From Buried in Data to Lightning Fast Insights

How we slashed research time by 92% for a top executive recruitment firm

Who's the Client?

A fast-moving executive career management company with about 100 people. They help C-suite leaders land premium roles - and their success hinges on rock-solid research.

What Was the Problem?

Their research team was drowning in work. Each company report took up to 3 hours to create, and with more clients coming in, the team was hitting a wall. Something had to change.

What Did We Want to Do?

Pretty straightforward - we wanted to:

• •Dramatically faster research without quality drops

• •Help the research team work smarter, not replace them

• •Free up time for high-value client work

• •Increase capacity without adding headcount

• •Quick wins to prove value from day one

How Did We Fix It?

The Game Plan

1. .Shadowed the research team to understand their exact process

1. .Spotted where AI could make the biggest impact

1. .Built the solution step by step

1. .Kept tweaking until it worked like a charm

What We Built

An AI system that:

• •Handles the grunt work of data collection automatically

• •Standardizes report structure and quality

• •Gives researchers a 90% completed foundation to build on

• •Frees the team to focus on analysis, not data gathering

The Results? Cold, Hard Numbers

After implementation:

• •Research time slashed from 3 hours to just 15 minutes per report (92% reduction)

• •Weekly research time cut from 60 hours to just 3 hours 20 minutes

• •Saving 30+ hours weekly (that's basically a free full-time employee)

• •Processing 2,500+ reports in just 5 months

• •Team capacity increased by 60% without adding headcount

• •More consistent quality across all deliverables

What Did We Learn?

1. Yeah, AI isn't perfect - we had to deal with:

• •Sometimes it made stuff up

• •Inconsistent writing style

• •Occasional slowdowns

• •AI being... well, sometimes stubborn

2. What Made It Work:

• •Kept our eyes on the prize (actual business results)

• •Worked closely with the people who'd use it

• •Kept improving bit by bit

• •Found the sweet spot between AI and human smarts

The Bottom Line

When your team spends 60 hours weekly on research alone, something has to give. Our system didn't just make things faster - it completely transformed how they work.

The math is stunning: We gave each researcher back 28+ hours every week. That's not just efficiency - it's like hiring a whole new team without the overhead. The researchers now spend their time on what actually matters: strategic thinking and client relationships, not data gathering.