Basware, the global leader in Invoice Lifecycle Management, is working with Kantata, a leading provider of Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions, to move its professional services organization beyond routine task automation and toward scaling the expertise that differentiates the business. The companies will outline that transformation at Technology & Services World in Las Vegas on October 20, where Mark Johnston, Chief Customer Officer of Basware, will join Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, to share how Basware progressed from AI experimentation to AI-enabled delivery and the business transformation it is driving.

Professional services teams are under growing pressure to deliver more with less. PSA platforms are the operational systems those teams run on, coordinating project staffing, billing, and delivery, so weakness in that layer shows up directly in margins and customer outcomes. For Basware, the answer was not simply automating tasks, but finding ways to scale the expertise that creates value for customers across every engagement.

From Chaos to Control

Basware's effort began with a foundational operational 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.

Johnston and his team set out to build a stronger foundation and identify where AI could deliver the greatest operational and customer impact. They quickly concluded that the opportunity extended well beyond 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 put that vision into practice, Basware implemented the Kantata PSA Platform and concentrated first on the fundamentals: automating billing. The company is now expanding into three additional areas that use AI to transform how 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 in all implementations to AI, while scaling human expertise toward tasks that are unique to each customer – where its real value lies.
• Automated Documentation: AI generates and sends 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

The strategy is already producing measurable results. Customer success managers who once spent four to five hours a day on research before a customer call now spend that time on the phone with customers instead – capacity that Johnston says could allow the company to double revenue with its existing CSM team rather than adding headcount.

In customer support, an AI 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."

Johnston and Speranza will take the stage at TSW for "Congratulations, You Hired an AI Agent! Now Who's Managing Its Margin?," a fireside chat in which they will discuss what it takes to move AI from experimentation to real-world delivery and share practical tips and lessons learned about operationalizing AI and measuring the real economics of AI-enabled delivery.