Sprint scenario

Professional services firms are under growing pressure to deliver more value without simply adding more people. Clients expect greater speed and clearer outcomes, while AI is changing both what can be delivered and how expertise can be packaged.

A mid-sized consultancy has built its reputation around highly tailored client engagements. The model has served the business well, but margins are tightening and growth remains closely tied to senior capacity. A tension is growing among the partners—is the model itself a threat to the firms future?

With the management team preparing its 2027 offer, the company is exploring whether part of its expertise could become a more repeatable, productized service—without losing the senior judgement and customization clients value.

Meet Sara

Sara is one of the fictional archetypes in the AI Business Council, representing a consultancy CEO navigating growth and transformation in professional services. Her challenge provides the starting point for this AIBC Lab sprint.

The challenge

Where could we productize our expertise—and still create enough client value to justify the change?

Find the opportunity

Where is there room to productize?

We start with the firm's existing offer, client relationships and commercial model. Internal knowledge is combined with AI-powered market intelligence to explore changing buyer expectations, competitor offers, pricing models and emerging patterns in how professional expertise is being packaged and delivered.

Rather than treating productization as an all-or-nothing shift, we break the current offer into the problems clients buy the firm to solve. Some depend heavily on individual judgement and bespoke delivery. Others show greater potential for repeatable methods, clearer outcomes and a more consistent client experience.

Several possibilities emerge. But one pattern stands out.

Across different assignments, clients are increasingly asking for help understanding their readiness for evolving sustainability requirements—particularly what they already have in place, where important gaps remain and what deserves attention next.

The expertise exists across the firm, but it is fragmented between specialists, methodologies and previous assignments. Today, accessing it usually means commissioning a bespoke engagement.

That creates an interesting opportunity: Could this expertise become a more accessible, repeatable first step for clients?

Bring the service to life

What could a more productized service look like?

We make the idea tangible without trying to design the complete service. A short Sustainability Readiness Review becomes the proposition we take forward.

The emerging concept is a focused, two-week review that could give a client an initial picture of its sustainability readiness: where it stands today, where important gaps may exist and which areas warrant deeper attention.

We explore the proposition from different client perspectives, clarify the problem it would solve and consider how the firm's existing expertise, frameworks and experience could be brought together behind it.

Different versions of the proposition are simulated and refined. The objective isn't to finalize every element of the service, but to establish whether there is a credible productization opportunity worth developing further.

By the end of the exercise, something previously distributed across bespoke assignments has started to take the shape of a repeatable proposition.

Build the case to move

Is there enough potential to take it further?

We bring the concept back to the firm's broader ambition.

Would clients understand the value of a clearly defined first step? Could it open conversations that might otherwise require a larger initial commitment? Could the firm deliver it more consistently by combining senior expertise, established methodology and AI-powered analysis?

The Sprint identifies the assumptions that still need validating and what would be required to develop the concept further.

More importantly, the exercise provides a tangible example of what productizing expertise could mean for the firm's wider business model.

The question shifts from whether professional expertise can be productized to which expertise should be productized next.

Potential sprint outcome

Productization Opportunity
One area of existing expertise identified as having potential for a more repeatable offer.

Service Concept
An initial proposition demonstrating how that expertise could be packaged around a specific client need.

New Title

Decision Case
A recommendation on whether the opportunity supports further development and which assumptions should be validated next.

More sprint challenges