The client
The work was there to be won, and what held the firm back was finding the people to deliver it, with business development resting on one person and senior people spending too much of their week on admin.
The challenge
Recruitment was the biggest headache, with around 30 people a year hired through agencies at contingent fees of 15 to 25% of first-year salary, which for senior roles adds up to a six-figure bill every year.
Business development ran almost entirely through one person's network, and customer data lived across scattered spreadsheets with no CRM.
The starting point
Overall 4 / 10 · Exploring tier
Five initiatives, in the right order
I ran the AI Readiness Diagnostic, scored the business across six dimensions and checked the findings against what's happening in the wider market. That produced five initiatives in a set order, each one tied to a problem the client had raised and a projected return.
AI talent intelligence tools to build a bench of pre-qualified contractors the firm can call on, so fewer roles go through agencies. It comes first because it tackles the biggest pain point and carries the largest projected saving.
HubSpot as the one place every client relationship and conversation lives, with its built-in AI, Breeze, filling in contact details and prompting follow-ups.
A LinkedIn programme producing three quality posts a week that don't read like AI wrote them, tied to the existing marketing workload rather than adding to it.
AI-powered prospect research, personalised pre-event outreach and structured follow-up, layered on top of the industry events the team already attends.
Microsoft Copilot properly rolled out across project management, commercial and operations, getting value from licences the firm already pays for.
"The report gave us the sequencing we were missing. It read like someone who actually understood our business, not a generic AI pitch."
Every figure in the plan came from a number the client gave us or a conservative industry benchmark, so the projected savings are a range the leadership team can test against their own results as each step goes in.
Where things are now
Over the summer the project lost momentum, with people away on holiday and the work slipping down everyone's list, and it's proved quite difficult to keep the client's focus through that quiet spell.
The talent intelligence tool, the first of the five steps, is only now being put in place, so there are no results yet and every figure on this page is still a projection. I'll update it as the results come in.