AI in Project Management Consultancy Services: More revenue, better margins and reduced risk

Consultancies are implementing AI into their project management consultancy services and winning more business, cutting costs, and reducing risks. Read on to find out how.

Every business is driven by the bottom line—profit. However, the strategies to achieve this goal vary.

Within the realm of project management, three key players take center stage:

1. Clients/Owners
2. Contractors 
3. Consultants

At Nodes & Links, we collaborate with businesses that fit into all three of these buckets, and we’ve gathered important insights from each of them. 

In this article, we’re going to focus on consultancies. Like all businesses, consultancies care about money. Specifically, they’re focused on generating the most revenue possible.

What do consultancies sell? 

Consultancies sell expertise in the form of services. In the world of project controls, this lies in Project and Programme Management. 

Generally, these are the services offered by consultants for project controls: 

1. Reviewing current project management operations.
2. Schedule management and control.
3. Offering strategies to improve project management.
4. Cost estimating.
5. Cost management and control.
6. Change order management.
7. Earned value management.
8. Risk monitor and control.
9. Value engineering.
10. Training.

For consultancies specializing in project management, the aforementioned services should be familiar. If you aren’t offering these services yet, perhaps it’s time to consider it. 

If you are already providing them, how can you further increase revenue (and profit) from your offerings?

There are two approaches to achieve this. 

1. Firstly, enhance profit margins by optimizing costs, extracting more value from your man-hours. 
2. Secondly, boost profit margins by increasing charges, improving and expanding your service offerings.

Let’s take a deeper look into each of the options above. 

How can consultancies cut their costs to improve their profit margins? 

Simple, tech-enabled services. Get more hours out of your man-hours. To illustrate this, let’s use an analogy.

What did ChatGPT do for marketers, like me? It enabled me to do my work faster and easier, allowing me to get more results out of my 8 hour day. If you sell the service as an output rather than a workflow, you get more value out of the dollars you pay your experts for your services.

How does that work with projects? 

Just like ChatGPT helps marketers write content, AI and automation do exist for projects. Analysis on delays, progress, change control, risk, cost, resources… it doesn’t have to be manual. If you charge a flat fee for a risk workshop, but your team consistently gets better and faster, risk workshops become less of a cost to you, and your profits start to go up. Not to mention, the time saved gives your experts time to do work on more projects, allowing your business to bring in more revenue. 

How can consultancies charge more to improve their profit margins? 

Also simple, tech-enabled services. Enhance your service offerings and charge more for them. A car is a car. People pay more for Tesla. Why? Because it’s smarter and better (making them look good). 

What can you do to your services to make them smarter and better, without compromising on man-hours? Implement tech-enabled enhancements: AI and ML. Make your services smarter and clients will pay more to get them.

How does ML work with projects?  

When surfing the web, you see advertisements everywhere. Sometimes, it may even feel like your privacy is violated because that one product you’ve been contemplating just keeps showing up. Well, Google isn’t inside your brain. They’re using your data to predict the best ads to serve you in order to reach their end result: keep their ad-paying customers happy so they keep spending. This is the perfect example of machine learning.

What if you could do this for your projects in a few clicks? What if your forecasting wasn’t solely based on a Monte Carlo simulation with just current project data at hand in play? What if you could take all of the relevant data from the contractor and use it to improve the accuracy of your forecasting? 

I’ll take a bet and say contractors would pay for the peace of mind that would give them. 

How can you augment your traditional services to generate more revenue?

• Smart forecasting: To increase revenue through smart forecasting, consider two approaches:
  • As mentioned before, take your forecasting to the next level by implementing machine learning on the contractor’s entire project portfolio. You can do this with Nodes & Links AI Predict tool. 
  • Streamline your forecasting workflows with machine learning and AI. Faster work with the same results means better margins for you,

• Smart risk management: For increased revenue in smart risk management, consider two strategies:
  • Add AI to the workflow and introduce AI-powered QSRA. Nodes & Links QSRA feature uses AI built on datasets from thousands of projects. By analyzing large volumes of historical data, AI can identify patterns, trends, and correlations that may not be apparent through human analysis alone. When identifying risks in megaprojects, contractors will pay extra for this peace of mind.
  • If you’re in risk management, you’re definitely aware of painful lengthy risk workshops. Charge the same price for the risk workshop, but cut the man-hours in half and you’re exponentially increasing profits. Nodes & Links AI QSRA software will run an analysis on 50,000 activities in under a minute. Sounds nice, right?

• Smart change management analysis: Automation is key. Guarantee a 24-hour turnaround on your change analysis by utilizing software like Nodes & Links Change Control tool. This tool allows you to track the impact of changes from two schedules and see differences in KPIs, the critical path, and more. Automation removes human error, enabling fast analysis without compromising quality.

• Smart reporting: Reporting takes time. Consultants are brought in to manage reporting for contractors all the time for two reasons: 1. Reports are necessary for stakeholders to be in the know. 2. It’s timely and mundane, and many contractors would rather bring someone else in to do it. So, how can you make more money with smart reporting? 
  • Sell reports as an output cost, but streamline your workflows to reduce man-hours per report and make better margins. GPT for reporting exists. You can drop your data into software and output reports with automated text generation and interactive widgets. You can try the AI Reports tool with Nodes & Links for free. 

• And more…

In conclusion, consultancies are successfully expanding their revenue streams by embracing innovation and leveraging technology to enhance their service offerings. The key focus lies in two primary strategies: improving profit margins by optimizing costs and charging more for enhanced services.

Firstly, consultancies can lower their operational costs and increase efficiency by adopting tech-enabled services. Just as ChatGPT has empowered copywriters to achieve more in less time, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly enhance project management processes. By automating tasks related to delays, progress, change control, risk, cost, and resources, consultancies can optimize their man-hours, making their services more cost-effective and profitable.

Secondly, consultancies can charge higher fees by implementing tech-enabled enhancements that make their services smarter and more valuable. Just as people are willing to pay more for a Tesla because of its advanced features, clients may be willing to invest in consultancy services enhanced by AI and machine learning. For instance, implementing smart forecasting, risk management, change management analysis, and reporting through AI tools can provide a competitive edge and justify higher charges.

Nodes & Links, with its AI Predict tool for smart forecasting, QSRA feature for AI-powered risk management, Change Control tool for automated change analysis, and AI Reports tool for smart reporting, exemplifies how consultancies can integrate technology to offer cutting-edge solutions and, in turn, attract more business.

Consultancies that strategically blend cost-effective tech-enabled services with premium, AI-enhanced offerings are positioning themselves as leaders in the industry. This dual approach not only boosts revenue but also ensures that consultancies stay ahead in an ever-evolving business landscape, meeting the evolving needs and expectations of clients in the realm of project management and consultancy services.

Feel free to set up a chat with our team here or try our software for free here.