As a whole, the global professional services (PS) industry is having a good run, with a market size of $64.7 billion in 2023, predicted to rise to $112.6 billion by 2032.
This impressive growth has been attributed to a number of factors, including what Data Intelo calls “the increasing complexity of business operations and regulatory environments,” which require the specialized expertise of professionals.
This, coupled with other drivers like digital transformation and business globalization, means there is a unique opportunity for professional services organizations to gain new market share, achieve higher revenues, and place themselves ahead of the competition. To do this, they’ll need to deliver faster on business outcomes, supercharge efficiency, and shorten time to value for clients.
How? By focusing hard on the work that really matters. With this in mind, Wrike commissioned Sapio Research to analyze the current state of the workplace. We surveyed 1,000 business leaders and 2,500 knowledge workers across the U.S., U.K., DACH, France, and Japan, asking them detailed questions about their work. That incredible multinational data has now been compiled into the revelatory 2024 Impactful Work Report.
Let’s take a closer look at what the report says about the professional services industry — and its future.
What impactful work looks like in professional services
When we talk about professional services, we’re using an umbrella term for a diverse group of individuals, teams, departments, and organizations that usually includes:
- Consulting services
- Legal firms
- Accounting firms
- Marketing and advertising agencies
- IT services
Some offer online services, others offline or hybrid. For the most part, they serve clients in banking, financial services and insurance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, IT and telecommunications, and governments.
What unites these disparate groups is that their core output is a service rather than a product. This might mean advice, expertise, research, auditing, or any kind of service that helps to support clients’ needs. That is what the Wrike report’s authors might call impactful work, that which ”contributes to the strategy, growth, and revenue of the business.”
The problem is that this type of work only makes up part of what professional services employees do all day. In fact, according to our research, it’s just over half. That means the rest of our work — some 47% — is spent on low-impact tasks such as administration, duplicate actions, and unproductive meetings.
The effects of low-impact work
The impressive growth in the professional services market is not without a few bumps in the road — in fact, revenue growth slowed down by 25% YoY in 2023. That sluggishness is attributed to a number of factors, including external challenges like a shortage of skilled workers and reduced client budgets, along with persistent internal problems like poor visibility, limited resource management, and a disconnected delivery process.
This slowdown may also be related to the astonishing figure above — that professional services are spending half of their time doing work that mightn’t matter all that much. According to the research, there are real bottom-line implications to low-impact work, including:
- Lost money: Across the board, an alarming $15,138.03 is wasted per employee per year on unnecessary work and $7,016.82 per business leader per year on low-impact work.
- Wasted time: In PS, nearly a third of the working week is being spent on unnecessary work, with unproductive meetings swallowing almost two hours.
- Duplicated work: PS workers believe they’re spending more than 1.25 hours a week repeating work because the original document or information was lost.
- Heavier workloads: All of those mundane tasks add up, with PS workers believing their workloads have grown by 32% in the last year. Interestingly, leaders believe it to be 52%.
- Low staff morale: Only 60% of PS workers feel fulfilled by the work that they do, with only slightly more feeling happy at work.
- Lack of productivity: Some 43% of PS workers don’t feel productive at work, despite ostensibly being busier than ever.
These figures are striking, but they only paint a small part of the picture. There are more indirect ramifications of low-impact work that have a less visible but equally destructive effect on an organization’s growth.
Just 50% of the PS workers surveyed feel that their work is recognized, while more than two-thirds don’t feel comfortable saying no to work, perhaps because of a fear of potentially negative repercussions. In addition, it looks like they’re having to spend some 3.33 hours a week of their own time making up for unproductive meetings, duplicate work, or unnecessary tasks. That’s more than a day a month. All of this adds up to a high staff turnover rate, which is far from ideal in a market already struggling to find and retain key employees.
On the other side of the scale, managers and leadership teams are evidently struggling to steer the ship on an agreed course. Aligning the entire organization on strategic priorities was among the lowest priorities identified, while almost half of the respondents worry that their team or department won’t be able to deliver business outcomes because of a lack of alignment across the organization.
That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, as leaders may be working blindfolded, at least to some extent. Our survey revealed that on average, they only have visibility into around 60% of their team or department’s activity.
The inefficiencies that lead to low-impact work
When asking PS workers what causes the most inefficiencies in their organization, our researchers identified the following factors:
- Time wasted on activities like meetings and duplicative work: In general, up to 13 hours a week are spent on work that doesn’t benefit the company’s bottom line, from providing status updates to repeating completed tasks.
- Poor communication and collaboration: Just over two-thirds of PS employees believe that their company clearly communicates strategic objectives — leaving the rest potentially working in the wrong direction.
- Poorly designed or outdated processes: A lack of a single source of truth means that more than three hours a week is wasted searching for data across multiple systems and processes.
- Too many projects and lack of prioritization: Despite having more to do than ever before, PS workers and leaders alike believe that prioritizing high-value work is low on their organization’s to-do list.
- Ineffective use of technology: The majority of PS workers (82%) believe that AI and automation have improved their ability to do their jobs, but 15% of their current workloads are actually assisted by the technology.
Much of these inefficiencies — and the low-impact work they generate and facilitate — can be resolved with software. But the key here is choosing the right software.
Our relationship with workplace software has been something of a rollercoaster over the last few years. Moving to remote work and serving an increasingly digitized public entailed a big jump in the number of tools we used, which was then followed by a period of consolidation, as we realized those tottering tech stacks were getting expensive. And, frankly, a pain in the neck to use.
The answer we’ve been looking for is one powerful all-in-one solution that can deliver revenue-boosting efficiency, morale-improving collaboration, and client-pleasing acceleration — in one easy-to-use platform.
The key to seizing opportunities in professional services
The researchers behind the 2024 Impactful Work Report agree, concluding with a call to action for organizations to “eliminate unnecessary work, consolidate solutions, upskill their workforce, automate low-impact work, and — most importantly — prioritize high-impact work.”
Luckily, they have a roadmap too, with five key steps to follow for success:
- Eliminate: Of course, it’s easier said than done, but a lean work environment could be key for professional services to maximize their time. The report has top tips that can help eliminate unproductive meetings for good.
- Consolidate: 43% of PS workers surveyed say that the number of different software applications makes it difficult to work efficiently. Consolidating tools can save the average worker up to four hours per week.
- Upskill: 89% of PS leaders and 78% of employees believe that upskilling has been effective in challenging inefficiencies. It can also improve employee morale, buy-in, and productivity.
- Automate: While everyone agrees that AI is a benefit, only a small percentage of PS work is actually enhanced by the technology. Finding new use cases and better ways to put machine learning to work will benefit organizations’ bottom line.
- Prioritize: It’s a simple fix, but it works. By focusing on impactful work, workers and leaders alike can make a real contribution to the strategy, growth, and revenue of their companies.
Wrike is exactly the all-in-one workflow management software that is needed to turn these recommendations into solutions. Our powerful platform offers all the benefits, features, and automations needed by modern PS teams. From 360° visibility to real-time collaboration, live resource management, and advanced analytics, there is no part of the client delivery process Wrike can’t improve.
We have helped transform globally recognized PS brands like Granicus, BigCommerce, and Arvig, delivering 20% more time-tracking compliance, 50% less reporting time, and a 20% average project cost reduction.
Wrike improves our time to value and customer satisfaction by creating greater efficiency with the project manager, which makes them more effective with their customers.
Neal McCoy, Senior Director of Professional Services
Wrike improves our time to value and customer satisfaction by creating greater efficiency with the project manager, which makes them more effective with their customers. Neal McCoy, Senior Director of Professional Services
And that, in a nutshell, is what PS organizations should focus on to take full advantage of this period of unprecedented growth in the industry: improved time to value, increased customer satisfaction, and greater efficiency. If you don’t want to get left behind in the rush for greater market share, download the report in full or start a free 14-day trial with Wrike today.
Join 20,000 other organizations in Wrike, where we help you grow revenue, increase profit, and keep your clients coming back for more — all from one powerful platform.
