AI-powered micro-services business & Expert Leaders
The transfer of value in HR Services with AI
My POV is that AI will not serve all mid-level B2B end-clients alone but will be the power tool for verticals.
We are experiencing the rise of expert leaders in AI-powered micro-services business opportunities in HR.
Why now?
EQbuddy, early adopter clients, are expert HR service leaders in hiring & consulting who have become small (10-50 people) & micro-services business (2--9 people) owners.
Why is this happening?
Because experts desire more freedom, their employers have suddenly requested more days in the office, and the expert leader feels undervalued. This creates a political tug-of-war, not to mention of RIFs.
However, the future is bright for these leaders as they are poised if they have already taken steps to establish their expert consulting practice powered by AI.
What’s the Market?
The expert leaders of the Microservices business, AKA our AI community, focus on delivering a functional service, typically in a small-midsize company's department where budget is a concern for a full-time HR service.
By selling HR services as 'billable,' expert leaders can significantly impact the top and bottom line, giving them a sense of empowerment and control over their career path.
The irony is that the Expert service leaders end up working with the same mid-large company in a parallel universe with the only meaningful differences:
Employment modality, i.e., a 1099 or LLC VS of a W2
Corporations hire on-demand for specific domain expertise instead of generalists for full-time HR functions, work remotely, and are compensated for outcomes or hours rather than a total comp package with all the bells.
Also, as a side note, I recently discovered from an event that a well-known consulting firm cuts all 60-year-old partners. Not only does that sound off, with 60 being the new 40, but a lot of knowledge is being lost, forcing executives to develop more fractional and portfolio careers.
The need from the Lean expert leader to serve their client (Mid-large HR clients) is to:
Find clients and provide timely wisdom.
Why? Because the HR service job is to aggregate actionable information, merge it with knowledge, inspect with wisdom and implement with confidence.
AI Adoption is the key to actual value creation, for the new universe must fall into place in favour of the expert HR services leader.
Where is the value creation going?
What is the outcome?
The Lean Expert leaders deliver an expert AI-enabled service 10x faster and less expensive.
The expert leader is compensated by their end client, mainly in the vertical they have built a relationship with and trust with high-touch expert experience and are now empowered to book a high-margin revenue fee and then register a cost on their PNL for the AI service, which they acquired invisibly.Â
The Expert Leader's client registers "HR consulting services" in their PNL at a lower rate than a large consulting firm or in-house team. The end client is now using a nimble AI-enabled service provider with fast, expert knowledge and ownership by a trusted leader from the industry.
Finally, what about the incumbents?
M&A and Partnership Opportunities
Lean expert leaders clients want a team of experts, which will continue to squeeze the spend on general big consulting and, in turn, squeeze their suppliers of smaller firms who rely on them.
Large consulting vendors will consider investing in these AI-enabled service companies while trying to crush them.
Some will be reluctant to sell a high-quality lifestyle business; end clients will see a more extensive diversity of AI-enabled expert service providers at a lower overall cost.
There will be opportunities to partner with AI-enabled businesses that require a trusted reputation and direct relationships with large enterprises, high-barrier healthcare end clients, serving evergreen industries like biotech and government end clients; the HR services lean leaders make money from knowledge, not just information. This means it must be applied.
If you have or are considering building a small or micro HR services business, we would love to share our products and insights in the community to help you succeed in using AI.
Please send the message to an expert leader with an HR microservices business.