Everyone was billable, so the things that made the firm money later were done last: proposals went out and went quiet, meetings started with a hurried search through old emails, and invoices were raised at month end by whoever was least busy. The partners wanted the follow-up done, the meeting prepared and the invoice out, without a consultant coming off a client to do it.
Three things kept going wrong, and each cost the business time, money or a customer.
Three agents built on the consultancy's CRM, document store and accounts, with a partner approving anything about scope or fees and the agents doing the chasing, preparing and invoicing around the client work.
The CRM and document store held years of client history; the trick was letting the meeting-prep agent read it. Partners set the boundaries in an afternoon: the follow-up agent may answer anything already in the proposal and nothing that changes it. The first briefs went to two partners who marked them up; by the second week the briefs were going to every consultant with a client meeting, unedited. The billing agent raised its first invoices on day five against three engagement letters, on the day each fell due.
Every proposal is followed up on schedule and the partners hear about the ones that need a call. Consultants walk into meetings with a brief instead of a memory, and clients have noticed. Invoices leave on the day the engagement letter says, not at month end, and payment arrives twelve days sooner. Nobody has come off a client to chase a proposal since the second week.
'We were superb at the work and hopeless at everything around it, because the work always won. Now the bits around it happen whether or not we're busy.'
Managing partner
Every client is owed an annual review, and each one takes three emails to book, two to collect the documents and one to remind. With 400 clients that was a paraplanner's whole job, and reviews still slipped past their due date. The firm wanted every review booked on time, prepared for, and every message written inside the rules.
Consultants were hired to talk to candidates and clients and were spending half the day arranging interviews across three diaries, chasing referees who did not reply and answering the same questions about start dates and parking. Placements slowed not for lack of candidates but for lack of hours. The agency wanted the admin done so the consultants could sell.
A free 45-minute call. Tell us where the time goes; we'll tell you honestly whether an agent would help and what it would save.
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