Your CRM holds names. It should hold intelligence.
A search firm runs on the gap between partner judgement and execution. Two things have eroded that gap for a decade.
Time leakage. A growing share of fee-earner hours goes to drafting reports, scheduling, and data entry. Not to mandates. Candidate reports alone account for around 1,700 hours a year in a 30-person firm.
IP leakage. LinkedIn commoditised candidate identification. Depth of candidate intelligence is the remaining differentiator, and in most firms it sits in consultants' heads, not the CRM. Roughly 30% of weekly candidate intelligence never reaches the database at all. The firm's most valuable asset is one resignation letter from walking out the door.
Both have the same root cause: the work that builds firm value is not the work the firm captures.
Nexco builds AI agents for executive search firms that fix both at once. Candidate reports drafted in thirty minutes instead of three hours. Data entry that writes itself from the conversations consultants are already having. Within twelve to eighteen months the firm holds structured intelligence on every candidate it has assessed, with benchmarking on pay and career paths and a reference network mapping every executive interviewed. The CRM finally becomes the asset it was sold as.
We don't compete for the placement fee. That is our unfair advantage. Candidates share information with Nexco they would never share with anyone whose revenue depends on the outcome.
"Progressive firms are successfully adopting AI solutions that complement personal connections with productivity improvements that enable value-add, advisory activities." Jeremy Rickman, former Managing Partner, Russell Reynolds Associates.
