Professional Services Automation for Agencies and AEC Firms
When your service is your product, every untracked hour is margin walking out the door. We install the production-grade automation automation layer that fixes utilization, proposal turnaround, and billing leakage - built on your existing stack.
Our professional services client
FirePlan Strategies
A professional services firm running on billable hours, with quote-to-cash and delivery automated end to end.
Read the case studyIn a service business, margin leaks in five quiet places.
One operations automation layer that runs the service P&L.
Margin protection is the deliverable.
What We Automate for Professional Services
Eight modules that cover the service business operating layer. Each one ships in production and feeds the next.
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Proposal Generation
Branded proposals built from CRM data, standard pricing, and a scope library. A 4-hour proposal becomes a 15-minute review. Same look, every PM, every client. AI drafts the narrative; humans approve before send.
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Project Setup from Signed Deal
When a deal closes in HubSpot or Salesforce, the project auto-creates in ClickUp, Asana, Monday, or Notion. Folder structure, task templates, kickoff email, billing schedule - all populated from the deal record. Zero copy-paste.
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Time-Tracking Enforcement
Automated reminders, missing-time flagging, and weekly compliance dashboards. Hubstaff, Harvest, and Toggl wired into the project layer so consultants log against real tasks, not 'admin'. Compliance moves from 75% to 95%+ in weeks.
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Utilization & Margin Reporting
Live dashboards showing utilization by consultant, margin by client, and project health against budget. Pulled from time, CRM, and accounting data. The numbers a managing partner actually wants on a Monday.
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Client Portals & Status Updates
Automated weekly client updates pulled from project status, plus per-client portals with deliverable status, invoices, and document history. Replaces the partner's Friday-afternoon status-email habit.
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Billing & WIP Capture
Time-to-bill pipelines that close the gap between work done and invoice sent. Recurring retainers, fixed-fee progress, and T&M all handled in one flow. AR aging dashboard built in.
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Document Management
Contracts, SOWs, deliverables, and project artifacts auto-filed in Egnyte, Google Drive, or SharePoint with consistent naming. No more 'where's the final version?' on day 30 of a project.
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Compliance & Audit Trail
For AEC firms and regulated consultancies: licensure tracking, certificate-of-insurance renewals, project-record retention, and audit-ready logs. Built into the automation layer, not bolted on.
Three Flavors of Professional Services We Serve
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CONSULTING & ADVISORY
Management consultancies, fractional CFOs, IT advisory, strategy boutiques. Pain: utilization, proposal velocity, partner reporting. We've shipped this work for firms like a fractional CFO practice that recovered ~$54K/year and 480 hours through one connected automation layer. -
MARKETING & CREATIVE AGENCIES
Marketing agencies, design studios, content shops, dev shops. Pain: project-margin leakage, client-status churn, time-tracking compliance. We connect ClickUp/Asana to your CRM and billing so retainer math actually reflects reality. -
AEC - ARCHITECTURE, ENGINEERING, CONSTRUCTION SERVICES
Structural engineering firms, architects, construction services, MEP consultants. Pain: proposal complexity, calc-sheet documentation, certificate-of-occupancy paperwork. We've cut RFP response prep from 14 hours to under 2 for a structural engineering firm by automating the proposal-assembly layer.
How it worked for Fire Plan Strategies
Facility Services - Fire Safety Compliance How Fire Plan Strategies Eliminated 230 Manual Hours a Month
Lead intake, quotes, invoicing and certificates, automated
- ~230 hrs / monthManual ops time eliminated
- 14 days → 2 daysTime-to-payment
"This is music to my ears. Our accountant is definitely going to love this because she's not going to have to do invoices anymore. The admin staff is also going to love it because they're not going to have to manually do each one of those certificates."
Mariano VelazcoManaging Partner How 2V Builds the operations layer
One deep operations module + two integration layers. Together they replace the cross-tool admin that's eating your billable hours.
operations layer
The connected core that runs your service P&L:
Quote-to-Cash
Signed deal → project setup → billing schedule → invoice → AR follow-up, all connected. Cuts the days-long handoff between sales and delivery to minutes. See /systems/quote-to-cash-automation for the standalone module.
Time → Billing Pipeline
Time entries from Hubstaff/Harvest/Toggl flow into project records, validated against scope, then into invoice drafts. Billable hours that used to slip through manual aggregation now get captured by default.
Utilization Reporting
Live dashboards showing per-consultant, per-team, per-client utilization with margin overlay. Refreshed nightly from your time, project, and accounting data. The Friday-afternoon Excel ritual disappears.
Document Generation
Proposals, SOWs, change orders, and deliverables generated from data, not Word templates. AI drafts narrative sections; humans approve before send. Standard look across every PM.
Client Status Portals
Per-client web portals showing project status, deliverable history, invoice status, and document library. Replaces the manual 'status email' a partner used to send every Friday.
Custom AI Agents
AI agents grounded in your project history that draft proposals, summarize calls into CRM notes, triage inbound RFPs against your scope library, and flag scope creep before it eats your margin. Built into the automation layer, not bolted on as a chatbot.
Integration Layer
We don't make you switch PM tools. ClickUp, Asana, Monday, Notion, Wrike - we build native-first into all of them. Same for CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), time (Hubstaff, Harvest, Toggl), and accounting (QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe). If the API exists, we wire it.
How We Install It
Five phases from kickoff to live automation layer. Each one delivers measurable value before the next begins.
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Step 1. Discovery Workshop
Half-day with founders, ops lead, and one or two senior PMs. We map your current cycle tool-by-tool and surface the top 5 ROI opportunities. Output: a prioritized 12-month automation roadmap. The discovery week is priced separately and the assets are yours either way.
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Step 2. Roadmap & Scope
We translate the workshop output into a concrete first build scope - which modules, which integrations, which dashboards, which milestones. Every module has a measurable ROI target before we cut a single line of code.
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Step 3. First build
Four weeks of production engineering. We install the core modules - typically quote-to-cash, time-to-billing, and one reporting dashboard - on your existing stack. Built on n8n + native APIs with monitoring, error handling, and rollback baked in.
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Step 4. go-live & Training
Single-day migration to the new flow. Old workflows stay running in parallel for a week as a safety net. Team training is built into the rollout, not a separate week of off-site enablement.
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Step 5. Ongoing
Once a build is live it runs without us. If you want us to keep improving it, we agree that separately. Most clients add 3-5 modules in year one - utilization forecasting, custom AI agents, client portals - without renegotiating scope.
Why 2V
Why Production-Grade Matters When Margin Is the Product
20+ years of engineering
We're production engineers who learned professional services by fixing operations for consultancies, agencies, and AEC firms. We don't sell theory - we ship systems that hold under real load.
Native-first integration
ClickUp, Asana, Monday, HubSpot, Salesforce, QuickBooks, Xero, Hubstaff, Harvest, Egnyte, SharePoint - all built native-first, not through Zapier middleware. Production stacks need production integration.
Your stack, not ours
There is no 2V platform. Everything we build runs in your accounts, on your subscriptions, owned by you. If we part ways, the automation layer stays. You're never locked in.
Agency-margin pricing
Builds are priced per project: most take three to six weeks and land between $6,000 and $24,000. Once a build is live it runs without us. If you want us to keep improving it, we agree that separately. Calibrated for service-business P&Ls, not enterprise SaaS budgets. We only take work where we can prove ROI in six months.
Ongoing Further builds
We don't do one-shot project bills. The automation layer compounds over a retainer relationship - new modules, new integrations, new dashboards as your firm scales. Most clients add 3-5 modules in year one.
What clients say
"The team at 2V understood the project and completed it with minimal questions. Great communication, delivered on time."
"As a founder I was personally spending 360 hours a year just on client communication. 2V automated the entire thing. That time is mine again."
Stack We Connect To
Professional services firms typically run 10-15 of these tools - we wire them as one system. 137 tools in production overall.
137 toolsWired into production automation layers
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
CRM
TIME & UTILIZATION
BILLING & ACCOUNTING
DOCS & E-SIGN
COMMS
Engagement
Every engagement starts with a half-day Discovery Workshop and a written automation roadmap. From there we build one project at a time, in roadmap order. Once a build is live it runs without us. If you want us to keep improving it, we agree that separately.
Our pricing is calibrated for $1M+ professional services firms - not enterprise SaaS budgets. If the discovery week cannot show six-month payback, we don't take the build.
Automation Discovery Week
Builds
Ongoing
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions from consultancies, agencies, and AEC firms.
Do you serve very small services firms (under $1M)?
We focus on $1M+ firms because that's where automation ROI math actually works. Below $1M, there usually aren't enough repeated cycles to pay back a first build in six months. We'll tell you honestly, and if you're too early we'll point you at the pre-automation playbook instead.
Can you work with our existing project-management tool, or do we need to switch?
Yes, we work with what you have in 95% of cases. ClickUp, Asana, Monday, Notion, Wrike, Smartsheet - all native-first integrations. Switching PM tools mid-engagement costs more than the automation gain in almost every case.
We're a 30-person consultancy - what does an engagement look like?
Typical 30-person consultancy: half-day workshop, then a first build covering quote-to-cash + time-to-billing + utilization reporting. Once a build is live it runs without us. If you want us to keep improving it, we agree that separately. Most see ROI inside 90 days.
How do you handle time-tracking adoption - won't consultants resist it?
Adoption is the actual hard part. We solve it with automated reminders, missing-time flagging in Slack, and weekly compliance dashboards visible to leadership. The trick is to make logging time take less than 30 seconds - which means wiring it to existing project records, not a separate tool. Compliance typically goes from 75% to 95%+ in weeks.
Can you integrate with Unanet / Ajera / Deltek for AEC firms?
Yes. We've shipped production integrations against Unanet Cosential, Ajera, and Deltek Vantagepoint via their REST APIs and ODBC layers. AEC stacks are some of our most complex builds - we have patterns for proposal automation, calc-sheet documentation, and project-record retention specific to engineering services firms.
What's the ROI math for an agency at our scale?
Range: 15-25% of consultant capacity recovered, 10-15% billing-leakage recovered, 30-50% faster proposal turnaround. Plug your numbers into /tools/roi-calculator for a concrete estimate or take the Automation Discovery Week for a tailored read.
Do you replace our offshore ops team?
No, and we usually argue against it. Automation handles the repeated, structured work; your ops team handles the judgment-heavy work that doesn't automate well. Most clients keep the ops team and stop hiring against headcount as they grow - that's where the margin gain shows up.
What happens if we want to bring this in-house later?
Everything we build runs on your accounts, your APIs, your stack - there is no 2V platform to migrate off of. We hand over documented workflows, monitoring dashboards, and runbooks. Most clients keep us on retainer because hiring an internal automation engineer costs more than a full-coverage retainer; but the choice is always yours.
Start with an Automation Discovery Week
The discovery week surfaces where your professional services firm leaks margin, which processes would pay back fastest, and whether we're the right fit to build them. Build-ready assets, yours whether we work together or not.
Or read the Contrail Financial case study for the automation layer playbook applied to a fractional CFO practice, browse /solutions/operations-automation, or see the how-to-automate-professional-services guide for the full pattern library.