Utilisation is up.
Margin is flat.
Professional services firms at scale face a consistent paradox: more work, more headcount, no margin improvement. The cause is structural, not commercial.
We work with law firms, accounting practices, engineering consultancies, and management advisory firms. The operational failures compound differently in professional services — through utilisation inefficiency, billing leakage, delivery inconsistency, and knowledge management gaps. These are recoverable. We find the specific ones in your firm in 45 minutes.
33%
Of NL firms now use AI
EU average near 20%. Eurostat, 2025.
2×
Deploy rate with a partner
External vs internal builds. MIT, 2025.
95%
Of AI pilots miss the P&L
Integration, not the model. MIT, 2025.
Where the money goes.
- 01
Utilisation rates that look healthy in aggregate but conceal major variances by team, client, and project type — the profitable work subsidises the unprofitable work.
- 02
Billing realisation below 85% — hours worked but not billed, bills written down after delivery, and scope creep absorbed without change orders.
- 03
Delivery inconsistency across partners or practice groups — the same engagement type producing radically different margin outcomes depending on who leads it.
- 04
Knowledge management failures that result in rework — the same research, the same analysis, the same frameworks rebuilt from scratch on each new engagement.
- 05
Business development time allocated to existing clients that should be captured as billable service — and vice versa, leading to both revenue and relationship losses.
45 minutes. Free. No pitch.
Book the Operations Architecture Diagnostic. You leave with a ranked map of your operational leaks — regardless of what you decide next.