Unit4, an enterprise cloud applications company that serves people-centric organizations, commissioned Pierre Audoin Consultants, a technology research firm, to survey 500 professional services firms across the US, UK, Nordics, Benelux, Germany and Canada. The research, conducted between March and April 2026 with respondents from organizations employing between 250 and 5,000 people, surfaces a gap between firms that have moved to integrated cloud platforms and those still running fragmented systems.
Sixty percent of respondents said their work volumes will increase or become more complex in the next 12 months. Against that backdrop, 30 percent said they experience frequent or regular project delivery delays caused by operational inefficiencies. IT Services companies reported the highest rate of delays at 34 percent, compared to 25 percent of Business and Professional Services firms. By geography, the Nordics reported the highest rate of disruptions at 34 percent, while Canada reported the lowest at 26 percent.
The data points to fragmented IT infrastructure as a primary driver. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they rely on fragmented application environments, and 19 percent operate across multiple systems that require manual data entry and spreadsheet work. That figure climbs to 30 percent in Germany. Teams across the sample identified the main reasons they work additional hours as monthly or quarter-close bottlenecks, cited by 68 percent; inconsistent data models, cited by 59 percent; and outdated technology, cited by 55 percent.
The administrative drag is most visible in client-facing work. Forty-seven percent of respondents said their teams spend time correcting timesheets. Teams also reported working overtime on accounts reconciliation, project cost and profitability management, and project timeline management, each cited by 36 to 37 percent of respondents. More than a quarter of client-facing specialists, 28 percent, said they spend more than 30 percent of their working week on administrative tasks rather than core work. IT Services firms reported the highest overtime burden, with 40 percent saying their staff regularly work beyond core hours to complete timesheet management, budgeting and forecasting, and accounts reconciliation.
One segment of respondents illustrates what a different foundation looks like. Thirty-three percent of global respondents said they run their businesses on modern, integrated, cloud-based platforms. Within that group, error rates in finance reporting dropped to 29 percent against a global average of 37 percent, and errors in budgeting and forecasting fell to 28 percent against a global average of 36 percent. Adoption of cloud-based systems is most advanced in the US at 36 percent, followed by Business and Professional Services firms at 43 percent and IT Services at 36 percent. Germany has the lowest adoption rate at 22 percent.
Donna Dobson, Director of Professional Services at Unit4, connected the operational problem to a broader industry pressure: "Professional services firms are facing possibly the biggest inflection point in a lifetime as technology disruption and volatile economic conditions encourage clients to reevaluate their use of consulting expertise. PAC's research shows why modernisation of core processes is giving leading firms an advantage in terms of productivity and reduction of time lost on manual processes and error correction. As competition heats up, firms understand that limiting the impact on their workforce is crucial to retaining talent and delivering projects more efficiently."
For the year ahead, respondents said their three business priorities are increasing revenue, retaining top talent and improving cost efficiency, with 59 percent identifying talent retention as a strategic concern. Their planned investments track those priorities: modernizing operating models, automating manual work and building integrated data environments. Eighty-eight percent said data integration investment would improve firm processes, and 86 percent said it would improve the predictability of business performance. Despite the focus on automation, 25 percent said they have automated fewer than 20 percent of their core systems, a figure that rises to 30 percent in resource management, recruitment and talent management.
AI is on the agenda but without uniform expectations. More than 60 percent said they expect AI to have a beneficial impact, with 33 percent saying it will fundamentally change how project and resource management work, and 43 percent saying it will improve their ability to analyze critical data and enhance forecasting.
Nick Mayes, senior consultant at PAC, tied the automation and cloud investment priorities together: "Many professional services firms are being pushed by clients to transform commercial models to better serve their needs, but this is only possible if firms embrace modern cloud-based systems. This will give them the agile, scalable foundations to deliver process automation and adopt AI tools, but it will require investment to optimise and integrate existing workflows so that companies have a single view of company-wide information."
