How AI Is Changing the Way A&E Firms Use ERP Data
Key insights from a LinkedIn Live with Unanet, Wyatt, and AE Works
AI Built for How AEC Firms Find and Win Work
Discover how Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt, helps AEC BD and marketing teams use AI to strengthen relationships, advance pursuits, and win more work.
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AEC growth work does not happen in one place.
It happens in Outlook threads, Teams messages, lunch meetings, client check-ins, conference conversations, seller-doer notes, proposal reviews, spreadsheets, pipeline meetings, and CRM updates. It happens in the structured data firms capture and the unstructured context people carry in their heads.
For BD and marketing teams, that creates a familiar challenge: the work is moving, but the context is scattered.
A seller-doer may know the real story behind a relationship. A BD leader may know which pursuit is gaining momentum. A marketer may know which proof points are strongest. An executive may know which work the firm should actually chase.
But unless that context comes together in a trusted system — and unless teams can act on it quickly — growth teams spend too much time playing catch-up.
That is why we are launching Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt for Unanet CRM.
Champ™ Agents is the agentic AI experience for Unanet CRM, helping BD and marketing teams move faster across relationships, pursuits, and proposals.
Said another way, Champ™ Agents turns your Unanet CRM data and connected business systems into trusted answers, agentic workflows, and interactive web apps — helping AEC BD and marketing teams strengthen relationships, advance pursuits, build stronger proposals, and win more of the right work.
AI adoption is rising. Data confidence is not.
AEC firms are moving quickly with AI.
In Unanet’s AEC Inspire Report, 75% of AEC firms reported using AI, up roughly 20 percentage points year over year. But only 29% reported high confidence in the underlying data that fuels those AI tools.
That gap matters.
AI can only help firms make better decisions if it has access to accurate, relevant, governed business context. For AEC firms, that context is not generic. It lives in relationship histories, pursuit activity, pipeline data, proposal inputs, project experience, client conversations, and the operational knowledge firms build over years.
This is why business systems are becoming more important in the AI era, not less.
For years, CRM was often treated as a place to track what happened. Who met with whom. Which pursuit moved stages. Which proposal was submitted. Which next step was logged.
But in an AI-first world, CRM has to do more than track growth activity. It has to help teams drive it.
Growth requires visibility before the plan changes.
I have seen this firsthand working with AEC firms.
One firm I worked with had a major line of work tied to distribution center projects for a large vendor. The pipeline was strong, the work was active, and teams were staffed against it.
Then, almost overnight, that vendor halted project work across the country.
For a project-based firm, that kind of change can be brutal. You do not just lose future revenue. You have people, teams, offices, and plans built around work that suddenly shifts.
The firms that weather moments like that are not the ones with the prettiest pipeline report. They are the ones with enough visibility to pivot.
They know which relationships can be activated. Which pursuits can move faster. Which clients are showing signs of momentum. Which opportunities are real. Which teams can be reassigned. Which markets deserve focus. Which proposals are worth the effort.
That is the difference between a CRM that records activity and a growth system that helps the firm respond.
AI raises the stakes even further.
When growth work changes quickly, firms need systems that can help teams ask better questions, surface the right context, recommend next steps, and keep follow-through moving.
Why generic AI is not enough for AEC growth teams
AEC firms do not sell like generic B2B companies.
Relationships are long-term. Pursuits are complex. Seller-doers are critical. Proposals require deep firm context. Past project experience matters. Client and owner history matters. Local market knowledge matters. The right work is not always the biggest opportunity in the pipeline.
That is why off-the-shelf AI often falls short.
Generic AI can summarize text. It can draft an email. It can help write a first pass. Those things are useful. But AEC growth teams need more than generic productivity.
They need AI that understands the systems and workflows behind how firms actually find and win work.
They need to connect:
- Relationship history
- Client and owner activity
- Pursuit status
- Pipeline movement
- Proposal context
- Meeting notes
- Documents and spreadsheets
- Past project references
- Follow-up commitments
- Seller-doer knowledge
And they need to turn that context into action.
That is the role of Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt with Unanet CRM.
AI maturity for AEC BD and marketing teams
As BD and marketing teams evaluate AI, it helps to think in stages.
| Maturity stage | What it looks like | Limitation | What comes next |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Personal productivity AI | Individuals use AI to draft emails, summarize notes, or brainstorm content. | Helpful, but disconnected from trusted firm data. | Connect AI to CRM and approved business context. |
| 2. Content assistance | Teams use AI to help create pursuit, proposal, or marketing content. | Faster drafting, but still dependent on manual context gathering. | Ground outputs in relationship, pursuit, and proposal data. |
| 3. CRM-informed guidance | AI can answer questions about accounts, contacts, pursuits, activities, and follow-up. | Better visibility, but action may still be manual. | Add workflows, reminders, and interactive views. |
| 4. Agentic growth workflows | AI helps teams identify next steps, create scheduled tasks, draft follow-up, and build pursuit sal readiness views. | Teams need governance and clear human review. | Scale repeatable workflows across BD and marketing. |
| 5. AI-first growth system | CRM becomes a trusted foundation for AI-driven growth execution across relationships, pursuits, aals . | Requires strong data discipline and adoption. | Firms move faster, focus better, and win more of the right work. |
Most AEC firms are somewhere between stages one and three. Many are experimenting. Some are starting to connect AI to real business systems.
The firms that gain the most will be the ones that build the right foundation now.
What BD and marketing teams should look for in an AI platform
The right AI platform for AEC growth teams should do more than generate content. It should help teams move work forward with trusted context and governed action.
1. Is the AI grounded in the systems where growth work is managed?
If the AI cannot understand your CRM data, pursuit activity, relationship history, and connected business context, it will always be limited.
For AEC firms, the point is not just to ask AI a question. The point is to ask a question grounded in the way your firm actually finds and wins work.
2. Can it work across structured and unstructured context?
Growth data lives in fields and stages, but also in notes, emails, documents, meeting summaries, spreadsheets, and proposal inputs.
The right AI experience should help teams bring that context together.
3. Does it support action, not just answers?
Answers are useful. Action is better.
Look for AI that can help draft follow-ups, create reminders, surface next steps, build interactive web apps, and keep relationship, pursuit, and proposal work moving.
4. Is it built for AEC workflows?
AEC growth is relationship-driven, pursuit-based, and proposal-heavy. A generic sales AI assistant will not understand the full nuance of seller-doers, owner relationships, qualifications, project references, proposal readiness, and the importance of winning the right work.
Purpose-built context matters.
5. Is it governed and human-in-the-loop?
AI should help teams move faster without losing control. Especially when outputs may influence client communication, proposals, or business decisions, teams need reviewable, permission-aware, explainable workflows.
What Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt helps teams do
With Unanet CRM, Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt helps AEC BD and marketing teams move faster across the work that matters most.
Find the right leads
Monitor email or publicly available sources for upcoming bids to keep your firm out in front of the competition.
Strengthen relationships
Prepare for client and owner conversations with account history, relationship maps, contact activity, recent interactions, open pursuits, and recommended next steps.
Advance pursuits
Identify stale opportunities, missing follow-up, weak relationship coverage, and actions that can move a pursuit forward.
Build stronger proposals
Create proposal readiness views that organize pursuit context, documents, inputs, gaps, and next steps so teams can move faster from pursuit to proposal work.
Win more of the right work
Help BD and marketing teams focus on the relationships, pursuits, and proposal efforts most likely to move the business forward.
The future of CRM is not just tracking. It is action.
AEC firms are entering a new phase of AI adoption.
The first phase was experimentation. The next phase is trusted execution.
That means AI cannot sit off to the side. It has to connect with the business systems teams already rely on. It has to understand the structured and unstructured context behind the work. It has to support the way AEC firms actually build relationships, advance pursuits, and create proposals.
Most importantly, it has to help teams act.
That is what Champ™ Agents, powered by Wyatt brings to Unanet CRM: agentic AI built for how AEC firms find and win work.
AI that strengthens relationships, advances pursuits, builds stronger proposals, and helps you win more of the right work.