In July 2026, SPI Research and sa.global brought together experts in professional services performance and AI enablement to explore a growing challenge for architecture, engineering and accounting firms: the gap between adopting AI and achieving meaningful business impact.
SPI Research’s latest research indicates a direct relationship between a firm’s position on the AI maturity curve and its advancement through the Professional Services Maturity Model™. The firms beginning to pull ahead are not simply using more AI tools. They are applying AI more strategically across project delivery, resource management, financial performance and client outcomes.
In this on-demand webinar, Dave Hofferberth of Service Performance Insight joins Diek Muller and Stefanie Richter of SA.Global to examine what separates AI leaders from followers and what firms can do to move from experimentation towards measurable operational value.
Moving beyond AI experimentation
For many organisations, the first stage of AI adoption has focused on personal productivity. Employees use AI to draft content, answer questions, summarise information and accelerate routine administrative work.
These applications can deliver useful efficiency gains, but they do not automatically change how the organisation performs.
Greater value begins to emerge when AI moves beyond isolated employee tasks and becomes part of the firm’s wider operating model. This includes using trusted data and connected systems to support decisions about project margins, resource allocation, delivery risk, utilisation and client service.
The webinar explores why two firms can invest in similar technologies but achieve very different results. The distinction is often not the AI tool itself. It is the maturity of the organisation surrounding it, including its leadership, processes, data, governance and ability to turn insights into action.
AI maturity as a performance lever
For nearly two decades, SPI’s Professional Services Maturity Model™ has helped project-driven organisations understand their current performance and identify the capabilities required to reach the next level of maturity.
The model examines performance across five pillars:
- Leadership and strategy
- Client relationships
- Talent management
- Service execution
- Finance and operations
The webinar connects this established framework with SPI’s research into the impact of AI on professional services. It considers how more mature applications of AI can help firms improve the quality and speed of operational decisions across these pillars.
Rather than treating AI as a separate technology initiative, firms can use it as a practical mechanism for improving the way work is planned, delivered, measured and managed.
What you will learn
- Where architecture, engineering, accounting and other professional services firms currently sit on the AI maturity curve
- Where the performance divide between AI leaders and followers is beginning to emerge
- The relationship between AI maturity and advancement through the Professional Services Maturity Model™
- Why AI programmes can stall even when firms have invested in capable technology
- How firms can move from individual productivity tools to operational use cases
- What AI-enabled decision-making could mean for project margin, resource efficiency and client outcomes
These issues are particularly relevant to leaders evaluating further AI investment and those seeking a clearer path from experimentation to measurable business impact.