Professional Services
From standardizing project setup and management processes, to automating client billing and collections for increased cash flow, The Lab knows exactly where to find your most valuable standardization, automation, analytics, and AI improvements.
Professional Services: The Lab's Knowledge Base
We Know Your Firm's Processes—And the Most Valuable Improvements
Over the past three decades, our professional services clients have ranged from oil field services companies to AEC firms, and even outsourced HR organizations. These engagement insights have been meticulously organized into taxonomies, forming our project accelerating intellectual property assets. We harness these assets to drive rapid business transformation for our clients’ organizations.
Featured Case Study
Read Real-Life Professional Services Client-Success Stories
CEO Increases Cash Flow & Billable Hours with Standardization, Automation
The Lab helped this CEO of an AEC firm automate project setup and client invoicing to reduce past-due invoices by 30% and add 10% more billable hours.
Improvements and Benefits Are Highly Predictable—and Guaranteed
Benefits for Professional Services—The Lab's "Big Rocks"™
Hit More/Miss Less
Grow Sales
• Cross/up-sell existing customers
• Standardize proposal design and pricing
• Acquire new customers
New Sales Opps: 5% to 15%
Waste Less
Improve Productivity
• Decrease errors and related rework
• Automate value-added activities
• Reduce individual performance variance
Cost Savings: 20% to 35%
Keep More
Preserve Margin
• Increase revenue capture, reduce overservice
• Expand solution, or consultative, selling
• Realize more billable hours
Margin Savings: 5% to 15%
Professional Services: Catalogs from The Lab's Library
Preview The Lab's Professional Services Knowledge Base
Hear What The Lab's Professional Services Clients Say
“Our competitors can do this work 20% faster and cheaper—we needed automation and AI to keep up. The Lab came through for us, big time.
“The Lab helped us understand our business processes and how to improve them. They had it down to a science. It would have taken us years.
“Working with The Lab couldn't have been easier. They walked us through every step of setting up an effective, sustainable automation program.
Process Mapping Services for Professional Services
Understand Your Major Business Processes and How to Improve Them
The Lab combines our standardized process mapping experience with an industry-leading process improvement team. We swiftly document your end-to-end business processes from marketing to project management and execution to billing and collections, to client reporting—and many more. Count on us to map your business—wall-to-wall—in less than 8 weeks.
Intelligent Automation & AI Implementation Services for Professional Services
Identify and Deploy the Most Valuable Automations
Quickly find the most valuable candidates and accelerate automation with The Lab’s inventory of AI-enabled professional services bots. Lean on us to create entirely custom “humanly impossible” processes or engage us to help your organization pick from our shopping lists of previously implemented similar clients.
Professional Services Firms: Intelligent automation and advanced analytics "3-Packs"
Reduce DSO and Improve Cashflow
Executives at professional-services, AEC, E&C, and C&E firms know that their strategic- objectives include improving operational efficiency, increasing sales, and perhaps most pressing of all: reducing “days sales outstanding” (DSO) on open invoices across the entire client and project base to improve cashflow.
This real-life implementation “Three-Pack” example takes a coordinated approach to reducing DSO with cost-effective modern automation tools. It features intelligent robotic process automation (RPA) and two business-analytics dashboards that all work together to help professional-services firms reduce DSO by 10 days and past-due invoices 25%.
Best-Practice Future State Process
Define the Ideal Future State for Your Firm
The Lab helps clients answer the question “what should this process look like?”. Our professional services best practice future state process models are a composite of improvements—automation, AI, analytics, and process standardization—compiled over hundreds of implementation engagements. Rapidly compare current operations against these “gold standard” industry workflows to identify gaps and design your ideal future state.
Advanced Analytics
Monitor, Manage, and Improve Performance
Create a "single source of truth" for managing performance by selecting standard KPIs and connecting your existing data sources to The Lab's standard data models.
Executive Super KPI™ Dashboard
Summarizes the vital few KPIs—usually ~20—you need to manage your firm. A single, fully automated dashboard for executive-level measurement across your entire client portfolio.
Timesheet Review Dashboard
Find—and fix—staff timesheet errors, before these appear on client invoices. This automated dashboard identifies and queues up staff timesheet anomalies to get accurate invoices out faster and reduce project administrative work.
Measure What Matters
Select the KPIs—and Super KPIs™—for Your Professional Services Firm
The Lab’s inventory of key performance indicators (KPIs) takes the guesswork out of performance measurement. We maintain a database of over 250 standard KPIs for professional services firms. That’s a lot of KPIs (too many)! Fortunately, there’s a silver lining. There are actually a limited number of “Super KPIs” which comprise the vital few for your business.
