As in every other industry, professional services firms are feeling the pressure to make a big splash with AI, and aren’t sure how to do it. It’s that “big splash” thinking that complicates things, though; if you make a big splash in a small, peaceful pool, your fellow swimmers are going to be more annoyed than impressed.
Rather than bringing in a brand-new app with shiny bells and loud whistles, firms should look to take a more grounded approach: weaving AI into existing workflows. It’s about increasing efficiency and dealing with margin pressures in a way that’s easier to scale and sets your firm apart from the competition in the professional services space. With practical AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can transform your operations – without getting anyone wet.
The Business Case for Staying Grounded
There are five big advantages to this approach, even if it isn’t creating an attention-grabbing splash:
- Efficiency and cost savings. By automating time-consuming manual work, you can free up your staff to focus on higher-value tasks. For example, an AI agent can field simple, low-level questions from clients while human agents handle complex problems that require relationship skills and intuition. AI is also better at handling repetitive, rule-based tasks; after all, it never gets tired. More accurate work means less time and money spent correcting errors. And once you’ve got your automation framework in place, you can scale up quickly without increasing headcount.
- Better service and faster turnaround. Conventional wisdom says that you can choose two of the following: “good,” “fast,” and “cheap.” The best AI tools change that formula by expediting processes like document review, contract analysis, and compliance checks. The same goes for things like meeting notes, email thread summaries, action items and follow-ups, which can all be automatically generated. Bank of Queensland used Copilot to decrease content drafting time by as much as 99%, leading to better customer service. Essentially, you can provide high-quality work to clients in much shorter time frames at more competitive rates.
- Data-driven decision making. AI can quickly comb through massive amounts of data, both structured and unstructured, to detect patterns and deliver actionable insights. The experts on your team can make better decisions, faster – and become more proactive, too. When you know exactly how things are trending, it’s much easier to anticipate your clients’ needs and risks and allocate resources accordingly.
- Improved employee satisfaction. One thing AI can’t do is get bored. By letting it take care of the drudgery, firms can give their human staff more creative and enjoyable work. For example, Capita found that its developers were more fulfilled and less frustrated when coding with GitHub Copilot, while Copilot for Microsoft 365 made life easier for Atos employees who were tired of hunting for information on service tickets. In talent-driven industries like consulting, legal, and accounting, firms need to do everything they can to prevent burnout from administrative overhead.
- Competitive differentiation and future proofing. Firms that adopt AI now and implement it in a measured way will be able to build scalable infrastructure, establish widespread institutional knowledge, and get into an operating rhythm that gives them a long-term edge. Meanwhile, firms stuck in manual processes risk falling behind. They’ll be slower and spend more money than their competitors, and their clients will start to wonder if they can’t get better service from a more tech-forward vendor.
Realistic AI Use Cases for Professional Services Firms
So what does “grounded AI” really look like? Professional services firms can get the benefits listed above in many ways:
- Proposal generation. AI tools can use templates and your firm’s knowledge base to instantly create useful proposal drafts that human experts can then refine. Firms can respond more quickly to RFPs, speeding up development cycles, reducing bottlenecks, and ensuring consistency without overworking staff.
- Document review and analysis. AI can summarize long documents, such as legal contracts, and pull key clauses for human review. Private banking firm LGT reduced contract review time from 4 hours to half an hour thanks to Copilot, which helped them sift through the boilerplate to focus on the most important parts of each contract.
- Internal workflow automation. Every department can benefit from automation, from finance to client support. Intelligent document processing (IDP) tools can quickly and accurately process expenses while keeping humans in the loop for exceptions, and Copilot for Microsoft 365 makes it easy to create productive virtual agents. Using AI assistants, Tata Consultancy Services saw a 30% boost in business availability with 95% response accuracy. Service desk contacts fell 38%, which meant a 25% increase in productivity for employees who could focus on more complex problems for their clients.
- Summarization, collaboration, and communication. Tools like Copilot can take meeting notes that are both comprehensive and actually useful for people who weren’t there (or who need a reminder of what was covered). They can help generate drafts for emails, knowledge base articles, or other types of content. And they can help firms stay compliant and consistent by detecting issues before they get big.
- Data analysis, reporting, and decision support. AI tools can quickly mine large datasets to generate useful reports and point firms in the right direction. For example, accounting firm BDO Belgium used Microsoft Fabric to give their M&A team access to advanced analytics and instant insights, which led to better deals and more satisfied customers.
Why Grounded AI is More Sustainable
Big splashes and moonshots generate hype, and every now and then they actually hit. A more grounded approach means lower risk, less investment up front, and a much easier time justifying the investments you do make. Small, quick wins get people on board as they see tangible benefits, which can lead to big, long-term wins. In fact, research shows that successful AI implementation has a lot more to do with change management than sheer tech power.
Professional services firms should take care to build a strong AI foundation by automating and augmenting basic workflows first, before adding more advanced functions like data-driven services and client-facing agents. And they should never lose sight of AI’s true purpose, which is to complement your human teams, not replace them. Client-facing work will always require a human touch; the idea is to give your people the time and energy they need to provide it.
The Value of a Microsoft Partner
AI isn’t a futuristic novelty anymore. It can and should be a practical lever for operational transformation and increased value. Yet professional services firms don’t have to pull that lever by themselves. Firms can leverage a Microsoft partner’s expertise with the Microsoft ecosystem (including Microsoft 365, Azure, Copilot, and Copilot Studio) to enable low-friction integration, adoption, and scalability.
The right partner can help firms map key use cases, design automated workflows, build high-quality virtual agents, and (most importantly) manage change as their teams get used to their new tools. They can also point to client success stories and reference architectures to help overcome internal skepticism and justify the firm’s investment. Ideally, a partner won’t simply implement AI and move on; they’ll provide ongoing support to ensure compliance, security, maintenance, and continuous improvement.
At Enavate, we check all of those boxes. We’ve been helping professional services get the most out of Microsoft’s ERP platforms for years now – and we’re eager to help more firms turn AI from a mere experiment into a fully integrated aspect of their business. Reach out to our team today to learn more about the services we can provide as your Microsoft technology partner.
