Use case · All professional services firms
Onboard new clients without the 8-hour partner ramp
The problem
Every new client engagement starts with 6-10 hours of partner setup: checklist building, document requests, stakeholder interviews, context documentation. For firms adding 10-15 clients/year, that's 80-150 hours of non-billable partner time every year just on onboarding.
How it works today
- Partners manually build per-client onboarding checklists — slightly different every time
- Document requests go out as ad-hoc emails, and tracking becomes a manual spreadsheet
- Stakeholder discovery calls get summarized in scattered notes nobody can find later
- First 2 weeks of engagement: context reconstruction costs exceed billable work
- Handoff to associate/staff happens unevenly — some clients get complete context, some don't
- No firm-wide onboarding quality metric exists; new partners don't know what 'good' looks like
How Practiq handles it
- Per-vertical onboarding playbooks — accounting, law, HR, consulting, agency
- Auto-generated checklist based on client type, size, and service scope
- Client portal for document self-upload with automatic progress tracking
- Stakeholder discovery interview guides + response capture
- Initial context brief generated automatically as information comes in
- Onboarding completion signal fires to the team when client is ready-to-work
Outcomes (from firms using Practiq 3+ months)
- Partner hours per new client onboarding
- 6-10 hrs → 1-2 hrs (saves ~5 hrs/client × 12 clients/yr = 60 hrs/partner/yr)
- Time from signed engagement to first billable work
- 10-14 days → 3-5 days
- Onboarding quality consistency
- Variable per-partner → standardized across the firm
- Document collection completion rate at day 7
- 45-60% → 85-90%
Step-by-step workflow
- 1
Engagement signed — onboarding triggered
Partner clicks 'start onboarding' or the signal fires automatically from e-signature integration.
- 2
Vertical playbook selected
Practiq picks the right onboarding playbook based on vertical + client type. Customizes based on firm-specific preferences learned over time.
- 3
Checklist + document requests generated
Client receives welcome email with portal access + specific document list. Practiq drafts all communications; partner reviews in 10 minutes.
- 4
Stakeholder discovery scheduled
Practiq schedules the kickoff call with questions pre-loaded. Associate or partner runs the call; answers capture into the context brief automatically.
- 5
Document collection monitored
Practiq tracks document submission progress, sends reminder emails at day 3/5/7, escalates to partner only for truly stalled cases.
- 6
Onboarding complete — team notified
When checklist hits 100%, team is notified that client is ready-to-work. All context flows into the active-engagement brief seamlessly.
Ideal fit
Any professional services firm adding 8+ new clients/year where partner onboarding time is a meaningful capacity cost. Especially valuable for firms standardizing across multiple service lines.
Frequently Asked
- Can Practiq handle custom onboarding for complex engagements?
- Yes. Standard playbooks cover 70-80% of the workflow. For complex engagements, the playbook becomes a starting point — partners add custom steps, which Practiq learns to include for similar future engagements.
- Does this work with e-signature tools like DocuSign?
- Yes, via webhook integration. When a client signs the engagement letter, DocuSign fires an event to Practiq, which starts onboarding automatically.
- What happens if the client doesn't complete onboarding?
- Practiq escalates stalled onboardings to the partner. Often, a partner call is what unsticks the engagement — knowing which ones need a call is the time-saver.
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