AI Knowhow, Episode 87 Overview
Skating to where the puck will be? Not enough. In professional services, it’s all about anticipating where your client—the skater—is headed next. But how do you stay ahead when clients start zigging, zagging, and getting slammed into the boards? How can you get out in front of these strategic pivots before they even happen?
This episode of AI Knowhow tackles that challenge head-on. Knownwell CMO Courtney Baker is joined by CEO David DeWolf and Chief Product and Technology Officer Mohan Rao to unpack how AI can empower service leaders to become true strategic navigators. They explore why staying close to clients, decoding digital breadcrumbs, and scaling the “trusted advisor” model are essential in today’s AI-driven landscape.
Anticipation vs. Reaction
David emphasizes the paradox inherent in professional services: becoming a trusted advisor makes scaling difficult. He highlights the necessity of intimately understanding client businesses, industries, competitors, and economic ecosystems. According to David, the key lies in synthesizing information across multiple sources, leveraging cross-industry insights, and proactively advising clients, even if the recommendations aren’t directly beneficial to your own services. “Those types of recommendations are what fuel great, trusted advisor relationships,” David says.
Leveraging AI to Anticipate Client Needs
Mohan highlights the role AI can play in anticipating client shifts through digital footprints. “The data is always there,” Mohan says. “The question is, can you take these signals, amplify them, and get them to the right people in time?” Digital traces such as industry disruptions, budget reallocations, and internal communications can be effectively harnessed by AI to reveal strategic opportunities or threats well in advance.
Practical Steps for Proactive Advising
The team shares clear, actionable insights professional services leaders can follow to ensure they’re passing the puck where the skater will be:
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Develop Deep Industry Insight: David recommends, “You’ve got to know your client’s business better than they do. Act like an insider studying their customers, competitors, market trends, and more.”
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Speak the Client’s Language: Clients trust advisors who demonstrate clear industry fluency and credibility. David noted the importance of understanding industry-specific terms and nuances to authentically engage clients.
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Proactive Engagement: Being proactive isn’t optional; it’s fundamental. Courtney reflects on the missed opportunity several providers she worked with missed when they failed to proactively address big issues on the horizon like the advent of GDPR: “It felt like a missed opportunity. Their proactiveness and thought leadership totally would’ve shifted the game.”
Expert Interview: Ardy Tripathy of OpsCanvas
For this week’s expert interview segment, Pete Buer sits down with Ardy Tripathy, AI lead at OpsCanvas, to explore how his team is using AI to automate infrastructure intelligently. Ardy shares a refreshingly honest rubric for evaluating AI use cases and explains how he turns high-potential features into real, verifiable products.
He emphasizes evaluating AI based on clear data availability, contextual understanding, and ease of verification, stating: “Think of AI as an enthusiastic intern that somehow suffers from amnesia. They are very diligent. They’ll lift rocks around and do the thing you ask them, but they’re going to forget it five minutes later because their context window is limited.”
Ardy also highlights the importance of keeping AI use cases realistic and focused: “If you can verify the output easily, whether programmatically or through human oversight, that’s a potentially good use case for AI.” Noting the continuously evolving nature of AI, Ardy stresses the necessity for agility in decision-making, acknowledging the rapid changes in AI capabilities and costs that businesses must continuously monitor.
Listen to the Episode
You can tune in to the full episode via the Spotify embed below, and you can find AI Knowhow on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Show Notes
- Connect with Ardy Tripathy on LinkedIn
- Learn more about OpsCanvas
- Connect with David DeWolf on LinkedIn
- Connect with Mohan Rao on LinkedIn
- Connect with Courtney Baker on LinkedIn
- Connect with Pete Buer on LinkedIn
- Watch a guided Knownwell demo
- Follow Knownwell on LinkedIn
