NEWS
87% of professional services teams plan to manage AI agents as part of their workforce
9 in 10 firms want AI agents in their workforce. Integrating them into delivery workflows is now their biggest challenge. The gap between ambition and readiness has never been wider. These are insight from the annual State of the Professional Services Industry Report, sponsored by Kantata, a leading provider of Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions.
What can we learn from this?
Professional services firms are buying AI before they've fixed the plumbing. 87% plan to integrate AI agents into their workforce. But only 12% trust their own data. The pipes were broken long before the robots arrived.
Firms are piling automation on top of broken workflows. Documents lost in inboxes. Client data split across five tools nobody actually uses. AI doesn't clean that up. It makes the mess bigger. The firms that win in 2026 built solid operations first, then brought in AI to speed things up. Everyone else is just automating chaos.
BEHIND THE SCENES
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INSIGHTS
"A single audit generates approximately 2,000 emails on average, and 74% of auditors are unsure where their information ends up."
(Insight from State of The audit)
🔍 The Systems View
Toto De Brant, Co-founder Alkmist
2,000 emails per audit. That's not communication. That's noise. When inbox search is your main retrieval tool, nothing works. Structure the data once. The rest takes care of itself.
💬 Behavioral Perspective
Mathias Celis, Co-founder Alkmist | Phd Psychology & Business Economics
When 74% of professionals don't know where their information lands, they stop trusting the process. Distrust is expensive. People hoard, double-check, send the same thing three times. The emails are just the symptom. Confidence in the system is gone.
TIPS
What high-performing firms are doing differently? 6 tips
(Insight from our blog)
Firms that excel in client experience aren’t necessarily those with the most resources, they’re the ones that design intentionally for continuity and clarity. Common practices among these firms include:
1. Structured pre-engagement planning to reduce last-minute requests and align timelines with client availability.
2. Centralized collaboration environments that consolidate requests, updates, and documentation into a single shared view (no a static sharepoint is not enough…).
3. Context retention mechanisms such as engagement notes or client profiles that allow teams to maintain organizational knowledge across years and engagements.
4. Proactive communication rhythms involving both junior staff and senior leadership, reinforcing transparency and attentiveness.
5. Visibility tools (e.g., shared dashboards or status trackers) that reduce the need for follow-ups and eliminate ambiguity.
6. Automated follow-up and milestone tracking that keeps teams aware of pending items and ensures timely outreach without manual chasing, maintaining engagement momentum throughout the audit cycle.
None of these require radical reinvention. They require focused attention on service design and the discipline to embed client-centered behaviors in daily workflows.
See you for the next one!
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