Intake consumes senior time
The partner qualifies every enquiry personally because nobody else can judge fit. Most of those conversations were never going to convert, and the hour is gone either way.
Professional Services
Grow the firm without billing every hour yourself.
Revenue is tied to billable hours, so every hour spent on admin is taken directly from capacity. The constraint is rarely demand — it is that the people who can do the work are the same people doing intake, scoping and chasing invoices.
The customer lifecycle
Every stage, including the ones that fail.
This is the path a customer actually takes in your sector. We’ve marked the stages where the business most often loses them — and it is rarely the marketing.
- Referral or searchDemand
- EnquiryDemand
- Conflict checkOperations
- Intake & scopingOperationsUsually breaks here
- ProposalOperationsUsually breaks here
- Engagement letterSystems
- Matter deliverySystems
- Time captureOperationsUsually breaks here
- InvoicingOperations
- CollectionOperationsUsually breaks here
4 of 10 stages are where this sector most often loses the customer.
Where it breaks
What that costs, specifically.
Proposals are rebuilt from scratch
Each one is assembled by hand from an old document. The work is nearly identical every time, which is exactly what makes it automatable.
Time recorded from memory on Friday
Hours reconstructed days later are always understated. This is revenue that was genuinely earned and simply never captured.
Invoices chased inconsistently
Collection depends on someone remembering. Firms routinely carry receivables that a scheduled sequence would have cleared weeks earlier.
What we measure
The numbers this work answers to.
Agreed before we start, reported throughout. No vanity metrics.
- Realisation rate — billed against recorded
- Enquiry-to-engagement conversion
- Proposal turnaround time
- Days sales outstanding
What we typically build
For professional services.
Let’s talk about your professional services business.
30 minutes, no pitch. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you that too.