Services as Software

Recent launches of Deep Research products by OpenAI and Google Gemini manifest a new trend gathering momentum – professional services delivered as services.

Market research is a $90B industry in the United States. The list of professional services offered by market research agencies includes market segmentation analysis, competitive analysis, trend analysis, brand research, and others. A competitive analysis project, for instance, can take a few weeks to complete and costs in the range of $15-20K.

Deep Research can perform a similar analysis in 10-15 minutes as part of a $200/month subscription. The quality of its output will likely be lower, but the price/performance ratio may still be rather attractive.

Market research is just one example. Many other areas of professional services may be similarly affected by the emergence of intelligent agents:

• Financial advice
• Accounting
• Legal advice
• Human resources and recruitment
• Management consulting
• Sustainability consulting
• And many others

The size of the market impacted by this transformation is estimated at $1.5 trillion.

What should a professional services firm do in anticipation of this change?

My advice is two-pronged:

1. Identify the firm’s unique value proposition
2. Deliver some or all of this value in the form of AI agents

Most firms already differentiate in their competitive markets with proprietary brands, methodologies, frameworks, data sources, tools, specialized expertise, and other capabilities.

Many of these capabilities can be codified as AI agents.

By packaging the firm’s unique value as AI agents, the firm can reap numerous benefits:

1. Expand the addressable market by providing services to new customer segments.
2. Expand the footprint at existing customer accounts by providing more services as software.
3. Create new recurring revenue streams by offering services as software products.  

Achieving this is much easier said than done, of course. It requires strategic planning, talent development, product development, and change management.

On the bright side, companies that can navigate this transition will undoubtedly create numerous growth opportunities. Now is the time for smaller and more agile firms to grab market share from their larger, slower-moving competitors.

Are you ready to transform your professional services? Let’s discuss how AI can make your business more agile and competitive. Contact us to schedule a free consultation.