As Artificial Intelligent (AI) Chatbots and Agents become increasingly adopted and as enterprises increasingly look for better value for money from their creative, proferssional and tech services providers, the linear billable people hours business model is under threat and in decline.

Knowledge-intensive services firms have long relied on a linear revenue model where income is directly tied to hours worked. However, the advent of AI has disrupted this structure. Tools like generative AI can draft documents, analyse data, and streamline workflows in a fraction of the time once required, reducing billable hours.

While AI enhances efficiency, it paradoxically squeezes profitability as fixed costs (e.g., salaries, overhead) do not scale down proportionally. A study by McKinsey & Company (2023)² highlights that AI could automate up to 30% of tasks in professional services by 2030, amplifying this trend. The result is a shrinking margin where revenue growth cannot outpace cost increases.

In an increasingly competitive and dynamic market landscape, organisations who are inherently knowledge-intensive services operations face inherent limitations tied to the linear model of hourly-based services, where costs simply grow linearly with revenue.

To transcend these constraints and unlock sustainable, scalable growth, Going Non-Linear offers a transformative strategy that leverages your organisation's existing expertise - a brainware-to-software digital innovation - resulting in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ventures emerging.

Knowledge-intensive organisations can leverage AI-powered technologies, in the form of SaaS apps, to move beyond linear operational models and adopt strategies and initiatives that allow for exponential growth¹. This means encountering and overcoming several challenges:

• Geographical Constraints. Expanding to new regions increases workforce costs.
• Customer Dependency. High reliance on fewer customers means delays and losses.
• Resource Allocation. Fluctuating demand leads to inefficiencies in resource utilisation.
• Competitive Pressures. Increasing competition drives down rates, eroding value.

These challenges necessitate a strategic pivot towards more scalable, predictable and recurring model. Hence, Going Non-Linear.

Who?

With the emergence of AI and a growing questioning of the billable hours business model, any creative, professional or tech services firm is facing a significant decline in business¹. As AI Agents become Copilots augmenting human labour, whilst this increases productivity per person, in the absence of organic growth of business-as-usual, it will ievitably lead to job cuts.

When you look at the trajectory of innovation, AI Agents will emerge as Coworkers: not merely augmenting but replacing human labour. Although this may start with low value, repetitive tasks, over time, this AI Automation will eat further into higher-value knowledge worker roles.

So, if you lead a creative, professional or tech services firm now is a good time to consider embarking on a Going Non-Linear transformation and the next section of this post provides you with a strong argument for doing it now.

Why?

As a creative, professional or tech services firm, with a SaaS venture you can achieve 5-10x annual revenues⁶ as an exit valuation of the firm versus <1x annual revenues with a linear, billable hours services firm. Add to this the limitless expansion of a SaaS business versus the challenges of the same with a billable hours services business and you have a compelling reason to do this!

By harnessing the power of Design Thinking³ and Value Engineering⁴ at Being Guided we can help you to build a solid case for transformation to Going Non-Linear and getting beyond a linear revenue model. This is a surprisingly easy and low risk move to make, as you will see blow.

How?

As market demands evolve and technology advances, there is now a pressing need for knowledge-intensive services firms to innovate beyond linear hours. Here's how. This means embracing a combination of AI and No-Code digital innovation, underpinned by Design Thinking and Value Engineering.

Going Non-Linear presents a strategic, safe pathway to transform your organisation's intellectual capital into scalable SaaS solutions, ensuring sustained growth, increased customer experience and competitive differentiation in the marketplace.

Going Non-Linear is a comprehensive strategy designed to unlock the hidden potential within your organisations's expertise by transforming brainware into software. This approach enables you to:

• Enhanced Scalability. Develop apps marketed globally with no increases in workforce.
• Increased Margins. Technology to deliver more efficiently, reducing operational costs.
• Improved Client Engagement. Offer innovative tools that provide deeper client relationships.
• Strengthened Position. Establishing as a leader in innovation within your industry.

By adhering to these principles, we commit to work at Being Guided that starts with identifying and engaging your early adopter clients for new digitised services delivered on a SaaS technology. We will work with you through the entire process to timely monetisation of SaaS.

At Being Guided we believe that this collaborative approach will lead to greater customer satisfaction, stronger product-market fit, and ultimately, greater success. Now let's take a look at the technology we use to enable Going Non-Linear.

What?

At Being Guided we deliver No-Code innovation and SaaS solutions on a world-class technology: Google AppSheet, powered by Google Gemini AI. Going Non-Linear addresses the declining linear revenue challenge by introducing No-code apps rapidly and at low cost.

Google AppSheet, acquired by Google in 2020, exemplifies this low-cost, low risk approach with Going Non-Linear by enabling firms to create apps from existing data sources like Google Sheets or Salesforce, while Gemini AI enhances these apps with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI generative capabilities⁷.

If you are a Google Workspace customer with Business Plus licences, AppSheet is free. At Being Guided we can deliver fixed-price Annual Subscription Fees for your first SaaS app, including the complete design, development support, starting at just £6,000 per annum.

Let's Meet to explore this further.

References

1. Iansiti, M., & Lakhani, K. R. (2020). Competing in the age of AI: How AI is redefining business strategies. Harvard Business Review, 98 (1), 60-67.
   https://hbr.org/2020/01/competing-in-the-age-of-ai
2. McKinsey & Company. (2023). Valuing high-growth companies. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/valuing-high-growth-companies
3. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. (2004) Stanford d.school. https://dschool.stanford.edu/about
4. Miles, L.D. (1947). The Lawrence D. Miles Value Engineering Reference Center Collection.
   https://minds.wiscon.edu/handle/1793/301
5. Jobs, S. (1997) Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
   https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Worldwide_Developers_Conference
6. Bessemer Venture Partners. (2022). The state of the cloud 2022: SaaS valuation benchmarks. https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-the-cloud-2022
7. Google Cloud. (2023). AppSheet: No-code app development. https://cloud.google.com/appsheet