Find the Secure AI revenue in professional services.
A full-day working session for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners. How accountancy, consultancy and engineering firms make money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and how to reach them. Included with Cumulus Practice and Executive. £500 per MSP for Community members, up to 2 seats.
Microsoft co-op funding. Subject to eligibility, you may be able to claim back up to 100% of the £500. We give you the invoice and the proof-of-execution paperwork the claim needs. Check with Ingram that you qualify before you rely on it.
You sell the same technology to every industry. You cannot sell the same business case to every industry.
The same Microsoft work sells differently to an accountancy firm than to a manufacturer, because their money is made and lost in different places.
A job cannot start until the client sends the information, so somebody chases, three times on average, and half of that chasing is done by a senior because clients reply to a named person. The firm records the time. At billing it writes some of it off. Nobody codes the reason on more than one write-off in eight.
Commercial consulting goes deep into one sector. Technology implementation works largely the same way across all of them. Both matter, and they are bought by different people.
They need measurable business outcomes.
They need IT policies and change management.
Secure AI adds a business conversation above the technical one. Neither is better. An MSP needs both, and needs to know which one it is in.
Answers: I already know Microsoft, so why do I need a professional services workshop? You already sell across the horizontal. This workshop builds the vertical.
This is how Cumulus reads the sector. It comes from our own model and from interviews with people who run these firms. Treat it as a pattern to test on your own clients, not a fact.
Being brought in after the business decision has already been made.
That decision gets made in a conversation about the client’s business, not their IT. This workshop is about how to get into that conversation.
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.
Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everybody else quotes against. A requirement written without you leaves you competing inside somebody else’s decision, often on scope and price rather than business value.
Three numbers a professional services board watches.
Most technical sales conversations do not begin with these. If yours does, you have a much stronger reason to speak with the people who answer for the economics.
58 to 72%
Fee billed against time recorded at charge-out. The closest thing this sector has to gross margin. When it falls, the work took longer than the fee assumed.
68 to 78%
Chargeable hours as a share of hours available. Ask whether it includes time that was later written off. Two firms quoting the same number can mean different things.
Compliance to advisory
Compliance is predictable and thin. Advisory is the margin. Almost every firm has wanted to move this for five years and has not, because the compliance work absorbs the people who would do it.
Five kinds of firm. One method.
All five sell the time of qualified people against a scope agreed in advance, so one model covers them all. What changes is where the time leaks.
Which one you are in front of changes the examples, not the method.
Answers: will this cover the firms I actually sell to? The worked example is a mid-tier accountancy and advisory firm, because that is the largest population and the chasing is worst there.
The 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System, applied to professional services.
One method, applied to a different sector each month.
Know the sector
How these firms make money, the numbers their board watches, and where recovery, capacity and cash get trapped.
Open the door
The clients you already have, the firms worth targeting, and how to get a meeting with the person who signs. This is not a cold-calling list.
Find the AI opportunity
Where AI could make them more money, free up time, or cut risk. Then how a client moves through the four steps, starting with a free assessment.
Build the case
How the work should run afterwards, what it is worth, and how to prove it if they ask.
Know the sector → open the door → find the AI opportunity → build the case
Answers: what will the day teach me to do? Sector knowledge, then trusted access, then a client opportunity, then a commercial case.
Where the opportunity sits in a professional services firm.
Five places to look. They are not equal, and the biggest one is usually not where you start.
The one worth most is often the one they cannot build yet. Telling them apart is the job.
Answers: where would I actually start? Sizing any of this in a firm’s own numbers is what the Secure AI Business Case & Process Design does, not the workshop.
Who you need in the room at the client.
These vary by sector. In professional services they are usually:
Answers for profit per equity partner
And the plan. Ask what one point of recovery is worth to them, and let them do the sum.
Answers for work in progress days
Understands the figures faster than anyone else in the room, and will check yours.
Answers for utilisation
Knows exactly where the hours go. Nobody ever asks them about it in money.
Answers for recovery and write-offs
Knows time is written off every month and cannot say why on more than one in eight. Rarely asked about it. Your best way in.
How MSPs usually get ready for a sector.
All three are sensible. Here is where each one stops being enough.
You get the size of the market and the growth rate.
Your engineers learn the product properly, and usually for free.
You get a list of things AI can do, with examples.
The workshop gives you the part none of them cover. How a professional services firm makes money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and up to 200 target accounts.
Four things these firms say.
If you have sold into professional services you have heard at least two of them. Each one is money, and none of them sounds like an AI problem.
Jobs cannot start until clients send us the information.
We write off time every month and nobody can tell me why.
Partners are doing work a senior should be doing.
We have wanted to move the mix to advisory for five years.
Their words beat your list every time. The workshop covers what each one costs, and which of them AI can do something about.
What you leave with on the day.
The five sub-sectors, the three board numbers, and the eight processes that carry the money.
One opportunity packaged into something your team can quote.
Four roles, what each one answers for, and the number each is measured on.
Up to 200 named UK accountancy, consultancy and engineering firms, picked to match the kind of firm the workshop covers. Enough to start booking meetings.
What to say first, and what to ask before you propose anything.
How to move a client from a first conversation to an implementation, without asking them to commit early.
Three priced steps, then the build.
The client only buys the next step if the last one was worth it.
- 1 Secure AI Opportunity Assessment Free. Find where Secure AI could create value.
- 2 Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop £2,500. One day with the leadership team. Find the business needs, rank the Secure AI opportunities, and agree which one moves forward.
- 3 Secure AI Business Case & Process Design From £15,000. Four to eight weeks. Build the business case, redesign the process and produce the high-level solution design needed to decide on the build.
- 4 Secure AI Implementation Your price. You complete the detailed technical design, then build, deploy and integrate it, and run it for a monthly fee.
One day does not make you a professional services consultant. It does let you open the right conversation and work out whether there is a deal in it. If a real opportunity needs deeper work, Cumulus does the commercial side. Your client stays yours.
Practice and Executive members pay nothing, because this workshop is included. Community members pay £500 per MSP, plus VAT, and that covers two seats.
Eligible partners may be able to use Microsoft co-op funding. Check your eligibility and the claim route with Ingram Micro before you count on the money.
Book your MSP’s place.
Four short steps. Two seats are included, and you can add the second person later.
Ten sectors. One workshop a month. Professional Services is the fifth.
Book Professional Services for £500. Or join Cumulus Practice for £3,500 a year and get all ten workshops plus the complete 5P System. Ten workshops bought separately would cost £5,000.
Win the business case before you win the build.