AI-Enabled Operations: How a Professional Services Firm Automated 40% of Its Workflows
The Challenge
A professional services firm with 200+ staff was watching its margins compress as client fee rates stagnated and operating costs climbed. Leadership assumed the answer was 'more AI' — but they had no way to tell which work was actually eroding profitability, and no capability to move from experiment to implementation.
Our Approach
Altiora diagnosed where margin was really leaking before recommending any technology. We traced the problem across operations, delivery and resourcing — not just the front office — and found 34 workflows where manual effort, rework and poor task routing were quietly destroying margin. We prioritised them by value, risk and complexity into a four-wave programme.
The Solution
Our own team then built and ran the fix in-house, engineering AI into the firm's existing systems rather than bolting on tools: AI-powered document review and extraction cutting manual processing by 78%; intelligent workflow routing that ended manual task assignment; automated generation of routine client deliverables; and a predictive resource-allocation model optimising team deployment across projects.
Results & Impact
The firm improved gross margin by 23% within 18 months. Staff satisfaction rose sharply as repetitive work disappeared, and the firm now uses its operational advantage as a differentiator in competitive pitches — and wins.
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