The Art of Steering

How AI and Analytics Keep Professional Services on Track

Professional services now run on speed, clarity, and confident decisions. This e-book shows how leading firms use data and AI to stay ahead — not just keep up.
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Professional services firms are under pressure from margin volatility, shifting client expectations, and unpredictable delivery. Yet most leaders still only see the full picture at month-end — when corrective actions come too late. This e-book reveals how early signals, live analytics, and simple AI assistance give you the advantage: spotting changes sooner, aligning teams faster, and taking action with confidence.

What You'll Learn

  • The key operational pressure points most services firms underestimate — and the early signals that reveal them sooner.

  • How leading organisations shift from explaining the past to steering the future, supported by real-time data and practical AI.

  • Where analytics and AI genuinely change decisions in finance, delivery, and operations — not just produce dashboards.

  • How CFOs, PMs, and Operations leaders align around shared, real-time insights to reduce surprises and act faster.

Who This E-Book Is For

This is not a theoretical whitepaper. It’s a pragmatic playbook built for project-led businesses, addressing:

Professional Services Firms with 100–5,000 employees

Leaders in Finance, PMO, Operations, Delivery, Practice Management

Organisations using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Business Data Cloud — or planning to

Teams struggling with utilisation swings, cash-flow delays, rising write-offs, or constant firefighting

If you run a services business and want clearer steering, this is for you!

What’s Inside

The e-book spans seven chapters packed with practical insights, including:

  • The five pressure points you can’t ignore – where services firms lose margin, predictability and control.

  • From hindsight to foresight – how leading firms shorten the loop from signal to decision.

  • Practical use cases across finance, delivery, and operations – explained through clear, relatable examples.

  • Dashboards that steer – how CFOs, PMs, and operations leaders use live data to align and act.

  • Predictive intelligence in action – what early, AI-assisted insights change in day-to-day decisions.

  • Building a better operating rhythm  – creating weekly and daily cadences that prevent surprises.

  • How SAP enables intelligent steering – SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Business AI as the foundation.

Each chapter offers frameworks, examples, and starter prompts you can use immediately. Get started now!
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