How Professional Services Firms Can Monetize AI

According to a Gartner CIO Survey, conducted in 2019, of over 3000 executives in 89 countries, implementation of Artificial Intelligence grew by 270 percent between 2015–2019. This trend is certain to continue its hockey stick upward trajectory as early adopters begin reaping the rewards of their investments forcing their competitors to scramble and follow suit. This trickle-down sea change in priorities will also see a rise in implementations by medium and smaller businesses that may not have initially realized the urgency simply based on their own economies. AI’s graduation from buzzword and hype to an imperative urgency and business-critical tool gives credence to its impact as possibly humankind’s most advanced invention yet.

As global enterprises, large and small, grapple with how to leverage Artificial Intelligence, so too must the global Professional Services industry adjust itself to servicing the needs of their clients. These Professional Services firms have grown exponentially over the last 25 years through a combination of Advisory, Technology Integrations and Development, Back-Office support and pure Staffing solutions. All have been predicated on profit margins generated by subtracting salaries of their staff working on solutions for their clients from billable rates that clients are paying for those services as well as any margins on the technologies they are coupling with their services. All of them either will be facing or are already facing the decline of their existing business models as more and more enterprise clients begin leveraging AI-based solutions across their different functional areas. The implementation of new AI-based tools is happening in virtually every industry as business leaders automate processes that once required a fleet of human-capital or leverage AI for better decision making and more cost-effective outcomes.

So how can a Professional Services firm not only get ahead of this new business offering but also monetize it for outcomes similar to those that catalyzed their global prominence to date?

To answer this question, Professional Services firms must first understand that AI itself is not a business strategy. It is a tool. Optimized leveraging of tools is based on how well a human can maximize its potential. Monetization of AI is, therefore, the result of leveraging AI for the right tasks. Maximizing monetization by leveraging AI, for Professional Services firms, is to maximize how, when, where and for what AI can be leveraged for and to then make it a central part of their portfolio of services.

Professional Services firms must chart a roadmap that involves the following:

1. An understanding of how AI compliments their existing Portfolio of Services
2. An executive-level buy-in and commitment centered on the belief that this is THE only way forward in order to not only avoid irrelevance but ensure continued prominence
3. A repositioning of their go-to-market strategy and a strong emphasis on new branding and marketing channels that reach across generational mediums
4. Finally, and most importantly, the courage to internally implement the same solutions and changes to business models that they are pitching to their customers

A monetization strategy must focus not only for themselves but also for their clients and should encompass

1. The democratization of information and data
2. Harnesses unique and invaluable insights gathered from the results of market-leading hypotheses as a new unique identifier and differentiator
3. Understanding of the shift from offering scarcity to leveraging abundance
4. Leveraging predictive insights on their own existing and future customers

This may result in a reduced workforce and a shift towards a product-based approach. This may also result in the repositioning of assets and resources and the need to invest in retooling and retraining of talent. This may result in disgruntled workers or even disgruntled leaders. All or part of the above are kneejerk reactions to challenges to the status quo, but the shelf life of today’s status quo does not have the same luxury of relevance that yesterday’s success models may have had. In taking this leap towards the future, the Professional Services firm will incubate a culture of innovation centered on “Causing Disruption” as the goal and not being impacted by disruption as a result of complacency.

AI, The Ultimate Force Multiplier

Humans have always leveraged tools to multiply their own ability to accomplish certain tasks. From the time we picked up a rock to exponentially increase our ability to crack open something like a coconut and shared that technique with our fellow humans, we embarked on an evolutionary journey that set us apart from other species. We created force multipliers to extend our own abilities but not replace us. We have done this repeatedly and will continue to do so. Today’s force-multiplying tool is AI, but it is not a tool by itself. It needs coupling with other technologies to improve their functionalities. For example, electric power did not replace a screwdriver but the coupling of electrical power with a screwdriver created a power-tool that exponentially increased our ability to leverage an existing force multiplier. AI enhancements to existing tools and processes will therefore exponentially increase our force multiplication abilities.

AI leveraging systems will help all functions of enterprise businesses in every industry do what they do better, cheaper, faster, more efficiently, with fewer errors and all complimented with the ability to harness vast amounts of data for better predictive and prescriptive decision making. The end result is improved customer experiences for enterprise clients and consumer demands that will force the adoption of these tools by everyone.

As the volume and variety of data continuously increase, enterprise leaders, need complex tools to not only manage the increased influx of data but leverage it for better decision making thereby converting data into business value. To date, this analysis was done through rule-based systems for pre-defined decisions. AI-based systems not only offer the promise of marrying this data with sophisticated algorithms to provide more personalized insights and a true pulse of the organization but also the cognitive functionalities to allow for prescriptive next steps. Intelligent, data-driven decisioning and automation of business processes are key to how enterprises will function moving forward. The ability of AI-based systems to adapt and learn and continuously improve provides immeasurable potentials in all aspects of enterprise functionality.

Global enterprises are already investing in enhancing business functions with AI to provide better management of their supply chains by reducing costs and avoiding stagnant inventories. They are leveraging them to increase sales by predicting customer intent and driving better margins by optimizing costs. They are reducing overhead by intelligently automating functions like Finance and Accounting, HR, Procurement and even Software Development amongst a host of other areas. But there is still a lot of confusion as to how to maximize AI’s potential and this is where today’s Professional Services firms must step in.

The Opportunity

With an assortment of new buzz words crossing the peripheral visions of enterprise leaders today, the emphasis is shifting from business as usual or sustained operations and growth to the urgency of adoption and the need for survival in a constantly disruptive business ecosystem. Those leaders experimenting and adopting these emerging and disruptive technologies are setting themselves apart from their competitors in exponential ways.

Blockchain, AI, Automation, Intelligent Automation, Innovation, Disruption, Digital Transformation or AI Transformation, the list goes on and on. Today’s enterprise leaders are being tasked with considering everything to ensure their relevance moving forward. Many organizations are either adding more responsibilities to the role of the Chief Information Officers or Chief Technology Officers, to make sense of these new tools, or bringing onboard innovation leaders as part of the C-Suite and calling them Chief Innovation Officers in order to have someone inhouse that can be the champion of innovative ideas.

The problem is that most of this is uncharted territory with few case studies to lean on. Those success stories that do exist aren’t seasoned enough to truly paint a long-term picture of the pros and cons of different solutions. This confusion married with existing bureaucracies makes progress slow in large legacy enterprises and these new heads of innovation are themselves betting their carefully curated careers on decisions that can have lasting impacts both good and bad. They themselves need guidance and assistance in order to protect their own personal futures.

This presents a unique opportunity for Professional Services firms to step in and shield the enterprise leaders tasked with innovation. Professional Services firms offer a unique position of experience that can be leveraged to bring not only tried and tested best practices but also an outsider view of industry trends gained from research and associations with industry analysts and thought leaders. Before the dust begins to settle around emerging technologies and enterprise leaders gain the experiential stripes they need to make their own decisions, there is an opportunity for Professional Services firms to provide guidance, implement and develop new solutions, mentor and coach towards innovation and provide expert resources that are currently scarce and become further scarce when considering an enterprises limited geography. There exists a new opportunity to achieve the “Trusted Advisor” role that is the goal for Professional Services firms with respect to their global client communities.

Crucial to providing these services today, is the opportunity to fully grasp how to leverage Artificial Intelligence and all of its subcategories like Machine Learning, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Narrow AI for example.

The Product Plus Service Approach

Professional Services firms looking to rebrand themselves around a new AI strategy have two options with respect to a go-to-market strategy. The first is the one-stop-shop approach of a Product. This can be an internally developed platform or one that is first acquired and then enhanced and rebranded as their own brainchild. This Product is then coupled with the Services required for implementation and customization.

Today, many large Professional Services firms are offering their own cognitive platforms customized to different industries and business functions. They are being branded as the cornerstone of the Professional Services firm’s continued ability to support their clients and offer a combination of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cognitive capabilities for intelligent decisioning across a myriad of business functions, Smart-Analytics, Chatbots and a host of other offerings.

Some examples of Professional Services firms and their accompanying tools are:

• Wipro Holmes
• IBM Watson
• Tech Mahindra GAiA
• Accenture Applied Intelligence Platform
• Infosys Nia
• TCS ignio
• KPMG ignite

These tools and the services supporting them are becoming the main emphasis for these global giants. They are supported by other third-party as well as open-source platforms and their implementations cover the scope of Advisory, Deployment, and Support. There is no single solution that outshines the other just yet but Professional Services firms that have entered into this market are set to position themselves as early adopters in this space. Each one of these platforms offers its own benefits but one perspective is clear and that is that they provide an imperative offering for enterprises moving forward as well as the intellectual anchor for that Professional Services firm’s future growth.

If a Professional Services firm’s leadership commits to a product-based approach it must do so whole-heartedly and not fight the battle of a new strategy on two fronts, external market relevance as well as internal opposition to change. It must also look both inwards and externally for talent and invest in those individuals that are entrepreneurially driven to want to adopt the new realities. Crucial to this are those resources that are client-facing as they must reflect the thought leadership that is behind this adoption.

Embarking down this road must be done in almost a stealth fashion and preferably as an external entity that can be later brought back into the fold of the mothership. This will ensure that the organizational inertia does not attempt to crush the effort and its potential.

The Integration and Partnership Approach

The second option of monetization in AI for Professional Services firms is to continue the path of Service Integration. Whereas this may limit a Service Provider’s potential of being viewed as an innovator it allows these firms to not put all their eggs in one basket and be viewed as agnostic to one single solution. If this is the path a Professional Services firm’s leadership commits to, the path to success is slightly different. This path does not create any meaningful innovation-related intellectual capital but allows them to take a holistic approach to client challenges by plugging the “right” solution for the “right” client challenge.

Professional Services firms choosing this strategy must continuously research and evaluate new technologies and partner with solution providers to enhance their offerings for internal consumption or even package their offerings through these partnerships. Historically, Professional Services firms that have committed to a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) approach have adopted this strategy and created competencies focused on their channel partnerships with providers like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and so on.

Be it an internal product plus the supporting services, partnerships with industry-leading platforms plus services or both, Professional Services firms must address the need of the hour for clients looking to demystify the complexities around emerging technologies and Artificial Intelligence.

AI in Different Service Portfolio Focus Areas

How a Professional Services firm leverages Artificial Intelligence to enhance its services and package them for their clients in order to monetize on this technology depends on what the service is that they are offering. As a force multiplier, AI may help Staffing firms better identify the right type of skills for a client’s requirements and accelerate the sifting through resumes to present the right candidates. A Management Consulting firm may better internalize their learnings and provide clients with better advice for decision making. A Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firm may leverage the use of RPA tools and cognitive data ingestion to deploy solutions that can help clients better operate their business functions and more accurately process invoices for example. And a firm that is offering IT Outsourcing or Infrastructure support may be able to offer automation tools like Chatbots for helpdesk support or deploy AI-based Cloud and Infrastructure solutions that ensure fast and low latency response times with autonomic bots that can not only perform constant monitoring of infrastructure but also take necessary corrective measures when anomalies are either detected or brought to attention.

As enterprises are building their own transformation teams and experimenting with their own hypotheses with new models, Professional Services firms can help with not only managing the deployment and upkeep of those models but also ensuring the right training and validation of those models, in order to govern the ethics and accuracy of these solutions.

The Explicit and Implicit Monetizing an AI Implementation

The opportunity to monetize on AI for Professional Services firms is now. There are numerous implicit forms of monetization as well as explicit. Implicit forms of AI monetization may not result in immediate revenue but can address key issues such as customer insight and intelligence and customer retention. Intelligence gained through internal activities, external customer interactions, and market activities represents a treasure trove of information that should be harnessed by Professional Services firms to build invaluable assets of industry knowledge. This knowledge allows for predictive and prescriptive analytics that can be then explicitly monetized. We are in an age where data is abundant and leveraging it with the right business hypotheses makes it invaluable.

Explicit monetization can be a combination of the immediate services costs plus the long-term licensing costs of tools as well as continued revenue by providing support and enhancement and the expertise that is currently creating a skills void.

AI implementations require the following key elements to produce their intended results:

• The right hypothesis and intent or business goals
• The subject matter expertise of manually executing for the desired outcomes or the current state
• The roadmap to a future state
• The infrastructure and computing power to support an AI capability
• A sound data management strategy
• Knowledge of the different models like neural networks, fractal sciences, logistic regression or decision trees
• The talent required to build, customize and deploy the solutions
• The time required to train the AI platform to handle exceptions and continuously improve through learning
• Change Management and training or reskilling of talent

How Professional Services firms look to augment their portfolio of services with AI depends on their own historic and future-focused business missions. Whether through partnerships, internal capabilities, human capital, advisory or all of the above, the demand for these services is now and those Professional Services firms whose inward capabilities are not being enhanced with AI or whose outward messaging is not yet positioning them as future-focused partners will have a tough time recovering from this opportunity for exponential growth and market relevance.

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Kory Farooquie is CEO of iNVATERRA (www.invaterra.com), a public speaker and host of #NextGenNinja, a talk show featuring Enterprise and Entrepreneurial leaders that are defining what the world looks like for future generations.

Kory provides Innovation consulting and leadership development via the NextGen.Ninja (www.nextgen.ninja) platform.