformation Leads

• Risk, Quality & Compliance Managers

• Technically minded Accountants & Analysts

You will also be provided with: 

• Access to watch the Live Webinar 
• Opportunities to ask real time questions to the presenter/s
• Poll questions to test your knowledge 
• Access to On Demand recording, which can be viewed multiple times, for as long as required 
• Presenters contact details for follow up questions 
• CPD Quiz (for On Demand recordings)
• CPD Certificate 
• CPD Report – Logged automatically 
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Verbatim Transcript, with Searchability
• Supporting Documentation