Mindset shift: Who are you competing with? Surprise! It’s not your traditional competitor, it’s your customer that uses AI.
See market data of enterprise service, consulting, BPO, digital agencies and research service companies.
Assume your customer is adopting AI faster than you can: rolling it out, and able to do your job. Once they set it up, they can sever relationships with outside services firms.
Despite the Nasdaq being up 20%, enterprise services firms are considerably down. I’ve read the earnings reports and industry news, and blog posts and it’s clear many are slow to adopt AI.
Enterprise services firms must pivot into AI quickly. Whether you’re a communications agency, consulting firm, industry analyst firm, BPO, or systems integrator, you must prepare for a culture shift.
The key cultures to know are the “AI-first” culture: turn to AI before deploying humans. It challenges the service-based model that has been human-centric and “throwing bodies at clients.”
I expect the most successful firms will offer AI software to employees and customers for recurring SaaS revenue, not just advice, implementation, or support. I recognize there are other market conditions as well, including immigration and visa challenges.
I’ll leave you with one question: What role do services companies play if their customers can adopt AI and complete many of the tasks themselves?
