Name: Artificially Intelligent. Actually Effective: 2025 in Review for Professional Services
Uploaded: 2026-03-14T07:06:06.759Z
Duration: 1 h 8 s
Description: Artificially Intelligent. Actually Effective: 2025 in Review for Professional Services

Transcript for "Artificially Intelligent. Actually Effective: 2025 in Review for Professional Services": Intelligence or actually effective 2025 in review for professional services. I'm Julie Beddahl from Deltek. And before we get started, we have a few quick housekeeping notes to ensure you have the best experience today. For the best viewing experience, please use Google Chrome or Firefox. Audio will stream through your computer, so make sure your volume is turned up. There is no dial in option. If you have a question, type it into the q and a box anytime during the presentation. We'll address as many questions at the end as possible, and any unanswered questions will be followed directly individually offline after the webinar. Resources including today's presentation slides are available in the resources widget at the top right of your screen. All widgets can be resized to fit your computer screen. You will also receive the on demand recording within twenty four hours after the webinar ends. And now, I would like to introduce today's moderator, Justin Britt, marketing director at Deltek. Justin, take it away. Hey, thank you very much, Julie. I appreciate it. Welcome everybody. My name is Justin. I've been in the professional services arena for twenty plus years now. Versus the owner of the small design firm and then working for a larger professional services organization. And now finally as marketing director focused on the professional services market. So we've got a really exciting agenda for you guys today. We've lined up a panel of top professional services leaders and experts who will share the successes and the challenges that they faced in this last year, as well as touch on some of the top opportunities that they see for professional services. So think about I love Spotify, so think about this as like Spotify Unwrapped, but for the professional services, or for professional services leaders. So, hey, when I introduce you, if you remember, go ahead, let me know your Spotify agent and your genre. Mine was folk pop and I think I was had like ninety nine thousand minutes listen or something crazy like that. But anyway, on to the next slide, I want to get this thing kicked off. So today we're gonna chat with those panelists that I mentioned, again, they're gonna introduce themselves, as they come up. We didn't wanna take your time and have 15 people introduce themselves. And we're going to talk about the lessons they learned in 2025, the technology and processes that have helped them advance the impact of, AI in the industry, and they're going to talk about the different insights and opportunities that they all see for 2026. We're all in this together and they're going to talk through challenges they faced and their lessons learned. So let's move on to the next slide. Our first agenda is the lessons learned for 2026. But first I want to hear from some of our audience about what's the biggest challenge that your firm has faced last year? And so I'm going to open up this poll right now. You've got four different choices up here. Number one is hiring and retaining talent. Number two is project delays. Number three or C is uncertainty and forecasting. And four is competition has increased. And then you've got scaling services to meet clients, increased pressure on revenue models and pricing structure. G is budgets have decreased. And then H is having a remote or hybrid workforce. So you can scroll down if you can't, in case you guys can't tell there. We're gonna take a second and give you guys a second to answer. So, Dave, I got you on my screen here. Do have any guesses as to, your firm surveys professional services organizations throughout the year, Any insight or guesses as to what we're going to see as the answer here? Part of it is uncertainty and forecasting. It's been a difficult year. We're finding out from surveying increased pressure on revenue models and pricing structures is another area that I see firms having a lot of problems with. But I could have checked all the boxes. So these are some very important points and I'm sure a lot of firms are having some challenges with them. Yeah, absolutely. Looks like we got more than half of answers, so I'm gonna move it forward and, let's see what, let's see what our responses are. So it looks like for the biggest challenges that our firm faced last year, we've got uncertainty in forecasting. Guess, you know, I don't think that's a surprise for any of us. Everyone's going through quite a lot of uncertainty in the market and really in the world right now. You've got increased pressure on revenue models and pricing structure along with decreasing budgets. So lots of pressure on professional services firms to optimize because they're, know, on their, with their pricing structures and at the same time there's decreased budget across the industry. Any other any surprises there, Dave? No, no, this is about what I would have thought. Again, I would have expected all of them to be answered because I know that these are the areas that are impacting a lot of professional services organizations we survey every year. This is spot on. All right, well, take let's it forward because I want to get into some of the lessons learned in 2025. So, you know, 2025 has brought its own set of challenges for professional services. We've seen them, you know, navigate these shifting client expectations we saw in that last slide, along with that economic uncertainty and pressure from clients to maintain performance while adapting to all of this. And so one of our panelists on here, she summed it up perfectly. She said, Sustaining clarity and performance amid constant change is one of the most important things that she's learned in 2025. She's learning to ensure our teams are staying energized so we can help clients do the same. So Tissa, I think you summed up what a lot of professional services leaders are feeling right now. And we'll hear from Tissa a little bit later on. But now I wanted to focus on some of the other lessons learned in 2025. And so we asked our panelists what has been the biggest challenge for the professional services industry in 2025 and how have you dealt with it? And so I'm going to have both Andy and Scott introduce themselves and take us through their thoughts on this particular questions. And so Andy, since you're first on the screen there to the left, why don't we start with you? Thanks Justin and thank you everybody for joining us today. I'm really happy to speak with you. My name is Andy Jordan. I run a company called Ruffensin Consulting. We're approaching twenty years old now that we've been doing this, hence why I have no hair. And we focus on helping organizations to do strategic planning, delivery, portfolio management, portfolio management offices, that kind of stuff. I think the polling question sort of said it, Justin, that uncertainty has been a big thing this year. We're based in Canada and most of our clients are in The US and that brings another level of uncertainty. But we've been very good at putting our plans together and being absolutely certain that those plans were definitely correct. And then three weeks later finding that they were completely incorrect because the world changed again and customers were dealing with a few other issues that has created real cost and revenue uncertainty for us and of course, currency exposure there as well with the difference across the borders. So we've really sort of been trying to work on how we can diversify, how we can mitigate some of that risk and uncertainty that we've got. We also do quite a bit of thought leadership. So we're dealing with some new challenges from AI that thinks it can do our job better than us a lot of the time. We've been really trying to focus on finding new ways to delight and support our clients. That's really been the key lesson for us this year. Yeah, of course, always important that we got to keep those clients satisfied and they're when the rubber meets the road and people are everything. So, thank you for that, Andy. Scott, you, you had some thoughts on this as well. Why don't you introduce yourself and, love to hear some of your lessons learned for twenty twenty five. Can you hear me? I can hear you. You can hear me. Okay. Great. I think I just had to set a change of setting. My name is Scott Montgomery. I'm the chief customer officer of Worldgate. What Worldgate does is we implement and integrate staffing, and systems integration work for school districts. We're primarily on the East Coast Of The United States. I run-in, the operations, and my wife, runs the back office HR and finance. I'm also an author, and I'm also a certified leadership coach, developing folks from management into leadership in various places, around the country. I love this question because we have seen a lot of shifts over the twenty five years that I've been doing this work. And the first one of tightening budgets is absolutely the volatility of the marketplace that that's shifting. And the clients aren't really sure where the money's coming from, and they're not really sure what the budget looks like, and their demand for the work is getting stronger. And we're trying to manage the fluctuation of tightening budgets, you know, workforce volatility while managing their increased expectations. So it's been an interesting run-in '25, and one of the ways that our firm has decided to take this and fix it or as you, you know, match the the duty is we've we've doubled down on partnering with certain clients that allow us to be a a united workforce, certain vendors rather for our clients. So we partner with UKG and we partner with other firms to kind of come in and deliver solutions in a one easy way to implement. And the other thing we did internally is we we decided to get a system that allows us to operate both projects and sales forces all in one system. Therefore, my teams are sort of being able to utilize how a project's going and what the next sales cycle will be to really be efficient for when we're talking to our customers about growth and and continued growth within their organizations. It's been an interesting year, but there's a lot of good things coming with AI. Really appreciate being included on this panel with these smart, lovely people. And I hope that, we can provide some value for today's discussion. Yeah, as firms are getting squeezed from clients, finding ways to become more efficient is super important and that's a theme that we heard from all of our professional services leaders really across the board and the ones that we asked this question to those of you on the panel here and the ones that we work with, every day. So figuring out ways to become more efficient because those project margins are tight, seems to be top of mind for everybody. Finding like repeatable frameworks and methodologies to make things seamless. Another very, very common theme that we've heard from you and from others. Partnering with your client is so key in this time because of that volatility and because things shift or they're expected to shift, but then they don't shift, to Andy's point, or they shifted in three weeks. Just being more available to your client using systems that streamline conversations is really critical. So I think that's really the big topic, yeah. Awesome. Any other, comments from some of the other thought leaders on the, call here, particularly when it comes to lessons learned in 2025? Alright. Well, feel free to chime in and stop me if you have anything to add, but no worries. If not, we're going to move on to our next question because again, we've got quite a few things that we want to cover for the call here. So, let's move on to our next slide and we can also introduce some additional speakers here. So, now I want to talk shift over to tools and processes that have helped professional services firms advance in 2025. So, this year many firms focused on leveraging technology and refining workflows to drive that growth and efficiency that we talked about. Everybody needs to be more productive in 2025 and beyond. And, you know, Scott, you captured this, I think really, really well. And when you talked about implementing unified CMS and workflow platform to centralize visibility, streamline collaboration and automate tasks, it resulted in a faster turnaround, fewer handoffs and stronger accountability. So, you know, kind of perfect flow into what we were talking about into what we want to transition to right now on the tools and processes. So, let me bring in a couple of new speakers into the fold here. So let's go over to Tissa. Tissa, you're on the left. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about the tools and processes that helped your organization and some of the ones that you worked with Advance in 2025. Thanks, Justin. Yeah. Hi, I'm Tissa Richards. I am a software founder. I founded a cybersecurity company and now run a consulting firm and have released my second book, which is called Rethinking Resilience. And so really what I help a lot of companies and leadership teams navigate is the uncertainty and disruption. And I think that what we've definitely seen is more firms turning to things like automation and AI, obviously, to improve things like efficiency and productivity. Definitely, while tools can streamline workflows, I think we can all agree that they can't replace things like clarity, focus, or in particular, where I see the biggest thing is they can't reduce the burnout. And that's where I see what we need is to reduce the greatest areas of friction, right, and unlock the most productivity as on the people side. So I think the real gains in terms of tools or processes is how are we managing the human energy? And I don't mean this in a squishy or soft way, but the most effective processes I've seen is in the human process versus the technology processes. So we can put in things like enterprise versions of ChatGPT. We can really get very, very, slick and, efficient in our processes, But we really have to manage the burnout that comes with constant disruption, constant uncertainty, the fact that what happens this week can be completely turned upside down by what's happening at a global or geopolitical level. So I've been doing things like circle of control workshops with leadership teams. And so we can really need to help teams understand and identify what can we control, what can we influence, and what is noise, because we have so much noise. And so putting in sort of human level frameworks, it becomes a catalyst for just better decision making, clearer boundaries. And I think most importantly, how can we sustain energy? So when I think we're directing time and energy and attention intentionally, we can then be supported by smart technologies rather than overwhelmed by it, because that's what I'm seeing is actually an overwhelm by all of the all of the technology, all of the options. And that actually, I think, helps us be more productive and have more growth come from it. Then no one's overwhelmed. Our resilience is higher. Everyone is more engaged and everyone is more productive. So that's really where I'm seeing the trend go. And actually, the ROI is much higher when you look at the human element as well. Yeah, that's awesome, well said. And for professional services, people are everything, right? We all know that, you guys understand that. So making sure your people are in the right places at the right time and they're happy and not burned out is, you know, top of mind for a lot of the leaders that we talk to, including just, Jason, love to get your feedback on this as well. Yeah, no, thanks Justin. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Jason, I own a marketing consulting business, Torrell Valiback, we do advisory work and thought leadership development. And I liked that Tissa used the word noise. And actually, I was thinking as she was talking, was laughing before this session, started, the panel came together and we were talking about, you know, just putting do not disturb on so you don't get distractions. And I think it's funny. I think there's just so many firms that it's like, there's the urgency of the now, it's the Slack messages, it's the team's messages, it's all this stuff that's flowing at you all the time. That's sort of getting in the way of actually getting stuff done. And, what we've done and what I've seen our clients do is try to just do less. So it's like, rather than adopting new tools, it's like let's streamline and throw stuff away. That's really not proving to be valuable and focus our energy on a handful of systems or tools that we're really going to rely on, whether it's, you know, let's get deeper into Monday for project management at Radeleback so that we can use that tool better than we've used it in the past, or we're going to use teams or we're going to use Slack, but we're going to learn how to use it better so that we're not wearing people out and giving too much noise in the system. The other thing on a more tactical level, what we've been doing, and we've been seeing our clients do a lot of too, is just look to like standardize lower level tasks and process across clients as much as we possibly can so that we can use AI to automate some of that task management or activity management or just the burdensome stuff that takes you away from being human. It says you can't do the things you want to do with a human because you're burdened with these kind of lower level tasks that aren't that valuable. And the reason that those tasks exist is because they're kind of bespoke for every client. And so the more you can kind of standardize that, I think the So we've spent a lot of time and energy doing that this year and we've seen our clients do a lot of the same too, looking for ways to standardize. That's something very common that we've heard with most of the professional services leaders that we talked to is the importance of standardizing and simplification. So we can have for efficiency and then repeatable processes. So you're not alone in that, Jason. Any other, the thought leaders that we have on here want to chime in on, you know, tools and processes that you guys, implemented, either tools or processes that you implemented in 2026? I'd just like to put a bow on what Tessa and Jason just said and the idea that you buy these systems and you can maximize them. And I think we haven't all been doing that in the past until the scare of budget and until the need to be tighter has sort of surfaced this year. And I think it frees up to match what Tissa was saying about our workshops and what Jason's saying about our staff. If we can automate those things, it frees up the human connection, and that really simmers and creates productivity and moves it forward. So I just feel the need to kind of reiterate that and and put a bow around it because that's exactly what we're doing here too at Worldgate. And I know Dell Tech has great products for that as well. Well, what a segment Scott. No, we do. Thank you. Appreciate that. Know we do. We've done a lot of work to embed AI in all of our tools and products. And, you know, one example is in like our time tracking solution. We use AI to capture time from the tools that your team is already using like Outlook or Teams or Zoom. And so the result is, you know, less time on them figuring out, entering those things manually. And, you know, just it's done automatically and then more accurate time sheets. So you really understand where your people are spending their time and it's done right because it's pulled automatically. That's just one small example, but let's move on to our next question. Again, got a few more people I want to introduce. So let's move on to the impact of AI on the professional services industry. Perfect segment as we were talking about it. So, AI, so Jason, he had a great quote for us and we wanted to call that out here. AI is both a disruptor and a catalyst, replacing routine tasks and reshaping client buying behavior while unlocking a $12,000,000,000 market for firms to lead in data strategy, platform integration, and cultural adoption. So I don't think any conversation about what worked and things to look forward to in 2026 for professional services would be complete without talking a little bit about AI. So we're going to do that right here. We're going to talk about the impact of AI on the professional services industry. So I'm going to have Dave answer this first question. Dave, how do you see AI powered platforms and solutions impacting the professional services industry in 2026 and beyond? And how, if at all, have you used it? Sure. Thank you. My name is Dave Hofferberth. I'm the founder and managing director of Service Performance Insight. I've been a technology analyst a little over twenty eight years, and I founded SPI about twenty years ago. Next month, I believe it will be twenty years. So many of you might have heard of because we do an annual benchmark of professional services firms. We're just about to complete surveying for the nineteenth annual benchmark. So you can see it's been a few times. And we're known for the survey based research with the goal of helping to accelerate productivity and profitability in organizations like all of yours out there. We just published an impact of AI and professional services report last month. We've done work on productization of services. So we draw a lot from the user community in terms of how they're doing things because it helps everybody. And so we try to show the impact of these tools, not just to say you're more efficient, but to really quantify the value because we know that executives want to know, is it worth my investment dollar to buy something? AI, I mean, I wanted to comment on the first two questions, but I thought it's just going to go back to AI for me. I mean, again, we just completed this study, a second annual study on this. And I took an AI class thirty five years ago. Nobody knew AI. Nobody cared about AI. But about two or three years ago, all of a sudden we started hearing about OpenAI, ChatGPT, and things like that. And so then the hype cycle started. Well, firms like Deltek had been embedding AI in their solutions for years now, but nobody heard of it. And so we got to this period where AI became the height of the market. Well, finally, 2025, we've really started to see the value that AI is delivering just in professional services, not let alone to the potential of services to their clients. However, our most recent survey showed that 20% of consultants are fairly proficient in AI. Most of them aren't using it in their daily job, which I think that will change. But what we've seen is the impact of AI in professional services has grown significantly over the past couple of years. And I just want to quote another statistic or two. The revenue is set to triple next year, but the execution lags far behind. So we're still learning about AI. We're still I'm using AI. That's one of the questions. I'm using it. I'm fascinated with it. But the most important aspect of AI to me is I believe it's taking away the mundane work that all of us have to do. And this move towards agentic AI, which is really something fairly new, has created something where AI isn't answering questions. AI is doing your work for you. And that's what we like. We had all liked time to think, to collaborate, to communicate, to build without having to do those repetitive things that we do every week. And we all dread them. We all dread time and expense, but we know we have to do it. We all dread billing hours. We have to do it. So AI is changing how we work. And just as equally important, it's going to help us help our clients be more efficient and effective. So that's my 2¢. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's not just, it's great to hear that from you, Dave, and that's not just you talking, but that's in addition to you meeting with professional services leaders, you conduct such a large report with literally hundreds of leaders every year that you have probably some of the most impactful feedback that anyone could gather. That SPI report that you put together has a ton on AI and how firms use it. And it's great. I think you can speak to this as well as almost anybody. So thanks for that. I wanted to also hear from Scott again. Oh, by the way, I don't think I've heard anybody's Spotify age or other genre, but if you were too shy to do that, no worries. I don't know what Spotify is and I'm old and that's why you're getting. ITunes, iTunes, that's my life. Is it related to a tuner on a TV? I mean, what is Spotify? I don't know what this is. Okay. We'll cut that part out so people don't think less of you. But anyway, let's move on to the impact of AI on professional services. Scott, yeah, know you had a couple of things you wanted to say about us, I'll let you go. Well, think in answering the question, I think it's already been covered. I think actually what I would do, just throwing notes away and what Dave can I would confirm what Dave was saying from what I know? What's interesting for me being old is I'm still trying to figure out what AI really means and how it really works in the world in which I'm professional services and I'm human based, right? So we approved for our staff, We're working with our clients day to day. And one of the things that I I will say that we're using it for that I hear in commercials and when people talk about AI is we're using it for, like, searches, social media responses, you know, PowerPoints on our next vacation. You know, we're going into chat GPT and we're getting answers from it. We're calling that AI AI. And really, that's all I really know about it right now, truthfully. And I hear how it's embedded in systems and it streamlines and it's doing things back office, but my firm doesn't get that far into all of that. And so I just wanted to create a little vulnerability in the idea that I really don't know where AI would go for me other than how I'm using it. And I hear that's a very remedial way to tap into it, but it's changing our lives. It's making things super easy that way. So that's that's how I would take, you know, that that question and throw it back at you, Justin, and say, that's how we're doing it. Yeah. You know, Jason, I know you're on the front lines every day working with other professional services leaders and I'm sure they're talking to you a lot about how they're using AI. Do you have anything you want to, you know, bubble up here either as it results to agentic AI in particular or, AI in general? Yeah, I think, well, a couple of things. One is, you know, I kind of came into this early in the year, seeing it more as a disruptor and seeing all of the issues that AI was possibly reeking upon the sector, if you will. If all you ever did, if you didn't work in consulting or professional services and all you ever did was read the journal, you would think the sky is falling and that it's an existential crisis for every firm. You know, early in the year, did a webinar about this, talking about how AI is changing client buying behavior and how it's disrupting traditional means of client attraction. And in that webinar we did with you guys, I think we did a poll question and the poll question was, is AI a disruptor or a catalyst? And 90% of people in that session were optimistic about what AI do for their firm. And I've seen that same data point come up in other types of activities. So I think on the whole, AI is going to be a huge catalyst for the industry and the things that we're seeing, you know, to me, what I'm excited about isn't the efficiency gains. It's like, it's one thing to be like, oh, I got rid of a bunch of remedial tasks. Okay, great. But it's really when you start to create whole new ways of working whole new products, whole new services. And we're seeing some of that emerge. There's a really cool company called Bridgetown Research, you've never heard of them, that does, basically qualitative research at scale using voice enabled AI agents. So you think about as a researcher, when we're doing content development, if we're doing research and we do qualitative research, if we can reach 10 to 15 people and have a good conversation with them, that's great. Their platform can reach two fifty in the same amount of time, right? So you can get a whole new kind of data set that you never could really get, you know, before. So I just think we're barely scratching the surface of that kind of stuff from an AI perspective or even an agentic AI perspective as you start to see firms roll that in. And I think we can only, all we need to do is look at some of the big four firms and see what they're doing and, you know, not the big four, but the tier one consulting firms and some of the things they're doing around it. So, I think it's just a really exciting time. I think there's just a lot of things that firms could be doing that they've never been able to do before, because they didn't have the ability, just wasn't practical and now it is. So. Yeah, and one of the major concerns that we talk to a lot of leaders is on, we'll call it AI slop in the way it's affected the visibility of some of these firms, right? So everyone needs to try to hold themselves up as experts and it's becoming more and more difficult when anyone can be an expert much faster than before by using AI. So the effect of firms on visibility because of AI is a concern shared with us by a lot of other leaders. Yeah, it's definitely, I've likened this a lot where we're sitting right now to sort of, February when Google search starts to show up and people don't know how to market anymore. Marketing is going through a radical reinvention in that window. Marketing is going through the same radical reinvention right now and firms are just sort of figuring it out. And yes, the AI slop is a significant problem, right? And the playbooks are just now being figured out, which I think it's an exciting time because as you figure out what is going to work, you know, we went through the content era where, you know, marketing became a giant content engine and now I think we're in the AI era and it's different. You know, the way you market, the way you attract clients, way you build visibility, the way you build reputation, it's going to look different five years from now than it did five years ago. And it's exciting. It's fun. Both are little crazy. Absolutely. There's opportunities there. Absolutely. For sure. Well, I think we could spend a lot of time on AI, but I want to move on and talk about 2026 and the insights and opportunities for 2026, and that may include some AI. So we're hearing consistent theme that firms that double down on service and tighten internal operations are better positioned to scale up in 2026. So as automation and AI mature, the leaders here are going to be the ones who redeploy time and talent towards higher value client outcomes. And I think Andy summarized it very well when he said, Service excellence remains a key differentiator while internal efficiency is increasingly vital as firms leverage automation and AI to maximize returns on talent. So with that in mind, let's talk over here with Tissa and Jason. Beyond AI, what are some key areas of improvement that you see for 2026? Yeah, so Justin, let me take a little bit of maybe a contrary position on this, because I think the biggest opportunity here is actually helping organizations rehumanize work. When you really think about it, we spent so much of today talking about automation and AI and processes. And we've had so many consecutive years of disruption and acceleration into these things. But I think so many of the conversations that I have, especially with leadership teams, is this sort of dawning realization that efficiency alone does not create excellence or a competitive advantage. And I think, you know, Jason mentioned earlier, right, standardization simplification is great. Dave also mentioned we want to have AI do our work for us. And I totally agree with both of those. I think I want to add a nuance to that, though, which is that we need to make sure that it's work that needs to be done. I'll just give you an example. I worked with a really large global CPG company, and they were they were really delighted. They had brought in a company to do a lot of automation, a lot of AI, and they were doing all these processes. And then they realized that they had sort of done all this work on work that maybe no longer needed to be done. And just a very crystal clear example was they had been automating all these reports. I think they they started to use AI for a lot of these. I'm just gonna call them legacy reports. And they'd never stopped to ask, do we still need these? Is anybody using them? Is anybody reading them? So we just did an experiment where we just stopped. We stopped a couple of them, and only two people in this entire organization put their head up and said, where did they go? Two people. And they had put in so much investment into this automation, this processes. And so I think that deep thought needs to go into first. What are we in line? Are we intentional on what we even need to do with this technology and with these processes? So I think that the next evolution needs to be strengthening, like the alignment. How are we thinking? How are we deciding? How are we collaborating? What do we need? And so I think the investment actually, I'm seeing it shift more to leadership development, psychological safety, intentionality. And again, this is not soft or squishy, but it's they're not even to build them as soft skills, but as really big competitive differentiators. That's a really big competitive edge, right? It's creating a really carved out space for learning, for helping people navigate that sort of sense of, is my job going to be here next year? How is it going to change? It really becomes a way to attract and retain talent to drive growth. So I don't think the opportunity is just around technology. I really think it's around humans as well. And I think we've over indexed a little bit on the technology piece and under indexed on how humans interplay with it. And I think that some of the companies I'm seeing that are doing really great work and starting to sort of pull away from the pack are the ones that are focusing on that interplay. Would agree with all of that, Tessa, that you put it really, really well. You know, I think that all of the automation, all the AI, all the technology that's now at our fingertips, you see firms, you see organizations talking about sort of reinvention and what the new business model looks like in a world where you sort of have digital employees and human employees working side by side. And let's face it, you literally have companies where they have AI agents that have identity profiles the same way a human does. They have same systems access, right? And they're sort of co working together, right? But I don't think it's about the technology and figuring out what that looks like. It's about figuring out what does that organization even look like? How do those things coexist to create value and generate outcomes that you want as an organization? And it's sort of like, I think that the unmet needs of the client base to me are more around kind of macro process, culture change, adoption, understanding, getting people comfortable. Like I'm now working my peer as a digital agent. What is that? What is that? I don't know what that is, you know? And so I just think there's a lot of that. I saw a really neat piece of the day. This is something that blew my mind. It was an article about, I think it was Morgan Stanley that's been investing in AI and agents because they had a realization that they had essentially a gap, talent gap. They didn't have nearly enough wealth advisors to meet the needs of their growing client base. There a talent gap in the marketplace that they could not fulfill. And so their recognition was we actually need these AI tool sets to sort of be companions so that a wealth manager could touch, you know, more clients. So 500 clients instead of 200 clients or whatever the numbers are. I have no idea. And I think that that's a big piece of this. A big piece of this is that it's not just about like job replacement. It's about figuring out how all these things sort of work together to create value for the customer, whatever, whoever the customer might be. So, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, when you first, whenever there's new technology, it feels like it's disruptive and you feel your initial blush is like, oh my gosh, the world's collapsing. Everything's falling apart. And then the other side of it is, like you said, you get to the more human elements of things and there's probably more opportunity on the other side than anybody can dream imaginable, but when you're living in it, it's hard to see. So I don't know if that makes sense or not. Yeah, think so. I think it makes a ton of sense and I think that you see that very often where you have, you know, a disruptor come in and people think the sky is going to fall but it creates that long term opportunity. I think I've heard that over and over that, you know, there is an expectation. Yeah, it's going to take some jobs. Absolutely. But it's going to open up a lot of other ones as well. So, sorry, I talked over somebody else. Go ahead. I think that was Dave. Oh, you know, at the end of the day, we still are a people based industry. That's the biggest cost, you know, and so, you know, there's other industries where robotics takes over and it replaces people, but we're still a people based industry. We still as a we still advise as opposed to having a computer advisor, you know, a robot advise a client. It's always the person. So the tools, technologies are important, but it but it comes into how do they make the people more knowledgeable, more efficient? Just how do they make us all better consultants? And that's what we're we've always got to keep our eye on is it's not just a technology. It's something to enable all of us to be better at what we do. And so if there's a takeaway, if I can add to that, if there's a takeaway for our listeners and what we're trying to say is both can be true at the same time. So you do the technology, learn about the AI, and then you maximize the opportunity it provides for the people who are now freed up of that duty. And that streamlines, makes more efficiency, and is kind of where we're at in this panel today for everybody. And it and there's a piece of all of that that might just need to be connected in saying, train your leadership development and your skills and your growth in the human side while you develop and understand better the AI side at the same time. And that's going be a win win proposition. I think we're all trying to do that to some degree right now. So my takeaway on that. I think this is critical. I mean, there's another member of the old guys club with Scott. There's nothing new about this. And AI itself might be new, but I'm pretty sure that when someone invented the wheel, there was the big strong guy who made his living moving heavy things for people was annoyed because he was now out of work because someone had invented the wheel. We adapt as human beings, we adjust, we find new ways of applying the skills and unique abilities that we have to help our clients to do better. And the key to me is it comes back to what Tissa said at the start of this question is, why are we doing this? Is there value in what we're doing? And if not, we'll do something different. And if AI can help us to make that shift, then great. But there's new challenges and new opportunities coming every single day. It's just that AI seems to be grabbing all the headlines right now. Well said, thank you guys. I think that was a great summary of what we heard from everybody. It's running a little bit late, so let's move on to our next question. I wanted to first ask a quick poll question from, to our audience members, about the, where they, you know, what are their watering holes? Where did they learn about industry trends and best practices? And so, I'm going to give everyone just a quick second to go through and answer this question. We've got, the answers we got are generative AI, industry publications and research reports, webinars or virtual conferences, LinkedIn, other social media, podcasts and video series, industry events, online learning platforms, peer networking groups, news aggregators and blogs or other. If you want to be different and say other, you're welcome to. So let me give everybody a minute here. Andy, since I got you on my screen, do you have any, guesses as to, what the most impactful couple are going to be? As an old geezer, I'm going to say LinkedIn because to me that's certainly something that is a key part of my familiarity and I suspect it's still fairly popular even with those young ones. And I also think that we can't escape Gen AI. We've been talking about it all day. Those would be my top two of three. And then I guess I'll throw in others third just to be disruptive. Any other panelists have any, thoughts here as to what we're going to see? Looking forward to see the answers here. What's that? I'm looking forward to what the poll says because Justin, I'm going to nominate Deltek webinars is what I'm going to nominate as the number one. Thank you. You're going to go to the other. Yeah. Write that in Jason. That in. Type that in as other. Will do that. And then I'm also going to chime in and say podcasts just based on what we saw on the election cycle. I got to think that podcasts are gonna are gonna perform well. But I, you know, as a marketer, I'm I'm known for for for big ideas and big mistakes. Yeah. Think social media is gonna be the big hit on that. If people are being honest, everyone's scrolling something all the time. No, absolutely. It's interesting though. I mean, my social media is all fun stuff, whining about football, whining about things like that. I guess I'm waiting for these answers because I think eventually it will be Gen AI. But I mean, for me personally, I go to a lot of conferences. So that's where I get a lot of knowledge because get to talk to people. I watch a lot of webinars or do a lot of webinars. That's that's where I pick up things. LinkedIn, I don't use as much as some of you guys, but I think it's valuable. I just don't take advantage of it as much as I'd like to. But again, I'm just wondering if Gen AI eventually will be my go to, you know, we'll all just say, Hey, every morning at 07:00, give me, you know, ten ten different things I'll ask for and it'll just search the internet all night and in the morning, I'll, you know, open it up and read 10 or 15 pages of what's happening and what's new. You know, just don't know. I just don't know. The Dave AI agent going on search for the last Well, that's likely. I mean, again, things I don't want to do. So yeah, is interesting. It's kind of what I thought. I just think, when we do this meeting again a year from now, I wonder if Gen AI will jump off to 50%. Yeah, so it looks like from our answers, we had Gen AI at 25% industry publications and research at 25, webinars maybe that was strewn by Scott's answer over there for us. But that was Jason's answer. Oh, sorry, Jason. Yeah, LinkedIn at 43 and podcasts industry and online learning at 18%. Awesome. So Dave, you know, if we wanted to hear from you in particular, as well as Andy, what are the watering holes that you go to can you recommend some for our audience? Yeah, sure. I mean, again, as I said, I do do a lot of conferences, lot of webinars, a lot of one on one meetings. I'm, you know, I'm an analyst. I have some some access to different people. But from the pure watering hole perspective, the first thing I thought when you asked me to comment on this was there are so many, and let's just say consulting organizations that you can belong to the Information Technology Alliance, the Consulting Magazine, the Institute of Management Consultants, International Council of Management Consultants. There are hundreds of organizations and I bet you all of them add value if you take the time. But what I would say is that people should look at you know, what market are you in or are you interested in? Maybe even what function are you in HR? Are you in finance? You know, maybe it's by city. There are local chapters of a lot of these organizations that you meet once a month or every couple of months to really help you and also size of organization. I work with different firms that cater to the employee crowd, the mid market maybe, and then some of the larger organizations meet together. And so there's a lot of watering holes. I mean, there's hundreds of them that you could potentially join or belong to. A lot of people just use our research and go to our website and download a lot of the free stuff because we're always publishing something. But it's important to stay educated, continue to learn what's happening in the market. And my last plug is you better learn AI, you better become proficient in it because that's where the best firms will be. Andy, would love to hear any watering holes that you might want to recommend or where you're getting your info from? I used to hate answering questions like this because my answers are always the same and I thought, you know what, that's a good reason to answer it. I don't like recommending specific locations to people because everybody needs to get something different out of it. So my general comment and then I do have a specific recommendation. But my general comment is find people that resonate with you. Because if you find a podcast or webinar or a writer or whatever it is that I think is great and it doesn't resonate with how you learn or your opinions or your industry and region, it's not going to work for you. So find things that work for you and then find things that really annoy you, really have views that are counter to what you think. And make sure you subscribe to that sort of content as well because that helps you think and that challenges your preconceptions and forces you to evolve your own thinking. I'll piggyback on what Dave said and say that the industry things for your clients are vitally important. I do a lot of stuff in the project arena, so I can't escape all the project management institute stuff and that kind of thing. So that becomes key for me, but you will have your own. So that's sort of my generic avoid answering the question answer. Then there is one specific podcast that I do highly recommend that runs counter to everything I've just said, which is the professional services pursuit. So look that up on your provider of choice, Spotify or other, the Professional Services Pursuit. I think there's over 100 episodes now, and that is always worth a listen. Thanks. And let me plug a couple of the guys on here. Dave Hofferperth on here, his industry report, the SPI benchmark report is absolutely one of the key resources that professional services leaders should go to. Jason, I listened to your podcasts all the time, Rattle and Peddle, it's great for marketing and professional services as well. So I would definitely highly recommend that and all of the thought leaders on here publish on social media and LinkedIn, they're always publishing very important insights. So I would recommend everyone follow them already if they're not. Let's move on, let's move on because I wanted to, we only have a couple minutes left. Hopefully we can get to a question. Unless anyone else has anything else to add there, you're welcome to do it. Okay, sounds good. We're gonna wrap up with that. Julia, I hope I'm going to pass it over to you. Thank you, Justin, and our wonderful panel. We'll now give everyone a minute to locate the Q and A window on the webinar console to submit your questions for our panel. While you do so, we have a few quick reminders. First of all, we want to remind you that Deltic is in the business of time and project success for project based organizations of all sizes. We enable professional services organizations to streamline their business with unified time tracking solutions. Be sure to visit our website to learn more about our solutions and request a demo to see how we can help your organization. Next, if you'd like to explore how Delta can help your professional services organization be more efficient by easily tracking project hours and managing your workforce, please select yes, and we'll be in touch. Okay, we have a few questions that have come through from the audience. Panelists, let's get started. Let's go ahead and start with what areas beyond AI will define competitive advantage for PS firms next year? Yeah, I can take this one, Justin. I think one of the areas I really see is not just how companies respond to challenges and disruption, but how they turn those into opportunity. I think that's a really key differentiator, the ability to in parallel look forward. So readiness and steadiness, that's a it's a huge competitive advantage for companies and teams. Awesome. Great. And I want to go ahead and ask the audience, we were just talking about events. Please put in the Q and A which events you're going to or which events that you would recommend. With that, I can spur a little conversation there as well. Next, we're going to ask which sources do you trust the most for actionable insights versus thought leadership? So that goes hand in hand with those events. Anyone want to take this on? Or do we just beat it? Do we go into it too much? Section? Is. Are you asking the panelists for this? Yes. Yes. On the sources you trust the most. In my industry, conferences is definitely the best way to meet and greet and sort of share knowledge and talk about the education sector. And the Council of Greater City Schools holds two very big conferences each year, and I think they're actually the Council of Great City Schools. And that's a that's a big school district CIO, CHO conference happens twice a year, and I would highly recommend people in the industry or even offering things that would help that industry attend that conference for sure. Does that is is that answering what you're asking? Yes. That's perfect. And then I just audience, if you have any events that you were mentioning, just go ahead and throw them in the the chat as well. And the next question we're gonna ask is beyond automation. Where do you see AI creating new revenue streams for PS firms? I think we're just starting to scratch the surface on this. And that's one of the reasons I believe that everyone, every professional services employee should really get some exposure and some proficiency in AI because your, you know, your clients need help. They all need help that, you know, they're like you were a year ago. They don't understand AI. What can they do for them? And they're going to come to you and ask you how they should use it, how they should take advantage of it, what is the value of it. And so I think that strategically from a technology standpoint, who knows what new services that we'll be able to