Discover the latest innovations, tech practices, marketing trends, and more in our exclusive interview series, ExtraMile, by HiTechNectar. In today’s spotlight session, Sarah Edwards, Chief Product Officer at Kantata, joined us to share remarkable insights and knowledge on Professional Services Automation (PSA).
Kantata is setting the bar of excellence in professional services automation, helping people-powered businesses with the clarity, control, and confidence they need to optimize resource planning and boost operational performance.
Sarah is a dynamic business leader with over 27 years of experience in the PSA industry, possessing a knack for managing a successful service business. At Kantata, she is responsible for product strategy across the Kantata Professional Services Cloud product line, keeping customer-centric innovation to solve the changing challenges faced by professional services organizations at the forefront.
Let’s get straight into Sarah’s professional journey, leadership excellence, Kantata’s PSA solutions, thoughts on AI, and everything around the PSA landscape.
Welcome, Sarah; we’re thrilled to have you join us today!
Q1. Sarah, with an exemplary record of 27 years in the Professional Services Industry, you’re raising the bar of excellence. Could you share a few highlights from your initial time at Upstarts to now serving as the Chief Product Officer at Kantata?
Sarah. I’ve been fortunate to spend my entire 27-year career in the professional services industry, progressing from the ground up — starting as a consultant, then evolving into a project manager, and later taking on leadership roles across services organizations. That journey gave me first hand exposure to the challenges services professionals face every day, and it’s shaped my approach ever since.
My move into product leadership began at Kimble (which merged with Mavenlink to form Kantata in 2022) in its early startup days. It was an exciting and formative time—wearing multiple hats, scaling quickly, and building a professional services automation (PSA) solution designed specifically to solve the kinds of problems I had encountered throughout my career. That blend of empathy and deep domain understanding has stayed central to how I lead product strategy.
Along the way, I’ve also had the privilege of building and leading a global services organization at Hitachi, where I learned how to apply structure, governance, and operational scale in complex enterprise environments. That experience now complements the work I do at Kantata, a $100M+ company where I continue to bring that deep industry perspective to shape the future of professional services software.
Every stage — from startup agility and innovation, to enterprise rigor — has taught me something critical about how services organizations thrive, and I apply those lessons every day at Kantata.
Q2. As women today continue to push their boundaries in the tech space, how do you mentor all the brilliant women at Kantata under your exceptional leadership style?
Sarah. Mentorship, for me, starts with authenticity. I believe it’s incredibly important to show that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership — especially for women in tech. You don’t have to fit a stereotype to be effective. I try to lead by example, being open, approachable, and demonstrating that different leadership styles can be equally powerful.
At Kantata, I make a conscious effort to engage directly with the brilliant women across our organization — whether through one-on-one mentoring, group forums, or simply creating space for their voices to be heard. I also believe strongly in the power of community. That’s why I regularly bring together female leaders from across our customer and industry network to foster connection and mutual support.
A recent example was hosting an all-female leadership roundtable with customers and prospects at Ascot Ladies Day. The feedback was incredible — many shared how rare and inspiring it was to a table full of women, such accomplished, thoughtful women. Moments like that remind me just how powerful it can be to create spaces where women can see each other, support each other, and grow together.
Q3. Being a CPO, what’s the most recent product initiative you’re truly proud of? What’s the key impact it has had on your customers?
Sarah. One of the initiatives I’m most proud of recently is our work on Kantata Pulse — an innovation that’s redefining how we measure and understand service delivery quality. As a CPO, it’s incredibly rewarding to be pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with data — not just tracking traditional metrics, but introducing the metrics of the future.
Pulse goes beyond the typical project health indicators. It integrates employee and customer sentiment to provide a more holistic, real-time view of how services are actually being delivered and experienced. This fundamentally changes how we manage quality — not just for Kantata internally, but for every customer using our platform.
It’s reshaping how service organizations think about success — shifting the focus from task completion to value creation and relationship health. This is just the beginning. As we continue to incorporate new data sources, we’re unlocking entirely new ways to drive impact across the professional services lifecycle.
Q4. Kantata is built mainly for people-powered businesses. Can you brief us on how this goal aligns perfectly with today’s need to optimize an organization’s most valuable asset – its people?
Sarah. At Kantata, we’ve always believed that people are the heart of value creation in professional services. But the definition of a “people-powered business” is evolving — and that’s exactly where we’re focused.
Today, it’s not just about managing headcount or utilization. It’s about cultivating deep, specialist expertise, and ensuring that expertise stays current in a world where technology, and especially AI, is constantly reshaping how work gets done. What’s emerging is a new kind of workforce — one where human talent is enabled and extended by AI agents.
We’re building for that future — where people-powered means people and AI working as a unified system. Where insights, decisions, and delivery are shared between humans and intelligent tools. Our platform helps organizations not only optimize the people they have, but also prepare them to thrive in hybrid environments — where AI isn’t a threat, but a partner.
The businesses that win tomorrow will be the ones that know how to scale human intelligence with machine support — where every person is empowered by the collective knowledge, context, and capabilities of both their team and their AI tools. That’s the future we’re enabling at Kantata.
Q5. Kudos! Kantata has recently been ranked in the G2 Spring 2025 Grid Reports for both PSA and Resource Management. What does this recognition mean to you and the entire team?
Sarah. We’re incredibly proud of Kantata’s recognition in G2’s Spring 2025 Grid Reports for both PSA and Resource Management. To us, this isn’t just an accolade—it’s validation that we’re exactly where we should be: leading in the categories that matter most to our customers.
PSA and resource management are absolutely integral to how services organizations operate and grow. These aren’t just software categories — they’re strategic capabilities that drive profitability, predictability, and performance. Being ranked in both reflects the strength of our platform and the impact it’s having in the real world.
For our team, it’s a powerful signal that the market sees and values the work we’re doing — and it fuels our ambition to keep raising the bar. We’re not just building tools — we’re shaping the future of how services businesses are run. And this recognition reinforces that we’re on the right path.
Q6. What are the major challenges professional services organizations face today in managing people and resources? How does Kantata help in this regard?
Sarah. One of the biggest challenges professional services organizations face today is managing people and resources in a way that’s truly connected to the full services lifecycle — from early planning and sales forecasting all the way through to delivery and outcomes.
Too often, resource management is reactive — decisions are made too late, disconnected from pipeline visibility or delivery constraints. This leads to misaligned teams, capacity bottlenecks, and missed revenue opportunities.
At Kantata, we solve this by enabling organizations to plan earlier, forecast smarter, and operate with full visibility. Our platform connects the dots between sales, delivery, and resourcing, so you’re not just staffing projects — you’re strategically aligning talent to demand in real time.
We give services businesses the tools to manage people in context — not just as names on a bench, but as dynamic contributors to client outcomes. That context is what allows organizations to optimize utilization, reduce burnout, and deliver consistently high-quality work.
Q7. AI is the new frontier no matter what industry! What are your views on the role of predictive analytics and generative AI in improving decisions across operations, finance, and resource management?
Sarah. AI — especially predictive analytics and generative capabilities — is absolutely the next frontier for professional services, and it’s already reshaping how decisions are made across operations, finance, and resource management.
Predictive analytics allow firms to shift from hindsight to foresight — anticipating project risks, revenue leakage, or capacity shortfalls before they happen. That’s game-changing for both operational resilience and financial performance. It enables services leaders to act proactively, not reactively.
Generative AI, meanwhile, opens the door to context-rich decision support. From generating draft proposals based on past wins to suggesting optimal resource mixes or identifying margin risk in real time, it enhances human judgment with deep organizational intelligence.
At Kantata, we’re embedding these capabilities into the heart of our platform — not as add-ons, but as core features that make every decision smarter and more informed. It’s not about replacing people; it’s about amplifying their impact and giving them tools to lead with confidence in a fast-changing world.
Q8. Could you share key insights about Kantata’s next-gen PSA? How does automation go beyond helping optimize operations and deliver big profits?
Sarah. Our next-gen PSA isn’t just about improving operations — it’s about fundamentally redefining how services organizations create value. Automation is a critical enabler, but we see it as the starting point, not the end goal.
At Kantata, automation helps eliminate manual, low-value tasks — freeing up time and focus for what really matters: delivering outcomes, strengthening client relationships, and scaling expertise. But the real breakthrough comes when automation is combined with intelligence — turning data into insights, insights into action, and action into competitive advantage.
What sets our approach apart is how we embed automation and optimization across the full services lifecycle — from early-stage sales and proposal generation to delivery optimization, resource forecasting, and revenue recognition. And with AI-native capabilities, we’re not just streamlining operations — we’re enabling services businesses to learn from every engagement and get smarter with each project.
That’s how we help our customers go beyond operational efficiency to unlock sustainable, scalable profitability — powered by intelligence, not just effort.
Q9. In light of today’s client’s first environment, timely project delivery is a must! How does the right project management drive operational efficiency and stand out results down the line in service organizations?
Sarah. In today’s client-first environment, timely and predictable delivery isn’t just a KPI — it’s a differentiator. Clients expect transparency, consistency, and outcomes, and the organizations that can meet those expectations reliably are the ones that earn long-term trust and repeat business.
The right project management approach goes far beyond task tracking. It creates a connected operational backbone — linking resource planning, delivery milestones, financial performance, and client engagement in one integrated flow. That’s what drives true efficiency: the ability to make fast, confident decisions because the right data is visible in the right context.
At Kantata, we empower services organizations to shift from reactive firefighting to proactive delivery management. By aligning teams, surfacing early warnings, and automating administrative overhead, we free up project leaders to focus on what matters — driving impact, not just progress.
The result is not just on-time delivery, but standout client outcomes and a stronger bottom line.
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