Before the MIA Johor webinar on “AI in accounting firms” started today, the moderator, Wen Tak Wong, asked me one simple question.
“Teck Peng, do you have any slides to share?”

My first answer was very confident.
“No need.”

Because I thought this session was not meant to be another PowerPoint presentation. It was supposed to be a practical sharing of my AI automation journey.

Real experience.
Real failure.
Real learning.
Not theory.

But just before the webinar started, I changed my mind.

I told Wen Tak:
“Maybe one slide.”

Not my slide.
Not some beautiful AI framework copied from the internet.

It was a reflection written by our AI project leader Yaashiniy Segaran. After reading her LinkedIn post, I realised something.

That one slide explained our AI journey better than many fancy slides.

Because most people only see the front part.

A clean chat link.
A nice user interface.
A workflow that runs.
A staff member finishing in two hours what used to take one whole day.

Very nice.
Very impressive.
Very “AI transformation.”

But behind that simple screen,
the real work is very different.

Google Workspace API setup.
Service accounts.
Consent screens.
n8n credentials.
Cloudflare tokens.
DNS records.
Reverse proxy.
Network setup.

Testing.
Debugging.
Training.
Maintaining.

And when something breaks,
everybody looks at IT like they pressed the wrong button.

From outside, people say:

“Just connect Google.”
“Just login to n8n.”
“Just chat with AI.”

From inside, it is dozens of moving parts trying to talk to each other without fighting.

I love her statement : “The frontend may be 10% of the work. The backend is the other 90% making sure that 10% does not break in front of users.”

That was one of my biggest takeaways for participants .

AI transformation is not just about AI.

AI may be 20% of the work.

The other 80% is APIs, authentication, infrastructure, testing, maintenance, training, and getting humans to use the system properly.

Shipping is only half the job.
Training is the other half.
She had to sit with audit, tax, HR, finance and admin staff.
Walk them through the workflows.
Watch where they got stuck.
Redesign around the friction.

We are not fully automated.
Maybe less than 50% only.
But the workflows that are live are being used.

Looking back, I am grateful.

Grateful to be invited by MIA Johor.

Grateful to share the panel with good friends Wen Tak Wong, Jesu Dason and Wei Khjan Chan from the profession.

Grateful to my AI project lear Yaashiniy Segaran who carried the hard backend work that many people never see.

And grateful for the failures.

But inside the firm, it is really about people, process, patience, and a lot of debugging.

More to go.
Day one.
One day.