Professional services teams are under pressure to deliver more with less, and the answer is not simply automating tasks, but scaling the expertise that differentiates firms and creates value for their customers. Basware has figured this out and is teaming with Kantata to make it happen. And on October 20, Mark Johnston, Chief Customer Officer of Basware, will join Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, at Technology & Services World in Las Vegas to share the story of Basware’s journey from AI experimentation to AI-enabled delivery and the business transformation it is driving.
From Chaos to Control
Basware’s journey started with a foundational problem: “Our services organization was low-margin, slow to scope, slow to staff, and I couldn’t tell you whether the software we were running the business on was actually working for us,” Johnston recalls.
So Johnston and his team set out to build a stronger foundation and identify where AI could have the greatest operational and customer impact. They quickly realized the opportunity was bigger than simply automating tasks to work faster.
“AI can do the heavy lifting on routine work, but the real opportunity is using it to scale the expertise of our people,” Johnston said. “Every customer environment at Basware is unique, and that’s where our people make the difference. What if we could take what our best people know – their judgment, their patterns, their experience – and make that available consistently across every project and every customer? That’s where AI gets really interesting, and the direction we are moving.”
Where AI Meets Expertise
To make this vision a reality, Basware implemented the Kantata PSA Platform and focused first on the fundamentals: automating billing. Now, it is expanding into three additional areas, using AI to transform the way it delivers services and drive key business outcomes:
- Smarter Resource Management: An AI agent powered by the Kantata Expertise Engine helps Basware services managers determine how to staff projects as timelines and requirements change, matching the right people to the right accounts while protecting margins and delivery quality.
- Faster, Better Implementations: AI embedded across the platform allows Basware to delegate the repetitive work that is standard for all implementations to AI while scaling its human expertise to manage tasks that are unique to each customer – where its real value lies.
- Automated Documentation: AI can generate and send project documentation to customers, removing a time-consuming administrative burden so that professional services teams can focus on engaging with customers and delivering expertise.
From Efficiency to Impact
And the strategy is already paying dividends.
Customer success managers who once spent four to five hours a day on research before a customer call are now spending that time on the phone instead – capacity Johnston says could let the company double revenue with its existing CSM team rather than adding headcount.
In customer support, an agent now manages roughly half of the 10,000 monthly tickets submitted by non-paying customers of Basware’s customers, resolving them faster and more clearly and lifting satisfaction.
“In professional services, automation is table stakes. Expertise is the differentiator. And the challenge is scaling it without diluting what makes it valuable,” said Speranza. “Basware is showing what that can look like in practice, using AI to take the work off its experts’ plates so they can spend more time doing what customers actually pay for – solving problems, applying judgment, and delivering outcomes.”
