Industry Insights
These industry insights explore the structural tensions reshaping professional services firms, from AI and platform economics to private equity, governance, operating models, profitability, and large-scale transformation. The articles combine strategic analysis, industry research, and real-world transformation experience to examine how the business model of professional services is changing.
Weitere Kategorien
Newsletter abonnieren
The Institutional Test: What Private Equity Has Not Yet Proved in US Accounting
6. August 2026
Five years ago, the central question surrounding private equity investment in US accounting firms was whether the model could work at all. Accounting firms were constrained by professional-ownership rules, built around partnership economics and governed through structures that often made major strategic decisions slow, politically difficult and expensive for the current generation of partners. External
Trust Capital: Why Professional Services Manufacture Judgment but Accumulate Trust
26. Juli 2026
This article builds on Manufacturing Judgment: How Professional Services Build Their Most Valuable Asset, which argued that professional-services firms have always produced two outcomes through client work. Every engagement delivers something visible to the client while quietly contributing to the development of professional judgment inside the firm. The same work that generates today’s revenue also
Manufacturing Judgment: How Professional Services Build Their Most Valuable Asset
15. Juli 2026
This article builds on When Expertise Becomes Metered Infrastructure: How AI Is Changing the Economics of Professional Services, which explored how artificial intelligence is changing the economics of expertise. This article examines the next question: how those changing economics affect the way professional-services firms manufacture professional judgment. For more than a century, professional-services firms have
The Industrialization of Tax: How Recurring Expertise Quietly Adopted a Different Economic Model
28. Juni 2026
Tax has long been regarded as one of the great advisory disciplines within professional services. It sits at the intersection of regulation, finance, corporate strategy and governance. That description remains true, but it has become incomplete. Beneath the advisory narrative, the economics of large parts of tax have changed. Many tax practices no longer operate
The Transferability Problem: Why Professional-Services Roll-Ups May Be Discovering That Institutional Trust Is Harder to Scale Than Revenue
13. Juni 2026
For much of the past decade, professional services appeared to offer one of the most compelling consolidation opportunities in the economy. Across accounting, legal services, wealth management, engineering consulting, and numerous specialist advisory sectors, investors encountered industries that remained remarkably fragmented despite decades of broader corporate consolidation. Thousands of firms operated with recurring revenues, loyal
When Expertise Becomes Metered Infrastructure: How AI Is Changing the Economics of Professional Services
3. Juni 2026
What happens when expertise itself starts behaving like infrastructure? The current AI debate is dominated by questions about replacement. Will consultants disappear? Will lawyers disappear? Will accountants disappear? Will software developers disappear? Depending on who is speaking, artificial intelligence will either eliminate large parts of knowledge work or leave the fundamentals largely unchanged. The discussion
The Regulated Trust Layer: How Private Equity Is Separating Audit From the Economic Platform Around It
25. Mai 2026
The audit partner still signs the opinion. The local audit partnership still exists legally. The firm still presents itself externally as a partnership of professionals operating under regulatory oversight, professional standards and independence requirements. In many jurisdictions, the structure still formally complies with rules requiring licensed CPAs or equivalent professionals to own and control the
The Platform Gravity Problem: Why Control Over Shared Systems Increasingly Shapes Power Inside Professional Services Networks
18. Mai 2026
For decades, the large professional-services networks operated through a relatively stable institutional bargain. Member firms remained legally independent partnerships with substantial local autonomy, while the global organization coordinated methodology, standards, branding, and broad governance structures. Power inside the system largely followed relationships, revenue, and local market strength. The firms generating the largest profits and controlling
The Silent Engine: How Global Delivery Centers Are Rewiring Professional Services Firms
16. Mai 2026
For decades, the large professional services firms sold a relatively simple story: local partners, local accountability, and teams operating close to the client. That story still exists externally, but it increasingly fails to describe how many of these firms actually operate internally. Deloitte reported FY2025 revenue of more than US$70 billion with over 470,000 employees,
The Professional Services AI Paradox: How the AI Platform Economy Is Colliding with the Partnership Model
11. Mai 2026
Professional services firms increasingly present themselves as technology-driven organizations. Annual reports, strategy presentations, and leadership interviews are filled with references to AI-enabled delivery, integrated knowledge systems, automation platforms, intelligent workflows, and scalable client solutions. The language increasingly resembles the vocabulary of software companies rather than traditional partnerships. Large networks openly discuss moving beyond labor-intensive delivery