In the AI era, everyone is leaning into the term… even when it doesn’t apply. But sometimes it’s smarter to be more plain spoken, using terms like “automation,” and avoiding the temptation to jump on bandwagons. Indeed, AI is a loaded term and may even scare away some users.
This was a key finding in a recent Localogy report with original SMB survey data, done in collaboration with Duda. We presented the results at the recent L25, and the full report will be launched soon. In the meantime, some companies have already launched strategies that align with those findings.
Rocketlane is one of them. The company is pioneering what it calls professional services automation (PSA). It’s all about saving busy executives’ time through automating their workflows. Of course, that’s one of the things that AI promises, but PSA focuses on benefits rather than buzzwords.
We recently had the chance to catch up with Rocketlane co-founder and CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan to find out more. Below is part 1 of our discussion where Ganesan defines PSA and contextualizes its value. We’ll drill deeper in Part 2, including PSA’s particulars and tactical takeaways.
First, to level set, you are applying AI to professional services automation (PSA). Can you first define that term for our readers?
Professional Services Automation (PSA) software helps professional services teams streamline, automate, and analyze their service delivery. It is widely used by consulting firms, agencies, and service teams embedded within product organizations to improve efficiency. PSA software offer a broad spectrum of capabilities to manage a plethora of work—from the ‘front-end’ aspects of a services engagement—client relationship management, collaboration, project management, project governance, etc., to ‘back-end’ functions—the operational part of projects such as staffing, effort tracking, invoicing clients, project accounting, and margin & utilization calculations, etc. At Rocketlane, we are reimagining how services teams can leverage AI to become radically efficient across the front-end and back-end, as well as the service delivery itself.
We’re seeing AI applied to everything in a knee-jerk fashion. But the places that it appears to have the best applicability and resonance are whenever it can save executives time and make them more effective. At a high level, that would appear to be the case with project management and professional services automation. Can you tell us about your market thesis in this light?
AI has the potential to transform project-based services by driving efficiency in two key areas:
- Automating the ‘work-around work’: Tasks that consume valuable time, such as sending status updates, documenting decisions, and post-meeting busywork.
- Enhancing the quality and speed of the actual work or deliverables by augmenting human efforts with AI capabilities.
Given AI’s rapid advancements, we believe that professional services firms will fundamentally change in terms of business models, required skill sets, and operational tools. Rocketlane aims to lead this shift by equipping services teams with AI-driven capabilities that make this transition seamless and profitable.
In addition to being a tangible application of AI (e.g., saving time) that could resonate with end-users, this use case also seems to map well to the things that AI does best. Can you expand on how AI’s underlying capabilities are well-matched with PSA?
AI aligns perfectly with PSA needs because client delivery inherently involves extensive collaboration, communication, problem-solving, and knowledge documentation. AI can drive major efficiencies by:
- Eliminating tedious tasks like status updates, decision documentation, and post-meeting busy work.
- Enhancing actual deliverables through AI-assisted execution and decision-making. For instance, AI can draft an email, and a human can review and hit send.
- Extracting key insights from meetings and calls to generate documentation.
- Assessing the effectiveness of client-facing teams using specific parameters.
- Establishing standardized methods for evaluating project health and using AI-driven heuristics to alert leadership proactively.
- Leveraging vast amounts of project-related data (timelines, budgets, costs, execution insights) to detect patterns and optimize service delivery.
This fundamental shift will transform how services businesses operate, from business models to workforce skill sets and tool adoption. Rocketlane is at the forefront of enabling this transformation.
Apart from automating the ‘work around work’ as mentioned above, AI can also help in core work for professional services. What the core work is varies across domains within Professional Services (PS). Rocketlane is focused on automating the core work that tech implementation and services teams need to execute.
It seems that there’s also a sweet spot in terms of a balance between automation and human judgment. How do you find that sweet spot and apply just the right level of automation in saving executives valuable time, but also give them a sense of agency and control?
Striking the right balance between automation and human control is crucial. For PS use cases, AI can be leveraged to:
- Surface critical patterns, alerts, and recommendations without overwhelming the leadership with noise. The leaders can then make informed decisions.
- Allow teams to let go of busywork—drafting emails, proposing actions, and documenting decisions—requiring humans in the loop only to validate, verify, and augment AI-executed work.
By employing AI to augment, rather than replace, human expertise, you can ensure that executives and service teams remain in control while significantly reducing manual effort.
We’ll pause there and pick things up in Part 2 to go deeper with Ganesan…
