AI readiness for professional services companiesYou sell hours. Your systems can’t agree how many.
Professional services firms record time in one system, bill in another, plan people in a third and forecast in a spreadsheet. AI for utilisation, forecasting and billing needs the client, the engagement and the hour to match across all of them.
Starts with a 30-minute call. Commits you to nothing.
The AI on the table
The AI plays proposed in professional services.
What vendors and plans put forward in professional services, what each play needs from the data, and the gap that holds it back. In a real Read, each call rests on your Truth Score™ (a score out of 100 for how far your data can be trusted) and the records behind it. The calls here are an illustrative read, not a benchmark.
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Revenue and pipeline forecasting
“Forecast fee income from the pipeline”
What revenue forecasting needsNeeds work- Needs
- Won work that matches engagements and invoices
- Held back by
- Engagements opened with no CRM opportunity
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Work in progress and cash forecasting
“Predict billing and cash by week”
What 13-week cash flow forecasting needsNeeds work- Needs
- Time recorded against engagements that carry to invoices
- Held back by
- Billable hours that were never invoiced
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Engagement letter extraction
“Read terms and rates from every engagement letter”
What document intelligence needsNeeds work- Needs
- Letters that match the engagement record
- Held back by
- Rates in the letter that differ from rates billed
- Needs work
- Needs
- One client across CRM, time and billing
- Held back by
- Clients under different names in each system
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Ask-your-data for partners
“Utilisation and realisation on demand”
What natural-language analytics needsBlocked- Needs
- One definition of utilisation and realisation
- Held back by
- Utilisation calculated differently by each practice
- Deploy now
- Needs
- An outcome recorded on every proposal
- Watch for
- Lost proposals never recorded
Illustrative example, not a client. Your calls depend on your records.
The systems estate
The systems behind the plays.
Written for consultancies, accountancy, legal, engineering and IT services firms, running a CRM, a time or practice management system, a finance system and an HR system, with a lot held in spreadsheets. Each system is built to be right about one thing. None was built to agree with the others, and the plays above all run across more than one.
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CRM
Clients, opportunities, proposals
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Time and practice management
Engagements, time, WIP
PSA or practice management
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Finance
Invoices, ledger, debtors
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HR
People, grades, leavers
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Documents
Engagement letters, proposals
Document management
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Spreadsheets
Resource plans, forecasts
The partner pack
Typical, not exhaustive. Anything that exports to CSV or Excel can be included.
The gaps
Every system looks clean on its own. The truth is in the gaps between them.
One record traced across your time and practice system, finance and the CRM: each system right about its own part, and the three still disagree. Then the gaps that hold the plays back. Which of them exist in your data is what a Truth Score Read finds out.
Where the plays sink
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Time ↔ Finance
Billable time recorded but never invoiced
SinksWIP and cash forecasting
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CRM ↔ Practice
Engagements with no won opportunity, or the reverse
SinksRevenue forecasting
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HR ↔ Time
Time recorded by leavers, or by people missing from HR
SinksUtilisation and capacity planning
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Documents ↔ Finance
Rates in engagement letters that differ from rates billed
SinksRealisation analysis and pricing
Gaps to test in the sector, not client findings.
Regulation
The rules that shape which plays you can run.
Kept short and honest. This is not legal advice: we evidence what your data can support; your counsel decides what the rules require.
Client confidentiality
Engagement letters and professional rules can restrict how client information can be used, including with AI tools. Check them before any client data reaches a model.
GDPR
Time and HR records describe identifiable people. Utilisation AI that evaluates staff needs a lawful basis and a clear, stated purpose.
The EU AI Act and people decisions
AI used in recruitment, promotion or allocating work to individuals is listed as high-risk. Staffing and utilisation tools can fall into that category.
Your plan, tested
Got a plan that names these plays?
Send it with your exports. A Truth Score Read tests the AI in it against your own records, within 5 working days of complete exports. Go further with an AI Investment Review: every bet ranked, your plan tested play by play, and a roadmap to hand to your own team.
- 01
Send the plan, if there is one
The business plan, growth strategy, value creation plan or the vendor proposal. We pull out the AI plays in it and the targets that lean on them.
- 02
Send exports from two or more systems
Usually CRM and time and practice management to start. Spreadsheets count. Under NDA, using the field list we send.
- 03
Test each play against the records
Each play mapped to the data it needs. Our engine matches the customers, people, deals and invoices across your exports to see whether that data is there and agrees, and every red flag is checked by hand against sample records.
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Get the verdict, play by play
A signed memo: your Truth Score, a Leverability read marking each play Deploy now, Needs work or Blocked with the reason in your own records, and a verdict: sign, fix first or walk away.
What you get back
See what comes back: a real sample memo.
One fictional B2B software company, Example Co: 72,837 records in 7 exports from its CRM, finance and HR systems, run through the same engine and the same checks as a paid Truth Score Read. Each system passes its own checks. Matched across systems, only 13% of deals tie to an invoice.
Not a software company? The sample is one, but the method doesn’t change; only the systems do. For a professional services business the same match runs across your time and practice system, finance and the CRM, and every red flag is checked by hand the same way.
Questions
AI in professional services, answered plainly.
Anything else, ask on the 30-minute call. It commits you to nothing.
Book the callOur practice management system isn’t on your list. Does that matter?
No. Anything that exports to CSV or Excel can be compared. Time and practice systems usually produce engagement, time entry and WIP reports; we send the field list after the call.
Partners trust their own spreadsheets. Why would they trust a score?
Because every red flag points to records they can check themselves, and each one is checked by hand against sample records before sign-off. The Truth Score is a score out of 100 for how far your data can be trusted, and every pillar shows what was measured and what wasn’t, so a partner can check the work.
Can you test the AI plans in our strategy?
Yes. Send the strategy or business plan with your exports; we pull out the AI plays and show, play by play, whether the data they need is there and can be trusted.
Is client data involved?
Client names and billing records, yes; client work product, no. Everything is under NDA and a data processing agreement, and we keep quality metrics, not your records.
Before professional services AI gets funded, find out what your data can carry.
Exports from two or more systems, plus the plan or proposal if there is one. A signed verdict, play by play, within 5 working days of complete exports. Starts with a 30-minute call. Commits you to nothing.
Starts with a 30-minute call. Commits you to nothing.