Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

The data is in – and it's not pretty. After surveying 303 agencies and consultancies through the Business Maturity Quiz, Scoro & The Handbook have launched The Maturity Gap Report, revealing just how wide the gap really is between the firms where operations is a strength and everyone else. In this webinar, Harv is joined by operations consultant Manish Kapur and FinOps expert Rich Brett to walk through the headline findings – and what they actually mean for the way your business is run.

Most agencies and consultancies have an abundance of tools in place – and yet they still can't tell you how profitable they actually are. Why? Because when you're starting out, the priority is winning business and delivering work. Operational excellence comes later. Processes come later. The tech stack? You grab whatever works. The result is an assortment of tools that aren't joined up – and when nothing's joined up, you don't have visibility.

Growing a professional services business often starts the same way: scrappy teams, generalists wearing multiple hats, and a lot of momentum driven by energy rather than structure. In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with Alex Bodini, CEO of Spin Brands, to unpack how Spin evolved from a grassroots social media shop into a multi-entity group of 100+ people. Rather than waiting for a crisis to force change, Alex and his co-founder made a conscious decision to professionalize the business so they could attract bigger clients, better talent, and more ambitious opportunities.

The work we produce gets all the attention. But the real question is: what’s happening behind the scenes that makes that work possible? In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with creative operations expert Nicky Russell, co-founder of WDC, We Deliver Change, and chair of the Creative Operations Summit in London. Together they explore the discipline of creative ops – the systems, culture, and leadership required to help creative teams do their best work.

As AI tools get more powerful, a fair question keeps coming up –– If AI can connect everything, do you still need a PSA? With AI agents, MCP, and a bit of low-code creativity, it can feel like you could stitch together your own operating stack. That assumption misses an important distinction –– AI is an accelerator. It’s not infrastructure. For professional services businesses, reliability, structure, and trust come from having a clear system of record underneath it all. That’s what makes automation sustainable, reporting credible, and decisions defensible.

AI is quickly becoming the control center for operations teams. MCP is the next step – letting AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, securely connect to your systems and actually take action, not just respond to prompts. But there’s a catch. AI doesn’t fix messy operations. If your information is scattered across tools, spreadsheets, and workarounds, AI just amplifies the mess. The real value shows up when there’s a clear system of record underneath it all.

Ops Quickies – we're back with another snackable episode. This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered: Is my business actually set up to scale – or are we just surviving? Harv breaks down: Why business maturity matters What it really means (hint: it’s not about headcount or revenue) Why most service businesses get stuck at the early stages And how you can quickly benchmark where you stand today...

When businesses talk about “productizing,” they often picture cookie-cutter scopes and rigid templates. But according to Brian Kessman, that’s missing the point. Brian is the founder of Lodestar Consulting, and he’s spent 25 years helping agencies and consultancies scale without burning out teams or eroding margins. His approach isn’t about productizing services – it’s about productizing value. In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Brian and Harv dig into what that really means, and how it can transform both your client relationships and your bottom line.

From the outside, M&A can seem like a clean transaction – a new parent company, a logo change, a cheerful announcement. But inside? The reality is messier. Integration. Culture clashes. Reporting headaches. And a long list of decisions that determine whether the deal actually works. Dom Hawes has lived both sides. After his own agency was acquired (badly), he went on to build Selbey Anderson – a marketing services group backed by private equity, designed from day one to scale through M&A.

New series alert: Ops Quickies — snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. We're kicking off with a big question wrapped in The Clunkiest Acronym: what the heck is a PSA... or professional services automation platform? Harv explains why the name’s a problem, what this kind of platform actually does, and why service businesses need to start paying attention. If you've got any questions about ops tech, PSAs, or Scoro, drop me a message on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you – and might even turn it into a mini episode.