At Plante Moran, innovation begins with our people — encouraging every team member to ask tough questions, explore new opportunities, and lead positive change. And for more than a century, we’ve embedded this spirit of curiosity and creativity into everything we do.
Today, our culture of innovation is enhancing the client experience we deliver, from streamlining processes to embracing new technology and offering new services. Grounded in purpose and guided by ethics, we’re building the professional advisory firm of the future.
Our innovation commitment comes to life through our dedicated firmwide initiatives:
- Innovation crowdsourcing: Staff at all levels are encouraged to submit their ideas for improvements to standard processes, technology, and service delivery. Ideas are submitted and crowdsourced via our Bright Idea platform, and innovations that add significant value are refined, tested, and rolled out firmwide. This program has directly resulted in several enhancements to our client and staff experience, ranging from operational efficiency and software upgrades to new uses of AI. Since the program’s launch, we’ve received nearly 1,000 ideas from staff and moved 30% forward to production.
- Practice Innovation Committees (PICs): While many firms have a chief innovation officer, we believe innovation should be everyone’s responsibility. That’s why we take a different approach. Led by practice leaders and subject matter experts, our PICs apply insights gained from direct client experience to shape our strategy around innovation and emerging technologies. This approach keeps our clients at the center of all decisions we make with respect to innovation.
- Innovation Lab: Our in-house business innovation managers, UX designers, researchers, and technical specialists collaborate with our practices to explore, prototype, and refine ideas through human-centered design, AI interaction, and rapid experimentation. The Innovation Lab consistently develops solutions that provide measurable value for our clients, such as risk reduction and optimized engagement outcomes.
- Digital Solution Center: A dedicated team of professionals deploys pragmatic digital solutions firmwide, giving us the capacity and focus to accelerate the creation of technology-enabled service offerings. This includes the use of advanced engagement technologies that incorporate AI, machine learning, and intelligent automation. These optimizations empower our staff to work at their highest potential to exceed client expectations.