Professional Services Enabling End-to-End steering for project-based organizations

Professional Services firms – including management and IT consultancies, accounting and law firms, architectural and engineering companies, and digital agencies – operate in highly dynamic, people-driven environments. Their value creation depends on projects, their output on people, and their profitability on time. Rising margin pressure, fluctuating utilization, complex pricing and billing models, and fragmented steering structures demand integrated, data-driven management. Horváth helps you design and implement forward-looking steering models across all dimensions: strategy, finance, clients, resources, and people.

Professional Services Trends

Increasing competition, technological and regulatory changes as well as rising client expectations are ongoing pressures for you as a professional firm. These developments are particularly relevant for you:

1. Digitalization: Technology is transforming how services are delivered. AI and automation are streamlining operations, enhancing decision-making and create new ways to deliver value to your clients. Integrated systems and transparency are essential to improve how firms are steering performance, profitability and resources to remain competitive and deliever sustained client value.

2. Margin pressure and cost volatility: Growing client expectations and intensifying competition due to market consolidation lead to margin pressure while costs are increasingly volatile due to changing market conditions. Managing profitability while maintaining high-quality service delivery has become critical for firms across the sector.

3. Talent scarcity and workforce retention: Professional Services firms rely heavily on skilled people – yet many struggle with attracting and retaining top talent. New generations are demanding flexibility, purpose, and faster development. Without clear career paths, modern performance management, and engaging work models, firms risk losing key capabilities and incurring high turnover costs.

4. Client-centricity and value delivery: Clients are demanding more than just execution – they expect strategic insight, measurable outcomes, and long-term value. Service providers must shift from reactive delivery to proactive solutioning, requiring tighter integration between client feedback, service quality, and delivery performance metrics like NPS, rebooking rate, or value realization.

5. Scaling through data and process integration: Growth in Professional Services often leads to fragmented tools, inconsistent processes, and isolated data pools. To scale effectively, firms must harmonize steering logic across business units and connect key systems (CRM, ERP, HCM) into an integrated, scalable architecture that supports end-to-end visibility and standardized steering KPIs.

Industry expertise Implementing holistic solutions sustainably

  • We support Professional Services organizations with a holistic, value-driven approach. Our work spans strategy, performance, people, and systems – always with a focus on operationalization and integration into your processes and IT landscape.
  • We develop and implement Target Operating Models tailored to the unique requirements of Professional Service firms – combining client-centric processes, scalable structures, and clear governance to enable efficient, future-proof delivery models.
  • We advise holistically across your transformation journey – integrating strategic, organizational, process and system perspectives to strengthen your firm's ability to grow, adapt, and differentiate in a highly dynamic market.
  • We help define strategic KPIs, cascade target systems across organizational layers, and align your performance management with market and capability priorities – always supported by transparent governance structures and system implementation roadmaps.
  • Our models enable you to track and steer profitability on a per-project and per-client level – with consistent calculation logic, clear accountability, and direct integration into controlling and ERP systems.
  • We design skill-based staffing models, establish utilization targets by role, and implement rolling forecasting processes – all linked with your planning tools, project systems, and time tracking platforms.
  • We implement skill matrices, define variable compensation schemes, and introduce performance management processes that are measurable, scalable, and supported by integrated HR and planning systems.
  • We build multi-level dashboards, design consistent data models, and connect your BI, ERP, and CRM systems – enabling a single source of truth for real-time, role-specific steering information.