The Professional Services Pursuit

AI is forcing consulting firms to rethink what clients are really paying for. In this conversation, originally recorded for The Leaders in Consulting Podcast, Olly Purnell, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Q5, joins Kantata’s Sarah Edwards to explore how AI is reshaping the traditional consulting model, why specialist expertise is becoming more valuable, and how services firms need to evolve across talent, pricing, delivery, and growth.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why AI is disrupting the traditional consulting model
• The shift from generalist consulting to specialist expertise
• How delivery is moving toward shorter, higher-value engagements
• Why the future workforce needs both human judgment and AI fluency
• How pricing, culture, and growth strategies need to evolve

To learn more about Leaders in Consulting, the exclusive hub for like-minded consultancy leaders visit their website: https://www.leadersinconsulting.com/

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What gets a professional services firm to $30 million won’t necessarily get it to the next stage of growth. In this special compilation episode, we revisit the best of four podcast conversations exploring what separates firms that successfully scale from those that stall. 

Featuring insights from industry leaders Tom Rodenhauser, Ramone Param, and Alex Klein, we challenge conventional wisdom around pricing, profitability, client relationships, talent, and operations — and explore what needs to change as a firm grows. 

Key topics include: 

• Price for value: Align pricing with the outcomes clients value most 
• Grow profitably: Avoid top line growth that masks margin erosion 
• Build beyond relationships: Turn client trust into a scalable growth strategy 
• Scale expertise: Build organizational capability beyond individual star performers 
• Make operations an advantage: Strengthen the systems, discipline, and governance needed to scale 

Scaling isn’t just about winning more business or hiring more people. It’s about building a firm that can consistently deliver its best work — profitably and at scale.

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AI adoption is accelerating across professional services — but for many firms, the promised gains in growth, margins, and predictability have yet to materialize. In this episode of Pursuit Power Half Hour, Brent sits down with Dave Valliere, Founder and CEO of Form & Function Consulting, to explore what separates firms simply experimenting with AI from those positioned to turn it into a true competitive advantage.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why AI productivity gains aren’t translating into business performance
• What separates “AI-enabled” from “AI-ready” firms
• How AI can capture and scale your firm’s most valuable expertise
• Where services leaders should focus over the next 90 days
• How to measure AI by outcomes that actually matter

To learn more about Form & Function Consulting visit: https://www.form-function.co/

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For years, AI conversations have centered on efficiency and automation, but what if that's asking the wrong question? In this episode, Banoo and AI strategist Jamie Bykov-Brett explore why the future of professional services won't be defined by replacing people, but by amplifying their expertise. From human-centric leadership to the rise of AI-human "centaur teams," this conversation challenges leaders to rethink how they prepare their organizations for the expertise era.

• Why expertise, not efficiency is becoming the ultimate competitive advantage
• The three roles AI can play in an organization
• The essential skills every organization needs to develop 
• Why AI strategies fail without people strategies
• What professional services firms must do to thrive in the expertise era

Learn more about Bykov-Brett Enterprises and the services they provide.

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In this episode of The Professional Services Pursuit, Kantata presents a special TSIA session exploring what outcome-based pricing really means and why most professional services firms misunderstand it. Peter Fitzpatrick, VP of Value Engineering at Kantata, and Bo DiMuccio, Distinguished VP of Professional Services Research at TSIA, explain the difference between outcome-aligned and fully contingent pricing, why hybrid base-fee and performance models are gaining traction, and what firms must change operationally before putting revenue at risk.

• Why outcome-aligned pricing is different from true outcome-based pricing
• Why hybrid pricing models are emerging as the most practical option for professional services firms
• How attribution, telemetry, cash flow, and client readiness can determine whether a model succeeds
• Why firms should standardize and productize delivery before pricing measurable outcomes
• Real-world examples, and a clear roadmap for navigating the transition.

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In this episode, Brent sits down with Tom Rodenhauser, Managing Partner at K2 Consulting Research, to discuss why AI is forcing consulting firms to rethink the way they create value.

For decades, consulting firms have been paid for outputs — deliverables, implementations, and billable hours — with the assumption those outputs would drive meaningful business outcomes. But, that assumption is starting to break. Demand is still there. Clients are still buying. The model is holding, for now. But beneath the surface, AI is rapidly reshaping the economics of consulting. Firms that continue selling effort instead of impact risk competing on speed and price, while the firms that embrace measurable outcomes will define the next era of consulting.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why AI is disrupting far more than productivity
• The critical difference between outputs (deliverables) and outcomes (business results)
• Why outcome-based pricing remains difficult to implement, despite years of industry discussion.
• How consulting firms need to rethink utilization, compensation, client relationships, and commercial models for the AI era.
• Tom's predictions for the future of consulting

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In this episode of The Professional Services Pursuit, Brent sits down with Kantata CEO Michael Speranza and Chief Product Strategy Officer Sarah Edwards to explore a growing challenge facing professional services firms: AI sprawl.

Michael and Sarah discuss why professional services require a different approach to AI — one built around business context, connected operations, and institutional knowledge. They share their perspective on how firms can move beyond isolated automation to intelligence-driven operations, and how those ideas shaped the development of Kantata's newly launched Expertise Agent capabilities.

• Why the explosion of AI tools and role-specific agents is creating more complexity, silos, and noise for professional services firms
• The critical role of business context in AI, and why better decisions require a connected view across sales, resourcing, delivery, and financials
• The launch of Kantata's Expertise Agent and why the company chose to build a context-aware AI superagent instead of workflow-specific agents
• How leading firms can capture institutional knowledge, learn from every project, and turn expertise into a scalable competitive advantage
• What will separate the highest-performing professional services organizations in the emerging "Expertise Era"

To learn more about Kantata’s new AI capabilities, click here.

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In this episode, we explore how professional services organizations can reduce project unpredictability by closing the gap between scoping, pricing, and delivery. Banoo sits down with Anish Udayakumar, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Customer Experience at Provus, for a thoughtful conversation on why projects that start with strong plans and healthy margins often end up facing scope creep, resource constraints, margin erosion, and delivery risk.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

• Why margin erosion often goes unnoticed until late in the project lifecycle
• How disconnected sales, delivery, operations, and finance workflows create unpredictable outcomes
• Why resource availability, skill alignment, and capacity planning should be incorporated earlier in the quoting process
• How unified data, AI, and historical project insights can improve scoping accuracy, pricing confidence, and delivery predictability

Learn more about Provus at https://provus.ai/

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In this episode, Brent sits down with Sarah Edwards, Kantata’s Chief Product Strategy Officer, for a practical look at why consulting firms can no longer rely on headcount-driven growth — and how AI is reshaping the traditional talent pyramid.

Together, they break down the three critical shifts redefining consulting — and what leaders need to prioritize now to activate smarter resourcing, pricing, and delivery models.

Other topics covered in this episode include: 

• Why rising client expectations are putting pressure on delivery speed, cost, risk, and team capacity
• How AI is changing consulting talent models, including the shift away from the traditional pyramid structure
• Why outcome-based pricing, fixed-fee models, and productized services are becoming more important
• How connected data, trusted systems, and better operational visibility help firms make faster, more confident decisions

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In this episode we share a conversation from a recent Leaders in Consulting podcast, where Kantata’s Chief Product Strategy Officer, Sarah Edwards, sits down with James Cawthorne, CEO of FOIL. At the center of the discussion is a shift every services leader is starting to feel: clients no longer want dependency — they want independence. James makes the case for “autonomic consulting” — a model focused on embedding capability directly into the client’s business. Instead of delivering answers, firms must build systems that encode knowledge, drive consistency, and enable better decisions at scale.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why competing on productivity in the age of AI leads to diminishing returns
• What “system intelligence” actually means, and why it matters more than standalone AI tools
• How client expectations are shifting from support to true capability-building
• Why dependency-based models are becoming structurally unstable
• What it takes to stay relevant when value, not effort, becomes the primary differentiator

If you’re rethinking how your firm delivers value, and how to create more predictable, scalable outcomes for clients this conversation is a must-listen.

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