By Brendan Richards, Founder & Senior Advisor, Rebound Advisory
I used to brief a team of three to build a financial model for a distressed client. It would take a week. Sometimes longer.
Today I can produce the analytical foundation for that same model - the same level of detail, the same structure - in an hour or two. The specialist modelling work still needs a specialist, for now. But the volume of preparatory analysis that used to surround it has compressed dramatically.
That's not an exaggeration. That's not aspirational. That's what I did last Tuesday.
"This changes the economics of advisory work fundamentally."
For the last 30 years, the professional services model has been built on a pyramid. Partners at the top generating the work. Layers underneath doing the work. The margin comes from marking up junior time.
When I started Rebound three years ago, I made a deliberate bet that this model was going to shift. That the analytical heavy lifting - the research, the data structuring, the scenario work - would be compressed by technology to the point where the pyramid didn't need to be as tall, or exist at all.
That's happening now, faster than most people expected.
What's left when you strip that layer back is the stuff that actually matters. The judgement call on whether a business is viable. The negotiation with a lender who has heard every story before. The ability to sit across from a director who hasn't slept in three weeks and give them a clear, honest view of where they stand.
Experience. Relationships. Nerve.
I don't think there's only one right way to build an advisory firm around that reality. But I do think there are a lot of experienced people sitting inside large firms right now who already sense this shift - and who know that their value has always been in the judgement, not the pyramid underneath them.
The compression of analytical work doesn't diminish the value of experience. It amplifies it. When the scaffolding falls away, what's left is the advisor - their read of the room, their relationships with lenders, their ability to hold a director steady when the pressure is at its worst.
That's what we built Rebound around. And it's why we built ReboundIQ - not to replace the advisory work, but to compress the analytical layer so that the work that actually matters gets the time and attention it deserves.
Originally published on LinkedIn by Brendan Richards, April 2026.
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