Part 4: Sarah Edwards – Make Every Consultant Your Best Consultant

Unlocking Value: Meet Sarah Edwards and Episode Preview Here's something I think about a lot. Most of us who run professional services firms only ever see one firm close up, and that's our own. The people in this miniseries see hundreds. I'm John Howard, the host of Unlocking Value, and this is a six part miniseries about how to navigate the huge technology driven change that's going on in our sector. Most of the guests in this series are founders and leaders of companies that build the professional services automation software our industry runs on. That means we're getting first hand insight from people whose systems support thousands of professional services businesses and 10s of thousands of users across the world every single day. These are conversations about a time of huge opportunity and some significant threats emerging in our market. As you'd expect, we talk a lot about AI and technology, but they're mostly conversations about what's driving growth, how client expectations are changing, and what the most valuable firms of the. Speaker 2 Future will look like. Speaker 1 The series starts somewhere you might not expect with someone who is at the leading edge when technology turned a very different industry upside down long before it reached ours. Wherever you are with your own firm, I think you'll take a lot from these conversations. Thanks for tuning in. My guest today is Sarah Edwards. She's the chief. Speaker 3 Product Officer at Cantata, which is one of the leading global professional services automation systems. Sarah has spent more than 30 years in professional services, starting out at Oracle, later running a global practice within Hitachi Consulting and then joining Kimball in his earlier stages before helping lead the journey through to what is now Cantata. Sarah also works closely with the leaders in consulting community. Through that, she spends a huge amount of time speaking with consulting leaders about how their firms are evolving, what clients are asking for these days and where firms are finding opportunity and also challenges in the market. In this episode, we talk about why the traditional consulting model is under pressure and why so many firms are rethinking how they package, price and deliver their work. We also spend time on the growing importance of a firm's expertise and why firms are increasingly having to think harder about what genuinely differentiates them. Arah also talked about the challenge of turning the knowledge that sits in people's heads into something more repeatable an scalable across a business. Speaker 2 And inevitably, we spent some time on. Speaker 3 AI, including Sarah's observation that everyone's gone a bit agent crazy and what she thinks firms are still getting right and wrong as they try to adapt. There's a lot in this conversation for anyone who's leading, scaling or reshaping a professional services business in this time of huge change in the market. If you enjoy the episode, please make sure you follow the show so you don't miss future conversations. And with that, here's my chat with Sarah Edwards. From Oracle to Kantata: Sarah Edwards' 30-Year Consulting Path Sarah, welcome to the show. Speaker 4 Thank you. Great to be here. Speaker 2 Now, really good to see you. Other reasons I've been keen to have you on the show is that you've had a really broad experience with cross professional services for a long time now through Oracle, then in the Kimball and now Cantata. But you also do a lot of work with leadership consulting. And that means you spend a huge amount of time around consulting leaders and growing firms talking about not just technology things, but loads of other subjects. So I think you get a really interesting kind of view and a cross section of what's happening in the market right now. So lots for us talk about. Before we dive in, could you just kick us off by maybe giving listeners a bit of introduction to you, your background, and the work you do today? Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's great to be here. Speaker 5 John and talk about a topic that I'm pretty passionate about because it's an industry showing my age here that I realized I've worked in for over 30 years now. You know, as you say, I started my career at Oracle. You know, those were the days where they took on big graduate intake schemes and I actually joined as a sort of developer and really sort of then, you know, spent my life in consulting, you know, working not only for large organizations like Oracle, but they're moving to smaller sort of startup consultancy businesses. So worked with founders at both company called Fulcrum and Edenbrook to sort of scale those consulting businesses. And then really got acquired by Hitachi and ended up running a sort of global practice at Hitachi. And then joined, you know, Kimball at the time, which was really about, you know, the passion of, you know, the founders there. Mark, you know, Robert, that, you know, was really about, OK, we've worked in this industry for a long time, actually. How do we build something that helps those organizations, you know, run more efficiently and help them run their businesses? And then obviously, you know, it was a merger that happened that really bought Kimball and Mavalink together and informed Cantata. And even at Cantata, I've played quite a few roles, you know, but my most recent roles have really been focused on the product side in terms of really looking at our product strategy. And I'll go to market strategy around, you know, this is a market that's evolving pretty quickly. I'm sure we'll talk about some of this. Speaker 4 Like the world of AI, so how do we make sure that we can continue to support not only how services firms operate today, but how they need to operate in the future? And that really then led to me getting involved with the leaders in consulting community. I went to one of their events last year and actually in my whole. Speaker 5 Career. I've never been to an event that was purely focused on leaders in consulting and where you were talking to people who were truly the leaders of those organisations. So they're very firm in terms of you have to be 50 people and above and you have to be a sort of C level executive or you know, partner within those businesses. Whereas typically you go to events and you end up talking to an administrator or someone who's trying to sell you product and technology. And even though I'm from a product based company that is selling to professional services firms, the reason we do leaders in consulting is not really our primary function. Our primary function is how do we get close to and understand what are the opportunities and the challenges facing, you know, consulting businesses in this market. So I meet with consulting leaders now on a pretty regular basis. We have a monthly meet up in London, but I'm speaking to them every week, only our customers and prospects, but through leaders in consulting. And I think it's some interesting times and lots of interesting conversations going on. Speaker 2 No, I'm sure really appreciate that and about 30 years and it myself. So I think it's been lots of change and lots has evolved over those years. Yes, we just stay on the leaders and consulting thing for a bit. Consulting Leaders Face Urgency, Optimism, and Unknowns When you're speaking to people who are leaders in the industry, what's coming up most consistently in conversations right now and how does the mood feel at the moment? Speaker 4 Yeah, the mood is an interesting one. I think overall the mood is definitely urgency. I think everyone recognises. I mean, I think whichever industry you're in at the moment, let's be clear, you know, technology and AI is rapidly changing everything. I mean, we all learn something on a daily basis. So there is definitely a sense of urgency. I can't afford to run my business how I've always just run my business. I need to really evaluate, you know, how do I change my operating model? I think people are seeing that the operating model is really under pressure. And I think, you know, there's a sense of urgency. I think that is balanced with optimism. And I think people are optimistic and excited about proving what they can do with AI and technology and how that's enabling them to change their business. But there's also a lot of unknowns as well. I mean, I spoke. Speaker 5 To one of our large. Speaker 4 Customers yesterday where he was really excited actually they can see real growth opportunity because actually AI is enabling them to actually go a lot faster and deliver benefit and opportunity to their customers that their customers were always a bit afraid to undertake. So actually for them, they can see a huge potential over the next 12 to 18 months. What he said to me is my challenge is I can't really see beyond that at the moment because I don't really know what it's going to look like in three years time. I mean, if you think about just traditionally how consulting firms, you know, have grown and scaled over the past. And I would question that. This is an industry that, to be honest, in my 30 years, hasn't really changed that much. We still go out and bill on hours and we rely on people and heroics and to deliver. Yeah. I'm not speaking to someone that isn't under pressure to grow revenue and margin without necessarily that linear growth of headcount. Like I, I think that commercial pressure is really increasing on organisations that traditional TNM model is under pressure not to talk about the pyramid is crumbling, et cetera. And even, I'll just give you another example, but the leaders in consulting forum met last month and the question was what's the biggest challenge we're seeing to our businesses that we need to address over the next 6 to 12 months? And we sort of gave four options. Was it pricing, was it competition? Is it talent, Is it client expectations? And actually interestingly, the two parts that came out was talent. I think everyone is worried talent and the expectations of, you know, how we need to evolve our talent and our expertise, you know, what becomes our expertise that we're selling in the future. And then I think the others was client expectations. I think clients have shifted. They want things quicker, cheaper, faster. There's a lot they can now do themselves. And I think you know, that whole, you know, how do you prove and demonstrate you're delivering value? It's not just becoming a race to the bottom on price. So lots of things there that we could dive in and discuss, but I think, you know, it's definitely urgency, I think mixed with some optimism and excitement, but with lots of unknowns. Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about the unknown bits of the future, read a book right now called The Future Habit by David Skelton and it's about kind of how do you in the world we're in, think about like what are the kind of tools and techniques and things you can help to kind of catch your mind in the future and not predict it, obviously, but kind of at least work your way through and at least be ready to change and respond and have thought about stuff. It's really, really hard to do and. Speaker 4 There's lots of interesting, I mean, we're all probably seeing this on social media and posts everyday about what's the world going to look like in three years time. I mean, I like the idea where there's lots of things saying that I'll be out to work a three day week and actually AI will do everything else for me, but there's lots of unknowns at the moment. Why the Traditional Consulting Operating Model is Under Strain When? Speaker 2 You say the operating model is under pressure. What do you mean? Speaker 4 I think again, we've traditionally A consulting firm has really operated predominantly on people and hours haven't is a business. We've really grown in our consulting firms. And you sit down and you think about, OK, how am I going to scale over the next two years? Well, it's typically how do I scale my people, You know, how am I increasing my day rates that I'm charging customers? And I think that's fundamentally under pressure. I think it's changing and I've been talking to lots of customers and we're all proving, we're proving this ourselves that I can now, you know, take something that I used to package and sell, which was 100 or you know, 50 people on site. And it's no longer that case. In fact, I did a podcast recording with a company called Q5. They're in a lucky position that they've really taken a different approach. You know, throughout this, you know, it's not about, you know, this idea of I'm going to sell you 50 consultants, it's a six month project or a 12 month project. I think we're really being challenged on that. It's about time to value. It's quicker pieces of work. You know, there's this whole idea of, you know, actually I can do a lot of it myself. You know, I'm coming to you for deep expertise. So I think those consulting firms that are perhaps, you know, more horizontal or generalists, so the ones that are going to struggle, I think you've got to show that you've got really deep expertise and how are you leveraging IP and you're building, you know, technology to really sort of differentiate how you deliver a package and price to your services. Speaker 2 Yeah. One of the things we're thinking about with our own business and with our customers, where does work sit on the kind of high judgment versus high kind of production eyes or repeatability kind of scale? And then thinking about that in terms of what do people see value in, like what are people going to be prepared to buy? And we see lots of stuff we do is a combination of high value kind of very judgment LED stuff, but also it has a repeatability element to it. And just kind of thinking through how you re engineer all that work and AI is part of that. But actually just the changing world is part of that is something I think we're all grappling with at the moment. Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. I think more than ever and I'm definitely seeing a lot of firms, even firms that come to us. You know, it's about how do I operationally go faster? Like what are my packaging and pricing that is low. You know, perhaps it's got low margins, but it's repeatable and I'm actually automating a lot of that with agents AI. And on the other spectrum, what am I building that is truly high value services and then how do I demonstrate the value of that and how do I package and price those? So it's definitely those two ends that people are looking at and having to pivot on pretty quickly. Speaker 2 Yeah, certainly. We see people kind of almost, you can get yourself a bit frozen because it's like back to predictability, the future thing, like if I don't quite know what it's going to be, then how do I get myself on the stuck and at least get some moment into moving that is. It's not easy. Speaker 4 No, it's not easy. And I definitely think there are some firms that are sort of burying their heads in the sands that are, you know, OK, I'm all right at the moment. I've got, you know, some trusted relationships with clients and, you know, OK, I'm, I'm perhaps not growing at 20%. I used to, but I've got 10% growth. But I think there's going to be some businesses that are really challenged over the, you know, I think not five years, but next even six months to two years. And I think it's the firms that really think how they fundamentally operate as a business. You know, I'm sure we'll come on to talk about this, but I think the challenge is AI isn't just about about automating the status quo. It's going to be about how we fundamentally change how we operate as a business, what we package sell and how we deliver. Speaker 2 I mean, I guess the final thing just kind of on the leadership theme for a second and recognizing some firms are responding differently. Like when you look whether it's across your customer base or across the lesion consulting form, like what are the leadership traits you see in firms that kind of are building momentum versus those that maybe are a bit more stuck, but I'll be disparaging anybody. How Technology Drives Strategic Change and Visibility in Consulting Some of it comes down to I think that the firms are thinking strategically. Like I think we produced a sort of an AI maturity model that actually I presented at Leaders in Consulting forum in Germany last year. And it was talking about like everyone was going pretty quick at the time with, you know, let's be clear, everyone's using agents. We're all using it in our day-to-day business to, you know, help me write a proposal or summarize an e-mail or things like that. You know, everyone's using that. But I think it's the firms who are thinking more strategically like that, actually, how am I taking that and building something that's repeatable or, you know, has value embedded within that packaging and building? You know, I'm packaging up some of my IP and I'm building something. I mean, there's lots of firms that I think are traditionally consulting businesses that are starting to become more like product businesses. And I think those that are challenging fundamentally how they operate, I think the winners are the ones that I see that are moving at a quicker pace than those that are doing it in a more just ad hoc way. I'm just getting everyone to use agents. I think you know, that's the difference. Speaker 2 If I did, you put your can Tata and technology leader hat on for a minute. One of the reasons I've been wanting to speak with you and other leaders in the professional services technology space is that I think you can see the market from a really interesting perspective because you'll have customers who are asking your products to do different things that I suspect are good signals of things that are, you know, impacting what they're seeing in their own delivery models. So I guess from your perspective as a leader in the PS tech space, what are you seeing happening in your customer and what do you think that's telling you about how firms in the industry are changing? Speaker 4 Yeah, I think maybe to pivot it just slightly to start with, I think what am I seeing not just from our customers, but people coming to us, you know, and in this space, it's still amazing how many people are still, you know, running their businesses off of disjointed spreadsheets, manual processes, human heroics. And I think the exciting thing for us as a business is actually, I think this is really the pivotal point where as a consulting business, you can't afford to do that. Let's be clear, most consulting firms go out and consult their customers on change on how to operate their businesses differently. They're giving advice on AI to their customers. Yet internally when you look at how they run their own businesses, it's still stuck, you know, in the past and I think that is really changing. I think we are now being asked by our customers, but also new customers that are coming to us. I fundamentally need to change how I'm operating as a business. You know, I can't afford like visibility is non negotiable now. I need to get visibility really quickly. Going back to what we talked about earlier, I've got pivot and figure out what do I automate next? Where am I going faster with AI and how am packaging and pricing that? Where's my high value coming from? How am I capturing and monitoring that? How am I then pivoting that back in and having that continuous learning cycle to know what do I automate next? What can I package and sell differently? So visibility and connecting all of that. I mean, fundamentally a PSA is about really connecting that end to end process all the way through from sales to delivery to resourcing to your financial control. And forecasting, I think is becoming top of people's minds. I need to be able to better forecast this business moving forwards because if I'm looking just back at historic reporting and data, that tells me nothing, you know, where's the demand coming in? What should I be packaging and pricing differently? So I think that forecasting has changed. And then I think this whole idea of like businesses are under huge pressure that become more efficient. And how does a tool like ours help them become more efficient? There's a partner of ours, a company called Foil or a customer of ours, and they talk about this autonomic business, but I think there's a lot of talk about like autonomous services delivery, like actually, how am I making my resource managers, my project managers? How am I automating all of that? I want them doing the high value piece. I want them managing the relationships with the customers. So I think for me, it's about they're coming to us because they recognize they need to change the way they operate as a business. They can't continue to operate efficiently at scale and grow without that, you know, visibility and predictability they need in their business. And then, you know, how do I drive that automation as well? Building Predictability and Operational Maturity for Future Success When you say visibility, Visibility of what? Speaker 4 I think visibility of where my business is going and what trends I'm seeing and visibility into so many organizations that still don't have visibility in terms of how's the pipeline changing and more companies are coming. I need to be able to better predict what skills I'm going to need in my business over the next 6 to 12 months. I think skills and talent is really evolving quicker than ever again. I did go back to leaders in consulting, but we did a presentation a while ago at an event with West Monroe, one of our customers talking about the half life of skills. Like, you know, how important skills planning is becoming because skills are evolving and more rapidly than ever. So how do I predict that? How do I get insight to that? How am I really forecasting, embedding confidence in my business? And I think it's also about predictability. We talk a lot about Cantartia, about theatre website. I think it's all about predictability because I think that's more important than ever. Like how do I really get that visibility and predictability just because I'm going faster as a business business and I can go faster with AI and stuff? Speed is one thing, but predictability is really important. How am I predicting, you know, where my business is going to go, my revenue, my margin, etcetera, I think is, you know, more important than ever. Speaker 2 One of the things that observed in the past when I was in a business implementing PSA, and I mean indeed it doesn't have to just be PSA like kind of system implementations generally, but particularly for firms that are trying to get a better grip on visibility and predictability, I think that requires a lot of kind of operational maturity in firms and I think a lot of leadership maturity. So otherwise, because just putting the system in doesn't do it. So alongside the, I guess the desire for that, if you're somebody who's in a business that's kind of thinking, yeah, I know I need those things and I know I probably can't keep running it on sticky tape and spreadsheets, like, what are you as a leader in that kind of business have to be prepared to do to make that possible? Speaker 4 I think you have to be as prepared to change. I mean, that's really what it comes to. I think you're not just adopting, you're not choosing a piece of software like APSA just to put in a new piece of software. You're putting in to change how you operate as a business. And yes, that comes with a, you know, we have customers and yes, you can implement the product, you know, quickly and efficiently. I think implementing the product is one thing, any PSA technology, it's actually how you're driving the change and your operating model, you know, aligned to that. I'm seeing a lot of firms going back to, you know, the change of pricing. I mean, you know, there's still firms that are doing TNM, but I think we're definitely seeing a shift to more and fixed fee delivery more than ever. I mean, the aim, ultimate goal for all of us is outcome value based pricing. But we've talked about that for years and I'm seeing some firms start to do that. But I would say not, you know, most firms are still in this actually I need to be able to confidently fix price something and deliver a fixed quickly and efficiently to our customers. Well, how do I do that if I don't actually have visibility and insight into actually what it is taking us to deliver this and how we're getting more efficient and making sure that we scope that correctly in the per first place. That whole idea of like continuously learning, I think is becoming more important. But I think maybe back to your question and I think you've got to go into this thinking how we changing as a business all the way through how we package and sell and how we deliver the roles we're going to need in our business going forwards and really driving that change around it. That's what delivers success, not just putting in at all. Speaker 1 I mean, are there new? Navigating the 'Agent Crazy' World of AI in Professional Services Things that customers are asking the software to be able to do that are maybe unexpected or driven by changes or go in the market. Are they asking for agents to be able to long time feature example or things like that? I. Speaker 4 Don't think it's necessarily unexpected. I think we're predicting some of this. I think the exciting thing now is probably the technologies there to deliver it. I mean, I think absolutely they want, you know, why I can go back to maybe a project manager and I was talking to a customer the other day and we were giving, you know, about how can Tata and agents and technology can help them. But why do I want a project manager or someone chasing down timesheets or chasing down I've got to go and now update my schedule on this project because someone was off sick last week and something moved. You know, what we want the project manager to become is more like an engagement and client manager, how they're managing that strategic relationship with the customer. And actually I want a PSA that's automating some of those processes, but also giving me insight to things like, you know, sentiment. We've always for years tracked a project. You know, traditionally your PSA even looked at revenue cost and margin and usage and your timeline. It didn't really look at, well, OK, we're delivering a great experience to that customer. You know, I think we've had that in our product for some time now. But I think that's becoming an expectation. Like how are you helping me? A spot where there's a stakeholder change on this project or, you know, I mean, this whole great thing with AI, now we can bring in, you know, sentiment data from calls. I can't attend every single call. Yeah. I don't want to be reliant on a project manager going in and flagging a risk or a change control or something. I want tech technology to do that for me, so. Speaker 2 What are you doing on the sentiment thing? Can you engineer things with just feeding and the coal transcripts and things into kintata? And that's reading, yeah. Speaker 4 Absolutely. So we started the journey with sentiment probably ahead of the curve a couple of years ago and we launched a product called Pulse, which is really around actually how do I take sentiment checks with my customers. A lot of customers were just going out and they, OK, they might do AC sat or a customer survey, but it's not integrated how you're delivering your services. And we really recognize that value. Actually, the important thing is I want to know what the sentiment is or how the stakeholders are changing in the project, because that would give. Speaker 5 Me. Time to do something. Speaker 4 About it and we've used that tool Pulse for our projects. I've seen it in action working where I picked up that there's a sentiment change from the customer and actually we've been able to do something about it and react proactively. Actually now we can supercharge that. We are, you know, we're supercharging that now. We've actually, I don't need someone even to respond to a survey or question impulse actually how can I leverage data from client calls and conversations and pick up those trends and challenges within that? Yeah. Speaker 2 No, it's great. It's really so much that cable being done. But you know with that comes the you've also got your people comfortable with kind of the bots listening and I think that that is asking a lot of all of us, but also really exciting when we spoke before. I think AI is obviously in the middle of everything right now, but you said something like can everybody's gone a bit agent crazy? What did you mean by that? And what are you saying maybe on the kind of aging crazy side? Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I think everyone was fantastic. There's these agents now and everyone's got excited and I can use it to automate, you know, all these tasks that I used to do. And absolutely, you know, that is exciting. But I think even in our competition, there's a lot of like I would say maybe vapour where I'm coming out and I'm saying, oh great, I've produced an agent that can do this. It was an example, great name, the competitor, but they were putting in out things that really just put in guardrails into the application that I think, well, they should exist. They exist in our application. They've existed there for years. I don't think you can paper out what doesn't work in your product today or what actually should exist with just lots of agents. I think to me, against the promise of an agent is it's fundamentally helping me to get insight or know something or take an action. Yes, it's part of it is automation, but it's also about how is it intelligently helping me to operate differently versus just a bunch of agents that, you know, just automate the status quo. You know, we really clear in our AI strategy that when we launched something called the Expertise Engine, we saw the value was actually to unlock your expertise and to build agents that had deep context and knowledge of services firms and how they operate and therefore, you know, become true experts on your business and how you operate. And that to me is the value an agent can bring versus it just being lots of agents that there's a pricing element to all of this. And you know, there's lots of things again in the press today. We don't know what the pricing, you know, we're all happily going out and building all these agents and fantastic, but what's the cost of those agents and how's that going to change over the coming, you know, months? And I didn't think it's going to be long till we're probably going to see if ones using Claude and things like that for program, you know, what's the cost of that really going to be to us in the future. So yeah, I guess my point is I don't think you should look at it like, and I would even challenge anyone, whether you're looking at a tool like Cantata or anything. To me, it's not about how many agents have you got that just automate tasks. It's actually where's the true context of your agents and the intelligence with those agents that can enable me to operate differently. And I think that's where we really see the opportunity. Unlocking Firm Expertise: Making Every Consultant Your Best Just going back pre AI and kind of just for the time you've been in the PSA space more generally, lots of kind of fierce operating model fragility that may come out as you try to implement technology around something AII would guess kind of amplifies that to a certain extent. When you look at customers you're working with, to what extent is that operational foundation important and what are people struggling with or getting right there? Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it's hugely important. I mean, the promise of AI is it's going to make you go faster and quicker and do everything for me. Well, just making quicker staffing decisions, it isn't enough, is it? If I'm still making the wrong staffing decision, I'm not, you know, So I think it's like, you know, again, we've got to get smarter at how we actually scope our projects, how we scope, you know, how we package and differentiate our value, how we resource the right talent and how we're developing that talent. I mean, the skills I think has become far more important. Again, I think it comes back to just the nature of projects, maybe the pyramid crumbling, that I'm not just laughing, lots of people on a project. Therefore I've got to find the right expert, the right cultural fit for that customer, the right skills for that customer. So those sort of things are becoming far more important and I think there is some fragility there. I'm going to think if people haven't got their skills well defined, or how do you make sure you've got some of those operational foundations in place so that you can really leverage ultimately the opportunity of AI. So again, I would always say AI doesn't fix a broken operating model, it scales it. We've obviously worked closely with organisations like Garwood and stuff like that. We need to have partners and people that can go in and help firms to get their operating model right. I don't think any tool just fixes that. You've got to really think about like how we're operating as a business and what foundations do we need in place to really get the full potential from a solution like Cantata. Speaker 3 One of those. Speaker 2 Foundations, I think and we've spoken about this before, is knowledge and expertise that sits and some of that stuff is in people's heads, some of it's IP. But. And one of the things you said was, you know, this idea of kind of making every consultant your best consultant. And I found it really interesting because I think professional services firms have talked about knowledge management forever. It's always been I think hard because like stuff sits in people's heads, it's hard to get it down. It's hard. There's behavioral stuff, like there's a whole can of worms around knowledge management that I think makes it hard for anybody to do. But I guess when you say make everybody your best consultant, what do you mean by that? And I guess from your perspective, going to forget AI for a minute, just like what are you seeing happening in the world of knowledge and expertise and how is that changing? What's the world today? Demanding is different. Speaker 4 Firstly, you have to differentiate on your expertise and for years we've relied on that being really in people's heads and heroics and you lose someone from your business and you're like, you know, where's that expertise gone? It's left the door. We can't afford to operate like that anymore. And I think you have to look at not only how are you institutionally sort of taking that knowledge and making that knowledge available to everyone so everyone becomes their best, but also how are you packaging and building unique IP with that? Was listening to a podcast on my daily run yesterday whereas someone was actually talking about that. Like I think that goes back to my point about like, I think in a sense a pure consulting business becomes a bit more like a product business. You've got a product ties your services. You know, you've got to really take that unique expertise and how do I build IP around that that is differentiating And I think you know, that's the journey we're going on. We talked to launch this expertise engine, which to me was the promise beyond just automating the status quo with agents was how do I surface that expertise and make it repeatable to everyone. So when you're scoping or putting a team on a project, how are you getting the insight to know actually, you know, what going to make this project successful based on all the other projects you've run? I, I've swing to consulting firms for years. And let's be honest, Cantata's been part of this challenge where, you know, astronaut Hitachi, one of our customers, they've run every single project through Cantata for the last 10 years or five years they've been a customer. What does that tell me? Like, how am I learning from that and taking that? And I think you can even take that further as a consultant and individual, How am I taking my learnings, my conversations, my playbooks and making sure that that playbook is available to the next person who's delivering something similar to a customer? That's how you scale your expertise. And I think that's what firms have to do. I do think AI can really now play a role in or technology. It's not just AI technology for a number of reasons. One is you can truly build a knowledge graph now. You can build things that truly learn and can surface that up to people. I think it's much easier now to connect additional data sources. So how do I connect, you know, the cantata that's delivering and managing our projects to the deliverables, to the documents, to the meetings. If you can start to bring that context in, boom, suddenly you can start to, you know, make sure that's available to everyone and really sort of surface that. So I think it's the first time we've really been able to deliver on that promise. Strategic Investment: Productizing Services and Building Internal IP Yeah, it's been interesting because one of the things I've kind of observed about the PSA space for a long time is like there's this huge richness of information about what's happening in a project traditionally around everything except what that project is actually about. You know, who's on it, how long did it take, what did it cost you? But you don't know what the people were actually doing. For the most part. It feels like there's an opportunity now to change that. Speaker 4 I think, John, you've captured that exactly right, which is really our mission, which is like OK operation, you can, Tata knows everything about the project, but does it actually know about the project? What did you actually deliver to this customer? Who was the cover, what was the dynamics? And I think if you can unlock that, that's the really powerful moment that really happens. Speaker 2 And so I guess I'm of the view that I think to achieve the kind of things you've talked about around productization and surfacing expertise, like we can't be in a world where stuff's just kind of on somebody's laptop or in somebody's head and that kind of thing. If you were giving advice to somebody about what they're going to do to tackle that both technically and behaviourally, because I think it's both of those things. What are you seeing people do? Well? What do you think that demands of firms? Speaker 4 I think first of all, it demands that you have a really clear vision of like operationally, how do you need to structure and manage your business. And I think it's the firms that are thinking much more strategically and then actually taking a strategic approach to put those foundations in and then to connect, you know, those data. Because I think unless you've got those foundations in place as a business and then you're connecting those data sources, I think you'll really struggle to achieve and unlock the promise we talked about. So it's those firms that are making some of those investments. I mean, and again, personally from for us, I think that's exciting because it means they're making investments in products like Cantata, whereas I think it's been far too long that firms haven't invested in their own back office, their own systems, their own processes. They go out and advise customers, but don't do it to themselves. And I think that's changing. So yeah. Speaker 2 And there's specific things, I guess, from a structuring standpoint or a, OK, where do I put these things standpoint, or what does good IP and consulting look like? Are the examples of things like that that you see? Because I think conceptually, it's easy to kind of say, yeah, we need to do that. But then I think people find it hard to know how to turn their PowerPoint decks into stuff. Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it is hard and I think it comes back to again listen to another podcast the other day when someone was giving some advice on this organisations that where do you start? And I think it is about knowing where is your expertise today, one of those projects, one of those people that you're really, you know, delivering time and time again. We've got you know, I think firms have got to go really deep. You can't be a generalist anymore focusing in on those areas. And then how do we productize that or how do we build IP around it? That's where you need to start. And I think again, you some of that comes back to actually how do you learn from and how you, you're seeing, you know what you're delivering, how can that evolve over time? And I think it's going to be a continuous journey. That's why I think you've got to get the foundations right. I don't think this is 1 and done. I think you've got continuously evolving your business and your IP. Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think one of the foundations is actually the leadership foundation and kind of intellectual foundation of saying this is a different world in which we're operating now. If you're going to achieve the possibilities, you're going to have to put the work in, and as you say, quite granular on some of it. Speaker 4 And I think I'm seeing some firms where I think what they're doing well is they are pulling people out. They're putting pods together or people to go and say, OK, right, you know what, let's form a team strategically, we need to take this and we now need to build, you know, IP around this. We want to package it. In fact, we're getting customers. You know, our tool traditionally tracks time and where people are spending time. Interesting. I think a lot of people are saying I've got to actually just track not billable time, but what's our innovation time, You know, where are we spending that time? Because if you're not spending that, you're probably going to be left behind. Commercial Pressures: Pricing, AI Costs, and the Hybrid Workforce Yeah. We've spoken about talent and the kind of move from throwing lots and lots of people at projects to being more specialist that the things that come in around pricing and commercials. Again, maybe more in your work with leaders than with the technology, maybe it's both. Commercially, what are you seeing customers customers ask of them? Speaker 4 Or commercially if one's asking, I mean, firstly, I think people are saying even with AI now we've seen this ourselves, customers are coming in saying, OK, well, give me your quote, show me where you're saving with AI. Like I actually you expect your pricing to reflect that pricing. Commercials are definitely faster, quicker, cheaper. And that needs to be balanced with how we're proving the value that we're delivering to our customers. We've got capabilities in our tool and some customers are using it today to do that sort of value and outcome based pricing or maybe some sort of success fee. Maybe I'm doing a bit more of a hybrid approach to start with doing a fixed fee, but there's some sort of success fee payment that's tied to that as well. So I think we're seeing that becoming a more common model that customers are starting to look at and deploy from a commercial perspective. Speaker 2 And so if you're going to be able to respond to that demand from your customer, I'm a leader in a firm that's my customers are now asking me that for that. What is that demand of my people to be able to move to that, do you think? Speaker 4 Well, I think he's. Speaker 5 Got a demand that how confident can you scope and price and prove that you can deliver you know to those? Speaker 4 Customers, again, what are you automating? How are you showing that you've got efficiency in that? How are you capturing and checking and looking at the value that's being delivered to that customer? And how are you sort of showing and demonstrating that value? If you don't have some of those foundations in place, it's very hard to do so. And I think one of the things I've heard from a lot of people is that our customers ready, like I still think there's a lot of people say, great, I might come up with this, but I go to a customer. There was an example where someone said they actually presented options to customers. You can have the sort of price this way or this way. And actually I think I'll stick with my TNM or my fixed fee because it feels less risky and cost. So I don't think it's just about a firm's ready, a customer's ready for some of this change as well. So I think it's a journey people are going on, but I think it is moving quite quickly. Speaker 2 And how much do you, I don't know if you've got visibility kind of through what you can see happening in project across the kind of portfolio. Do you have any sense of how much work today is still kind of its TNM versus its fixed price at a kind of most basic level? Like what do people actually do think? Speaker 4 Quite mixed, but I would say most firms I speak to now it's way towards fixed fee. TNM has become, you know it's 10 percent, 20%, but 8090% of my work is fixed fee. I think obviously there's the whole annuity based services as well, which is important. So I think we're seeing more mix of that particularly in I mean obviously services firms within AB2B software. We work with two types of customers, either your pureplay sort of consulting or IT services businesses, but also your services firms within B2B software. I think it's different, probably slightly different challenges, opportunities for, but particularly for B2B software. I think you know it is about that, you know, how do I commercially price this, how am I building more annuity based services, you know, as well as becoming important. Speaker 2 It might not be there yet. But back to that kind of point about consumption of AI tokens, for lack of better way to say it, and I think lots of people are struggling with, yeah, what's this actually going to cost me? And I'm not sure I know how to predict that. Are you seeing people needing to be able to track that AI usage in your tool in the same way they check time or anything else? And how is that playing out? Speaker 4 Absolutely. And was an area we set out to lead the way on. In fact, I've been talking to some of our large customers on this for a while. And actually we've got some customers starting to do this in Cantata. But I think the workforce of the future isn't just people, it's people and agents. So if I've got a staffing resourcing in a PSA tool like Cantata, I want to be able to look at a project or staff a project to know what's the mixture of people and agents and then what's the cost of that? Say we're working with customers on that today. I think this is a reality today that you've got to start. How do you get a true, you know, view of your cost of a project and how you're delivering it with people and agents? I think that's going to become even more important over the probably the next 6 to 12 months. I can see costs going up and actually how my transactional cost of that service from an AI perspective is going to be really important. Speaker 2 Well, we work with customer who's in the midst of a large AI roll out and kind of very enthusiastic about the potential and wants to make it possible, but also very keen to understand what it's giving them. And there's not really lots of frameworks for tracking that or knowing how that is. And that's one of the things that we will have to figure out. It's not free and we do need to be able to expect to see an ROI. But is that ROI inefficiency of delivery? And it's a bit of a minefield at the moment. Speaker 4 Yes, I agree. We don't have all the answers that what we do know is we're in the lucky position that, you know, we're going pretty fast on some of this and we're working with some of our customers who are moving, you know, pace on this as well. So I think, you know, fundamentally, yeah, it's about how do you manage that hybrid workforce to deliver your projects and how are you packaging and pricing those with people and agents at the core? Embracing Change: Leadership, AI-Native Talent, and Future Mindset Going back to the leadership challenges and stuff and the time you spend with leaders in the market, what do you think separates people who are adapting well from the ones who might be struggling a bit more at the moment? Speaker 4 I think it is those that are embracing change and the opportunity and then how they're structuring their businesses to do that. Again, I think, you know, even coming back to talent, it was a great example from a podcast I did a couple of weeks ago, again with another customer. They weren't afraid of, you know, bringing in that new junior talent because actually they're the AI native sort of workforce that we need in our business. So they were actually recognized. This was an opportunity to really get that fresh talent in and how they were pairing that with, you know, some of the talent that maybe had been there for a longer time. How how are you shifting and getting your whole workforce to really align and embrace this? You know, I think have you got the right talent, even at the top and the middle that are really embracing this, You know, building agents, understanding the potential here, really challenging the way they work. And I think it's exciting to see those that are doing it and really embracing it. Again, podcasts coming out with PA consulting, I think it was really refreshing. They are so excited about the talent and the opportunity and how they're driving that. And I think it's a mindset matter for some of the leaders that are really embracing this and seeing it as an opportunity. Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think we've just brought in a consultant who's, you know, relatively young, like he is what I would kind of AI first native consultant. Like the way he thinks about the work to be done is very different from the way I would have thought about it in 30 years ago whenever I was starting. And I think that some of the kind of the shape and size of firms like change and the expertise versus production thing will influence that. But I find it refreshing how many more people seem to be talking now like you have, like others I speak to you about, like we don't need the juniors anymore or is maybe not really what we think it is. Speaker 4 I think that the challenge we have is I don't think the volumes there as much. I mean, I think absolutely we need the juniors, we need that talent coming into our business and rethinking the processes and how we operate. But I think the challenges, the volume of people that we need to take on at that level is clearly not where it used to be, just based on how efficient we can now make people. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a difficult time, I think, as a young person to be in the job market. Is there anything people are saying privately in conversations that maybe they aren't saying publicly about the market that everybody's in right now? I. Speaker 4 Think it varies. You've got some more skeptics in the market. I've been at some of the forums that we've had where people are on one side of the room saying this is the end of consulting and it's, you know, it's going to be, you know, much more I think, pessimistic than others. I think there's mixed, you know, what people are really saying. I think what people are really knowing and saying is going to. Fundamentally change how we operate our businesses. What? Speaker 2 Gives you optimism about the sector at the moment I just. Speaker 4 Think there's so much potential to do what we couldn't do before. I mean, that comes back to this whole idea. If you can truly unlock your expertise and you can start to compound that expertise, think about what we couldn't do beforehand, we can suddenly do. I think we can. It comes back to our vision. If you can make every person you know their best, more efficient, you know, I think there's huge opportunities to actually drive revenue growth. There's a talk about like margin and how we're driving efficiency here. I think it's a huge opportunity for revenue growth as well. And how are you actually bringing new innovation, you know, quicker than ever building that new IP, you know, and actually, you know, new revenue opportunities I think is hugely exciting. So change, you know, for me is exciting. I think for others it's probably daunting, but I think it's, you know, it's opportunity. Speaker 2 It's been great to talk to you as it always is, and really appreciate the insight you bring from so many different perspectives. I close all the conversations with the same couple of questions. I'd love to ask you if that's right. One kind of looks backward a bit and the other looks a bit forward. And a bit more advice in nature, I guess the first. Speaker 3 Is if you go back. Speaker 2 And do one thing differently in your career in business, whatever that might be. What would that different thing be? Speaker 4 I think it would be to challenge how we run some of our businesses earlier. You know, I do think this has been an industry and every firm I've worked for, we go and sell this vision to customers and we help them on their journey. And yet we're running our businesses, you know, not how we tell our customers to run theirs. I would have made some of those changes earlier and actually made, I think actually if we'd have invested more in our businesses and some of the foundations to get that right, that would have really unlocked, you know, going back to the days when I was the consultant out there. Like I think just how we would have made things easier for people and you know, being able to grow perhaps our businesses more rapidly by making some of those investments. So I think it'll push harder to think about internally how we operate as businesses versus just, you know, how we're helping our customers operate differently. Building Long-Term Value: Expertise, Evolution, and Final Thoughts Then looking forward, I guess if you're talking to somebody who's looking to build long term value in a professional services business and looking for some advice, what would you say to them? Speaker 4 I would start by looking at where is your expertise, Like how are you going to differentiate your expertise and your value? And then how are you going to continuously evolve that over the future? And then what do you need to put in place to make that happen? And that feeds all the way through to not only like if you've got the right operational systems to support, they've got the right people and talent, but I think you've got to ask yourself, start with, you know, where's my expertise and how am I really capturing and evolving that deep expertise and value that I think is the thing that's going to sustain consulting as an industry moving forward. Speaker 2 Thanks so much. You've been really generous with your time and I really appreciate it. If somebody's interested in learning more about leading consulting or about Cantata or about you, what's the best way to connect they. Speaker 4 Should just connect with me, reach out to me either at Cantata or through LinkedIn. And I'd love to, particularly with the community I think we're building in London and you know, and globally as well. I think it'd be great to sort of get to tell you more about leaders in consulting, but also more about Cantata as well. Speaker 2 Fantastic. All right. We'll put your contact details in the show notes and have a great rest of your day and look forward to speaking to you soon. Thanks. Speaker 4 John. Speaker 1 Thanks for listening. This is one of six conversations in our miniseries about how to navigate the huge technology driven change that's going on in our sector. If you've enjoyed it, we love for you to follow the show, share it with others, and come back for the rest of the series. And do connect with me on LinkedIn, the links in the show notes. I'd love to hear what you make of the series or who you think I should be talking to next. Thanks again and see you next time.