​​Intapp and Microsoft deliver AI-based solutions built on Azure to financial and professional services firms​

Financial and professional services firms represent a $3 trillion market.

These firms work in a connected ecosystem, providing capital and expertise to support the growth of the world’s companies. Most of the employees are partners and professionals who are uniquely structured by area of expertise rather than a functional department. These firms are also governed by local statutes, client and investor obligations, and ethical codes of conduct.

General software solutions don’t adequately address the needs of these firms. With their complex relationships, partner-led operations, and compliance and regulatory mandate, they require purpose-built cloud solutions. 

This is where Intapp, a key Microsoft partner, and its unique software as a service (SaaS) offering steps in. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the company has been developing solutions for the specialized needs of these firms’ dealmakers, bankers, lawyers, accountants, and consultants. 

“We enable thousands of financial and professional services firms to harness the intelligence of their professionals through AI-powered software solutions,” says Thad Jampol, Chief Product Office at Intapp. “We’re at a watershed moment—not dissimilar to the dawn of cloud computing or smartphones—where AI will fundamentally change how people and firms do business.”

Understanding the challenge

Financial and professional services firms are vastly different from typical corporations. They have unique needs, and they operate in highly regulated industries. Unlike typical companies, Intapp’s clients’ businesses are driven by relationships and knowledge. They therefore need the combined capabilities of Intapp and Azure to help them harness the intrinsic power of these same relationships and knowledge to be successful firms. 

Most of Intapp’s clients already relied heavily on Microsoft and deliver many of their client services with the help of Microsoft 365 and other technologies. Intapp also recognized the scale of development and investment Microsoft was putting into the Azure cloud platform and portfolio of services, along with cost-benefit analysis, security, and support teams. Building with Azure was an easy decision.

Simplifying the work processes

Azure and Azure OpenAI Service are central to the evolution of Intapp’s Industry cloud platform and specific solutions, which have:

• Configurable UX blueprints to get a firm up and running quicker with out-of-the-box configurations for the specifics of professional and financial services firms.
• An industry data architecture to better manage a firm’s complex web of relationships, clients, deals, engagements, and knowledge with a single, industry-specific data model and source of truth.
• Robust compliance capabilities to ensure conformity with leading risk and compliance management practices by using technology designed to meet industry-specific mandates and regulatory requirements.

These benefits help Intapp deliver an out-of-the-box industry cloud experience designed for the evolving needs and demanding use cases of financial and professional services firms.

Applied AI for financial and professional services firms

Intapp’s deep understanding of the financial and professional services industries underpins its development and solutions. Its client firms are often at the frontline of dynamically changing economies—a factor that’s only going to intensify, especially with the advancements of AI in knowledge work. 

As a result of this imperative, Intapp is continuing to prioritize vertical AI investments in a way that keeps its solutions focused on the unique needs of these firms. “We have to think about AI differently,” says Lavinia Calvert, Vice President and Legal Industry Principal at Intapp. “These knowledge-based industries have special needs and require out-of-the-box AI capabilities that deliver securely and reliably on specific use cases. This is where the foundational power of Azure and Azure OpenAI delivers through Intapp’s solutions[DL1] , which bring unique vertical AI capabilities to life for our clients and their professionals.” 

Azure underpins all of Intapp’s solutions and AI initiatives, including managing end-to-end risk, compliance, and confidentiality, business development, driving profitability, and effective collaboration. Intapp’s AI-infused, Azure-based technologies provide firms with an industry-specific set of capabilities. One of its most popular solutions, DealCloud, is built for demanding professionals like lawyers, advisers, and investors to deliver end-to-end deal execution. It has been an Azure-based solution from the beginning, but it’s also now undergoing transformative change in light of generative AI advancements. Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure Databricks, and Azure AI services all bolster AI capabilities in Intapp’s offerings. 

Intapp’s Applied AI strategy has five major themes for generative AI capabilities for financial and professional services firms: zero-entry capture, conversational query, summarize, recommend, and generate. For example, Applied AI is being deployed to minimize the need to enter data into the system, bolstering a zero-entry philosophy. Users will be able to interact with DealCloud in a conversational manner. Intapp is also enabling users to take complex information, summarize it, and then make it consumable for primary users like bankers, dealmakers, lawyers, and accountants, thus helping firms execute their work more efficiently. 

Furthermore, Intapp’s intelligent assistant functionality incorporates Azure OpenAI to support the day-to-day work of firms’ professionals and dealmakers. For example, the solution can capture meeting transcripts from Microsoft Teams to the DealCloud solution and then use GPT to automatically summarize them. This helps dealmakers consume complex meeting details, deal documentation like due diligence information, and related data to execute deals more effectively. Intapp is also using Azure OpenAI to automate deal marketing and prospecting workflows. This enables deal teams to use AI-driven opportunity intelligence to curate target buyers and investors and then generate personalized, contextual email drafts using GPT. 

Additionally, Intapp’s relationship intelligence AI capability helps dealmakers harness their networks to find the right contacts to pursue key opportunities. The solution analyzes the history of interactions between individuals via Outlook, Teams, DealCloud, and more to automatically help professionals identify their best and most important relationships, allowing them to target and win more deals. 

“All of our solutions take advantage of Azure capabilities,” says John Harris, Vice President of Product at Intapp. “We’re taking this to a new level with Azure OpenAI to bolster DealCloud technology as an AI-infused dealmaker solution. Our clients will be able to interact with our DealCloud solution using natural language and use new generative AI capabilities in conjunction with our existing AI capabilities, such as automated relationship intelligence.”