Innovation Done Well: Lessons From a Forward-Thinking Client

What One Business Teaches Us About Doing More With What You’ve Got

Innovation doesn’t always look like flying cars or billion-dollar R&D budgets.

Sometimes, it looks like rethinking a daily task, one that quietly consumes time across dozens of team members and turning it into a strategic unlock.

We’re currently working with a business in the professional services space quietly doing innovation right. They’ve taken a long-term view, built a strong internal strategy, and made the decision to innovate how they deliver services, not just what they deliver.

The result? A change that reduces a daily task by 1.5 hours per team member.

That might not sound revolutionary, until you realise over 80 client-facing people do that task every day.

That’s a potential 600 hours every week they’ve just freed up, or the best part of a day a week per person!

For them it’s more than just an efficiency win, this creates space for their people to do higher-value work, test new service ideas and shift focus from being time-poor to opportunity-rich.

They’re now exploring what it would take to move toward value-based billing and thinking about how to scale innovation, not just execute it once. More importantly, they’ve done this without needing to overhaul their entire business model.

It’s a great reminder that innovation doesn’t have to be disruptive. Sometimes the smartest move is reducing friction in what you’re already doing, because time is the ultimate enabler.

The real magic? They didn’t start with the technology. They started with strategy, intent, and a vision for how their business could serve clients better.

For any business leader wondering where to start, maybe it’s not about what’s new that you could build, but rather what you could stop doing.

That 1.5-hour change could be hiding in your own business right now.

If you’re curious about what opportunities could be sitting unnoticed in your business, take some time and think about what you could do if you freed up almost a day a week per person across your team.

We’ve seen what’s possible when strategy leads innovation, and as this example demonstrates it doesn’t have to start with a full business overhaul and massive investments.