AI Workflow Automations for Professional Services Businesses: Where to Start and What to Avoid
Most professional services firms have more technology than ever, yet the work still feels hard. Teams spend hours every day entering the same information, moving documents, answering routine emails, and filling in templates by hand. None of it seems significant on its own, but together it can consume hundreds or even thousands of hours a year. And upgrading the same software again rarely changes the process underneath.
That's an ExitReadiness® issue. Buyers don't simply acquire revenue; they acquire systems and processes, and organizations that can deliver results consistently without depending on the owner or a few key people. When AI is used to improve how work flows through a firm, not just to help one person write a faster email, it can raise profitability, improve the client experience, and make the business more valuable and transferable.
In this episode of our AI & Exit Planning Series, Pat Ennis and Corby Megorden talk with Scott Samborn, Founder of Aspen Management Group, about AI workflow automation for accounting, law, engineering, consulting, and other professional services firms. Scott shares practical quick wins, why automation magnifies a broken process instead of fixing it, the security and governance mistakes firms make, and how to get started over the next 90 days.
Key Takeaways
Upgrades aren't improvements. Many firms upgrade the same systems again and again, but the process doesn't change; people just click a different button. AI now makes it far easier to connect systems that never talked to each other.
Look for the template work. An estate attorney's office can turn an intake form into a will, trusts, and medical directives automatically, then have the attorney review everything. A five-to-seven-hour process becomes a half-hour one.
Automation magnifies a broken process. Before automating, sit down with the people who do the work and map how data enters, moves, and who touches it. A simple Post-it note exercise often shows steps you can remove entirely.
Start with the smallest process, not the biggest. "We've got to use AI" is too vague to act on, and big projects tend to fail. Your biggest problem may really be many small ones; list them, rank them by criticality and impact, and fix one at a time.
Augment, don't just automate. Augmenting helps people do their jobs better, which eases fears about replacement. And a human should always check AI's work before anything leaves the firm.
Security and governance come first. Have a policy for what data can go into AI tools. If AI produces bad information or exposes client data, the responsibility is yours, much like a HIPAA breach.
Use what you already pay for. Most firms use a fraction of their practice management or CRM systems. Sometimes the fix isn't new technology, just training on what you have.
Buyers notice efficiency. Two firms with the same revenue and profit aren't equal if one takes a week to close its books and the other takes a day. An efficient back office is something a buyer can extend across their own organization.
Where to Start: Scott's 90-Day Approach
Start with an assessment. Whether you do it yourself or bring in help, spend a focused session identifying the issues slowing your firm down and why they happen.
Map the work around each issue. What does the process touch, and who touches it? Talk to principals and employees, not just leadership.
Rank and tackle one at a time. Order the problems by criticality and impact, and start small. Some fixes take a week; others take 90 days.
Set your guardrails. Decide what AI can and can't be used for, what data is allowed, and who reviews the output before it goes out.
About Scott Samborn
Scott Samborn is the Founder of Aspen Management Group, where he helps boutique firms rethink how work gets done through technology and AI. His career began as an IT consultant serving Fortune 1000 companies before he spent more than 20 years building and operating a managed services provider serving small and mid-sized businesses. After successfully selling that business, Scott worked with organizations evaluating complex technology solutions before founding Aspen Management Group to bring enterprise-grade AI strategy and workflow automation to SMBs in a practical, business-focused way.
Connect with Scott: LinkedIn · aspenmg.net
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Full Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited for readability. It may contain minor errors.
Hey there, this is Pat Ennis of ENNIS Legacy Partners. Welcome to the ExitReadiness® PODCAST. I'm here with Corby Megorden, my business partner, who's sitting in today for Walter Deyhle. Our mission here on the podcast is to provide you, the business owner, with subject matter expertise on topics pertaining to building sellable or transferable business value, and then for getting ready for that eventual exit from the business. We want to help you build a business that's transferable and then exit successfully on your own terms and conditions.
And today we continue our AI and exit planning series, where we're exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way businesses operate, compete, and create value. And one of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it's simply another productivity tool. While it certainly can help us as individuals work faster and more efficiently, its greatest impact may be something a lot bigger than that. It has the potential to fundamentally improve how work flows through an organization. Think about how much time your team spends every day entering information, moving documents, responding to routine emails, scheduling meetings, a whole lot of stuff.
Individually, none of those activities seem significant, but collectively they can consume hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours each year. And so that's where AI seems to be able to make a huge impact, with workflow automation. Rather than simply helping one person complete a task more quickly, workflow automation connects people, processes, and technology to create more consistent, efficient, and scalable operations. And today we're going to be focusing on professional services firms. And for professional services firms, or ProServ as they're known, whether you're an accounting firm, law firm, engineering firm, speechwriting firm, architecture, whatever, those improvements can have a meaningful, significant impact on profitability, client experience, employee satisfaction, and ultimately, of course, transferable, sellable business value.
Because buyers don't simply acquire revenue. They acquire systems and processes. They acquire organizations that can consistently deliver results without depending on one person or a couple of key people to make everything happen. And so today's conversation is titled AI Workflow Automations for Professional Services Businesses. We'll discuss where workflow automation delivers the greatest value, common implementation mistakes, how to identify the best opportunities to automate, and why thoughtful automation can help you build a ProServ that is not only more efficient today but more valuable and transferable tomorrow.
And joining us today is Scott Samborn. Scott is the founder of Aspen Management Group, where he helps boutique firms rethink how work gets done with technology and specifically AI. He started his career as an IT consultant working with several well-known Fortune 1000 companies, building deep tech grounding across industries. He then spent 20 years running an MSP serving small and midsize businesses, giving him a firsthand view of how SMBs operate and what they need from technology. And after selling the MSP, he moved to Bridgepoint, helping companies evaluate and select vendors for complex tech needs, including AI.
Working closely with AI solution vendors in that role is where he spotted the gap. Most AI service providers are built for enterprise clients, and SMBs can get an afterthought or a scaled-down enterprise pitch that doesn't fit how they operate. That insight led Scott to found Aspen Management Group. And so we're really excited to have Scott with us today. Scott, welcome to the ExitReadiness® PODCAST. Great to have you here.
Great. Thanks for inviting me, Pat. Great to be here. And you know, it's funny you talk about what you talked about there at the beginning, because one of the things that I talk about with business owners is, you know, you've bought the technology. So, you have the system that runs your business, and then you upgraded, and then you upgraded again, and then you upgraded again, right? Because the vendor told you you need to.
But has it gotten any easier? Probably not. You may be clicking a different button or on a different screen, but the process hasn't changed. So, when I was in my MSP days, back when we were doing IT support for businesses, companies would come to us and express the frustration of, this system doesn't work, or this system doesn't talk to this system. How do we fix that?
And there were some ways back then, but they were difficult, expensive, challenging, or impossible. Now with AI, it's a lot easier to connect disparate systems together through a variety of ways, whether it's built in or you have to build a different way of getting them together. It's become a game changer for a lot of businesses. Yeah, it's funny, Scott. I'm looking at your website even, and you have this statement: your firm has more technology than ever, why does the work still feel so hard?
True. You know, there is this sense that there's a new vernacular coming into play. There's a learning curve of, oh my goodness, this technology is here, it can help. Can you demystify it when we talk workflow automation? Just give us a couple of examples, when you go into, say, an accounting firm or a law firm, of some practical quick wins, things that you find are generally broken that you can fix, and what you do to fix it.
Well, sure. One of the easiest ones is you look at an attorney's office. For instance, an estate attorney is a perfect example, because when an estate attorney brings on a new client, they have to create a will. They have to create one or more trusts. They have to create advance medical directives, and all that has data that needs to be filled out.
So the attorney's office has a template, and in the template they may have a placeholder for an admin to go in and take the names and fill them in. But that's easy to augment with AI, with technology. You just create the template, you assign some variables to it, and then you have the AI take the intake form with all the data in it and integrate that into all the documents. And then you have the attorney review it and make sure that everything is accurate, because obviously you don't want to let anything out of your office that hasn't been reviewed by a human. AI can and often does make mistakes.
So you've gone from what could be a five-, six-, seven-hour process to a half-hour process. So that frees up a lot of time to bring in more clients and get more work done. There's a myriad of ways that we can look at different companies and come in and figure out, okay, where are the bottlenecks? Where are your people spending the most time that can be automated? Yeah. And along those lines, as you enter into engaging with a client, how do you go about actually discovering the human element, the process that already exists, so you don't automate a broken process?
Well, it's funny, because a lot of companies are automating broken processes and expecting them to get better. Yeah. But automation doesn't fix a broken process. It magnifies it. And that's really interesting, because that's where the human piece really comes into it: you have to sit down with the people and ask the right questions.
You have to ask them, where does the data come from? It comes into your company; what happens to it when it goes through the company? Who touches it? All the different things, to understand where things are. I remember I was sitting in a meeting a couple years ago with somebody, and they did what's called the Post-it note exercise, or I forget what the name of it is, but they took a process, and every step of the process was a Post-it note on the board. And as we sat there and talked about the process, we would say, "You know what? That's not really necessary," and we'd pull that Post-it note off the board.
So, at the end of the day, you had a clean, easier-to-understand, much more workable way to go about doing whatever that job was. And it's kind of the same thing as what we do now. We have to sit down and talk to the principals, we talk to the employees, and we figure out what you go through every day to get your job done. And then we figure out what can be automated or what can be augmented. Yeah. That's a radical concept, right? Understanding how to use AI through Post-it notes.
But it is not insignificant. You've got to bring it down to the simplest factor, make it easy for everybody to understand. Yeah. And are you finding that leaders are actually getting it and engaging with the change, so that they can lead their firm in the direction of this kind of change? That's a really interesting question. The way I approach it is, you hear these stories where somebody in their company was told, we've got to go use AI.
Well, what does that mean? That's like saying we've got to go eat. Yeah, that's not really realistic. But what I like to do is start with the smallest process, because if you try to start with the biggest process, it's probably going to fail. Start with the smallest process, fix that, make that work.
Get the people used to using the new tool, whether it's a technology enhancement or actual AI, and get them used to the new process, the new workflow, and then build from there. Start small. You've got to walk before you can run, right? So you need to start at the beginning. Yeah. Hey, Scott, if a listener out there is thinking, "Yeah, all this makes sense so far. I need to automate workflows with AI, so I'm just going to use AI to help me automate my workflow systems with AI," where does AI leave off, and where is that owner still going to need a human like you and your team to help them with the actual implementation of AI in order to improve their workflows?
Well, right off the bat, there's a couple different ways. First of all, security. Most people don't think about security. You want to make sure you're not putting the wrong data into the AI. You don't want your customer data released into the wild. So, you need to have a policy in place.
You need to understand what the limitations are and what the possibilities are. So, yeah, you as a business owner could talk to the AI and have it do something for you, but do you want it to do it on a regular basis? Is it something that needs to be repeatable? And a lot of times you've got to think about where your time is better spent. Is your time better spent doing what it is that you do as the business owner or the leader, and bringing in somebody who's an expert to do whatever they do?
You outsource your legal work. You outsource your accounting work. Possibly you outsource other things. Why would you want to take on a complex process like technology and AI to make a huge impression on your business, to improve your business? I understand if you want to use AI to create an email; that's fine.
I can also come in and train your staff, too. How are they using ChatGPT or Claude to write those emails? Are they doing the same thing over and over? Is that something that we can automate without realizing it, or is it something where you really need to have an expert come in and build you a repeatable process, a system that can do the work for you? And also, like I said before, you always want to have a human check the result, check the work, before you send it out.
Yeah. Hey Scott, we're in the exit planning space, and conceptually we always want to be thinking about the value of the business, growing the value, making the business more attractive to a buyer, and time horizon comes into play there as well. Can you speak to how workflow automation improves value, and secondarily, the time horizon? How much time does that business owner really need to mature their processes so that there really is value add? Well, let me address the second question first. I think that when it's done correctly, you can end up seeing value very quickly.
So, if your staff is overworked right now and you automate a process that helps them be more efficient, right away you're going to see value. And that value could be more time to get things done, so they're not working till 8 o'clock every night. Yeah. Or it could be the ability to bring on more business, to bring in more revenue. So there's plenty of ways that you can increase the value of a company by adding, let's call it, functional technology, right?
Yeah. Technology that does something. Because a lot of people will buy these practice management systems or CRMs, and they use a tiny fraction of the capabilities of the system. More often than not, it's because they don't need some of that, or they just don't know how to use it. So as part of the discovery process, we may discover that what they have already handles what they need, and they just need training on it.
So all those things increase the value, whether it's direct value or indirect value. At the end of the day, if I'm buying a business and I'm looking at two different businesses, and let's say they're at the same revenue level and the same profit level, but one of them has more people or is less efficient, or their books just don't look right because it's so manual that every month it takes their bookkeeper a week to close the books, and the other one can close their books in a day because everything is efficiently organized, that's going to make an impression on me as the buyer. And I'm probably going to lean that way. Yeah. So what I hear you saying is that understanding your manual processes and understanding what quality work is, is still essential, and AI functionally is a tool that's going to help do it better, faster.
You know, I think about companies that buy another company for the purpose of getting their sales and revenue, because they're going to integrate their back office into an existing process already. Well, if my back office is so efficient, then there's value in buying that efficiency as well, because then maybe I can take some of that efficiency and translate it to my existing back office and make my entire corporation more efficient. Yeah. And then along these lines, one of the things that we hear about is almost the fear factor, that, oh my goodness, particularly with lower-level staff, AI is going to replace workers, etc. What are you seeing as you come in to work in a company, in terms of cultural resistance?
That's why I like to start small, too. Because if we're starting small, it's not as scary. If I'm fixing one thing that person X does, it's not going to have a dramatic impact on their day-to-day. Actually, hopefully it will have a dramatic impact on their day-to-day, but it'll help them do their job better. I also prefer to use the term augment as opposed to automate, because automate, in my view, takes the person out of the picture, whereas augment implies that it's helping somebody do a better job.
And a lot of what we do in AI is augmenting. It's not automating. Yeah. So, today we're focusing on professional services firms, because that's what your firm does, Scott. Are there processes unique to professional services firms and AI automation, that aren't common with a lot of the other businesses we work with, that ProServ firms have to be particularly aware of? I think security and governance are the two big ones, and they really apply to everybody, but they're sort of the last things that get looked at.
You need to have a policy, and you need to manage that policy. I've read recently there are a lot of cases now where, if you put out bad information as a result of AI, you can get in trouble. And it's your responsibility. You can't turn around and sue OpenAI because you put information into ChatGPT and it gave you bad information. You have to be careful with your policies.
You have to make sure that you're secure. There was a story I just read this morning about how OpenAI was testing a new version of ChatGPT, and it escaped what they call the sandbox, which is the restricted area where it's supposed to run, and it actually hacked another company. Yeah, exactly. That was my reaction too. So it brings to mind the pictures of Terminator and Skynet and where we're headed.
You need to be careful with what you're doing, and you need to be secure. You need to make sure that what you're doing is secure for your business. You don't want to just let anything loose out there. You want to make sure that your customer data is secure and it's not out, because you can get sued for a lot of money. It's like a HIPAA violation, when a hospital gets breached and loses customer information.
It's the same thing if your customer data is released as a result of an AI problem. That's your fault. Yeah. So, my next question was going to be, what's the biggest mistake ProServ firms make when implementing AI augmentation? Is it what you just said, the security piece, or is it something else?
Security is a big one. And then also, going back to what I said before, trying to tackle large projects at first. Don't try to solve your biggest problem. The truth is, maybe your biggest problem is really the result of a lot of little problems. So let's figure out where all the problems are, and then rank them in order of criticality and impact, and then figure out which ones we want to tackle.
Yeah. Start small. And so, Scott, when a firm owner calls you and says, "Scott, I need help," how do you practically go about jumping in in the first few weeks? What are you going to do that's going to help them actually move ahead in understanding what they need to do? Yeah, that's good. Actually, Scott, this is a good way to wrap up: if a business owner is listening right now and wanted to begin implementing AI augmentation over the next 90 days, what would you tell them to do?
We have to start with an assessment, whether you're assessing yourself or whether you're having me come in and do an assessment for you. We're going to sit there and start with a 90-minute session. Figure out what's going on in your company. What are the issues you're having? Why are you having them?
And then start to look at the projects that are around those issues. What are they touching, who's touching them? And then let's tackle those issues one at a time. And it could be something that could take a week to fix, or it could be something that'll take 90 days to fix. Most companies don't have just one issue that's keeping them from being super efficient.
Yeah. So, we start small, and we build from there. And is there a commonality amongst firms, though, that a lot of CPA firms suffer from A, B, C, D, and E, etc., that you find? Not as much anymore. It used to be that everybody had multiple systems, and you had to enter all your data twice when you brought in a new customer or something like that.
But a lot of the practice management packages have fixed that. So now we have to be careful and look outside those things, or look at what's going on. How often do you have to touch that? How often does the data come out of that? How often do you have to work around that kind of system?
So I wouldn't want to say that there's a cookie-cutter approach, because every business is different, and you need to figure out what those differences are and how to tackle them most appropriately. Yeah, that makes sense. And one other question. Are there business processes that should not be automated? Probably not.
I don't think I've encountered one that should not be automated. I guess if I had to think about it, I would have to think twice before I start talking about some of the HR processes, when it gets into really personal information, that kind of process. I'm sure there are things you can do, but I'd have to think about that one. That's a good question. I don't know.
Yeah, thank you for that. I'm going to look into that. Are there processes that should not be automated? Get back to us. We like to ask questions that can't be answered on this podcast. That's a tough one.
I haven't encountered anything yet. I love it. Yeah. So, hey, Scott, what should be automated is what the company you're already paying for, like your practice management system, claims they do, but then it doesn't work as it's supposed to, right? That's a big thing. Or you bought it and then you found out that the thing you wanted is on their road map.
That's always fun. Oh, yeah. Well, that'll be ready in six months. And then six months from now, oh yeah, that'll be ready next quarter. So those are the processes that should be automated.
That's never happened to me. Right. All right. So, hey Scott, as we wrap up, is there a question that, coming into this, you thought we should ask and we didn't? Is there a question like that that comes to mind that we should have asked?
Well, really, the question that you should be asking is, how are businesses adjusting to the world of AI? And we did cover that a little bit, and really it is that your people need to know where their limits are. That's really the bottom line: you need to understand what AI can do, what AI can't do, what can be fixed by technology, and what is allowable. What do we need to do to make sure that we're covered from a liability standpoint, from a safety standpoint, from an informational standpoint, and make sure that we live within those guardrails? Okay, good.
And the place to start is what you said a few minutes ago in regard to my 90-day question: it's with that assessment. Yep. Okay. Yep. Reach out to me, we'll talk for a little while and figure out what the right next steps are, but most likely it's going to be with an assessment.
Come in and figure out where your bottlenecks are, what your gaps are, and then we'll start addressing them one by one. All right. Fantastic. Anything you want to promote today? And if folks want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
Reach out to me. My email is ssamborn, that's my first initial and last name, at aspenmg.net, or check out my website, aspenmg.net. And I don't have anything to promote right now, but I will definitely reach back out to you when I do. Okay, fair enough. Fantastic.
No golf tournaments for me this summer. Sorry. All right. Well, thank you, Scott. And listeners, if you'd like help building that more valuable, transferable business or getting ready for that eventual exit, you can reach Corby and me at email@ennislp.com.
And if you'd prefer to move forward through the planning process and get ready for that exit at your own pace, with occasional input from us, visit exitreadiness.com and explore our ExitReadiness® DIY™ platform. Thank you for listening. If you found today's conversation helpful, please consider liking it, sharing it, and then subscribing. Until next time on the ExitReadiness® PODCAST, this is Pat Ennis and Corby Megorden signing off.
