Add to this AI’s impact. “Artificial intelligence is elevating people, not replacing them,” says Raffaele. “To realise its full value, organisations need the right operating model around it. Those that combine AI with the right workforce structure will see the greatest gains. Businesses thrive when they treat AI as a co-pilot, not as a substitute for human intelligence.”
The shift to fully integrated global teams
Organisations are learning how the technology can be used to ask better questions and deliver better outcomes for clients. “At a client level, the core finance and accounting roles are now asking a lot more questions about AI’s potential to assist,” says Mark Muller, chair of the advisory network, the HLB Mann Judd Australasian Association. “We expect to see the pace of adoption and change to increase significantly.”
Historically, offshore teams focused on transactional work, while onshore teams handled judgment and client interaction. “What we’re seeing now is a shift to fully integrated teams, where global talent contributes across the entire finance function,” says Raffaele.
Companies adopting hybrid global talent models are seeing the greatest gains in resilience and scalability. This is where workforce transformation moves from concept to execution. Emapta has been at the forefront of this shift, helping organisations operationalise workforce transformation for an AI-enabled future, with particularly strong impact in finance and accounting.
“Our dedicated staffing model is built around fully embedded, single-client teams that operate as a seamless extension of the business,” says Raffaele. “It gives organisations complete control over their teams, from recruitment to onboarding and performance management with oversight for consistency and the ability to scale without compromising quality.
“This model challenges traditional perceptions of outsourcing. Rather than adding mere transactional support, organisations are building fully integrated, globally distributed finance teams.”
Outsourcing isn’t always about low-cost processing; however, it is also about access to good people in a competitive environment. “When done well, outsourcing is about building integrated teams that operate to the same standards and support the same outcomes,” says Muller.
Integrated global teams are becoming a seamless extension of finance departments, allowing leaders to scale capacity without burning out onshore staff.
Building the right operating model
Emapta’s Talent Marketplace allows organisations such as Muller’s to hand-select pre-vetted, pre-interviewed, video-recorded candidates from the top 1 per cent of talent globally. By reducing recruitment timelines from weeks to days, Emapta’s Talent Marketplace enables finance leaders to quickly build teams capable of supporting AI workflows, compliance reporting and emerging disciplines such as carbon accounting.
This approach accelerates hiring by more than 60 per cent and doubles — or even triples — team throughput, demonstrating the impact of well-designed global workforce models. Organisations scale finance capacity in days without compromising quality, a critical advantage in today’s constrained talent market.
The Emapta Academy also offers upskilling opportunities to its 12,000-strong workforce through various courses, certifications and resources including foundational and advanced classes in AI tools and applications as well as problem-solving and critical thinking. Team members achieve mastery of the relevant AI skills in their respective areas of expertise and can apply AI in a meaningful way to add value to their client’s operations.
“Our core skills of critical thinking, judgment and strong communication remain the same; they are just being applied using different tools and datasets,” says Muller. “It’s great we have technology to analyse data and trends, but the real value comes from being able to apply context, challenge assumptions and explain things in a way clients can understand and act on.”
Emapta partners with organisations of all sizes and across industries to design and implement strategic workforce solutions anchored by dedicated staffing to optimise operations, strengthen long-term talent strategy and provide a practical blueprint for building a future-ready, AI-ready workforce.
For leaders, the challenge is no longer just adopting AI, it’s building the right operating model around it. Those who rethink talent alongside technology will be best positioned to unlock its full value.
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