The Connected Services Firm

Most AI in finance checks the books after the fact. In a services firm, the money often leaks earlier: between the approved day, the contractor's bill and the project that pays for it. It is misjudged earlier still when decisions are made on a project's report while the company's result is quite different.

The connected services firm checks and decides where the work happens, against what it expects to happen.

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What the paper argues

• Judge decisions at company level, not only project level. A staffing choice can produce a modest improvement in a project's margin and a much larger improvement in company profit.
• Check delivery facts before they reach the accounting books. Approved days, agreed rates and remaining budget belong with the delivery record. The accounting system remains the end of the chain and the book of record.
• Keep the outlook in separate layers. Contracted work, Extensions and likely work each need their own assumptions and triggers. Blending them into one probability-weighted number hides the decision leaders need to make.
• Keep one governed record. Do not replace a thousand spreadsheets with a thousand AI artefacts, each carrying its own data and definitions.
• Decide closer to the work, within written limits. The information, decision rights and measures need to move together.
• Read utilisation alongside contribution. Busy people do not guarantee profitable work.
• Use actual experience to improve the next decision. Compare expected with actual and sold with delivered, then change how the firm prices, staffs and plans work.

None of this requires new accounting books or a five-year enterprise programme. It requires the commercial, delivery and financial facts to be connected around the decisions the firm makes.

Why reasonable decisions can produce the wrong company result

Consider a major client that delays a project by six weeks.

Sales wants to protect the relationship and hold the two senior architects the client expects. Resourcing agrees because it is measured on keeping the right people available. Elsewhere, a fixed-price migration is behind, so its delivery lead hires a senior contractor for the same six weeks.

Every decision is reasonable for the person who makes it. Together, they leave two salaries on the bench and add a contractor cost that one of those employees could have avoided.

Nobody chose that company outcome because nobody could see the whole of it in time.

This is the central problem. The constraint is rarely the quality of each individual decision. It is the effort required to see how the decisions affect one another, and to make the trade-off at company level while it can still be changed.

One working model of the firm

A capable COO has always been able to connect these decisions through meetings, spreadsheets and personal intervention. What has changed is the effort it should take.

The information decisions depend on can now remain connected through normal work:

• deals and pricing assumptions;
• people, skills, costs and availability;
• project plans, approved days and remaining effort;
• timecards and actual delivery;
• contracts, change requests and supporting documents;
• company costs, targets and the forward P&L.

The same definitions matter as much as the records. If sales and finance mean different things by a signed deal, a committed person or margin, an assistant will report the disagreement faster. It will not resolve it.

Clean data gives the firm a consistent record. Shared meaning gives it an answer the CFO can sign.

Five leadership questions

The operating model is best described as five questions the leadership team answers continuously.

1. What work should we win, and on what terms?

Assess the offer, price, expected margin and delivery confidence before signing. The delivery plan, people and assumptions should support the margin priced into the deal.

2. How will we deliver it?

See the people, skills, capacity, plans and client commitments together. Know who rolls off in the coming weeks, which deals would need them and what holding them costs.

3. Where are profit and cash heading?

Keep Contracted work, Extensions and likely work as separate layers, with the costs and assumptions each needs. Read operating KPIs beside the forward financial result.

4. Who makes the call, and within what limits?

Move cross-functional decisions closer to the work. Give the person making the decision the company-level view and written limits for acting. Escalation becomes the exception.

5. How do we learn and adapt?

Record what the firm expected at the time. Compare it with what happened, and compare what each engagement was sold for with what it took to deliver. Change estimating, pricing and capacity rules as a result.

Together, these form three operating layers:

• See: win, deliver, profit and cash.
• Decide: make the trade-off at the right level.
• Learn: use the evidence to improve the next decision.

Underneath them is one connected, governed record and the AI assistants that can work from it.

A company-level staffing decision

Return to the delayed client. Assume the firm has two architects on salary, a migration that needs one senior person, and a smaller client ready to start time-and-materials work.

The exact figures depend on the firm. The principle does not.

Project margin answers what the work carries. Company profit also considers the salary already committed, the contractor cost avoided, bench, competing demand and any new revenue created. A single decision needs both views.

How AI works in the connected firm

AI does the finding, checking, reconciling, drafting and preparing. People make the decisions that matter.

Each person can work through their own assistant within their permissions. The assistant can read the plan, approvals and calculations, test a new fact against them, explain the trade-off and prepare a supported update.

The important distinction is that the assistant works from the model already running the firm. It does not create a separate interpretation of revenue, cost, effort and profit every time someone asks a question.

Safe use requires:

• one governed record that assistants and views do not copy;
• agreed definitions and owners;
• access by permission;
• a source and date behind each answer;
• routine work within written limits;
• review and read-back for consequential changes;
• a named person accountable for every material decision.

Connected does not mean certain. It makes assumptions and trade-offs visible. It does not remove judgement or accountability.

Where to start

Redesign the process, not the spreadsheet.

For each operating flow, ask:

1. What does the firm expect to happen?
2. Where can the work be checked against that expectation as it happens?
3. What can an assistant prepare within limits, and what still needs a person?
4. Which spreadsheet or side record does the new process replace?
5. How will the firm compare what it expected with what happened?

Start with a flow that is frequent, measurable and reversible. Then take the flow that changes decisions: from a deal becoming likely, to the people it needs, to the forward view of company profit.

One test applies to every flow: if the old spreadsheet survives unchanged, the redesign has not happened.

A leadership discussion

Use the five questions with the leadership team. For each, agree the evidence, assess whether the answer is difficult to see, visible with effort, or connected and used, then name the most important gap.

Where two leaders answer differently, the reason is often the most useful finding.

The connected view creates the opportunity. Using it is leadership work.

About the author

Gerben Bosch was CFO, then COO, of Capgemini Australia and New Zealand. He advises IT and professional services firms through Bosch CG and is the founder and CEO of Profitdrive.

Profitdrive is designed to give leaders a connected forward view across pipeline, projects, people and P&L, with actuals beside it. It can inform decisions about pricing, capacity and delivery. The choices themselves, and the incentives and accountabilities around them, remain leadership responsibilities.

Download The Connected Services Firm.