Market Updates | 11th June 2021

The pandemic is accelerating the pace of change right across the professional services sector, amplifying pre-crisis trends as well as triggering entirely new ones. We’ll be keeping tabs on these over the coming months: We’ll be reporting back on what clients are telling us and how we see different segments of the professional services sector perform, as well as highlighting emerging opportunities and challenges. As always, we’ll be taking a fact-based approach. Our market sizing data comes from our unique model of the professional services sector, with more than $1tn of revenues broken down by sector, geography, and capability. Our forecasts are constantly updated to reflect the latest market data we have available from firms and their clients. Client data comes from our rolling programme of quantitative research and interviews.

Important lessons from Australia

Early into the crisis, early out of it: What does Australia’s professional services market tell us about future trends?

We estimate that the total professional services market in Australia was worth just under US$28bn in 2020; small in relation to the global total (just over 3% of the worldwide market), but high in proportion to the size of the Australian economy as a whole. A swift and rigorous response to the pandemic, aided by geographic isolation, a willingness to accept unprecedented internal controls, and prolonged lockdowns in some cities last year contained its economic impact. We think Australia’s professional services market shrank by 7% in 2020, compared to an average global contraction of 13%. Growth this year is expected to be higher (8%) than its historic norms as Australian firms leverage solid domestic growth with improving economic growth in neighbouring geographies.

Compared to pre-pandemic levels, we’re forecasting significantly higher growth in Australia’s healthcare and public sectors, and in retail. There’ll be stronger growth, too, in the primary resources sector—still a disproportionately important market despite recent diversification.

However, investors in the Australian market will need to pay at least equal attention to the trends at the line of business level, as it’s here that we think the biggest opportunities—and challenges—of this market become apparent.

Just under a fifth of revenues in the market are generated by technology work (including cybersecurity), and this market is expected to grow this year and next in the region of 13%. Australian private and public sector organisations were already investing heavily in digital transformation in 2017-19, a trend that’s only been amplified by the upheaval of 2020. The pandemic and the bushfires that preceded it in late 2019 mean that risk and ESG-related services, which account for a further 12% of the market, is also likely to grow at above average rates. We also expect high growth—around 14%—in the deals space. Deals will also stimulate demand for some tax and legal services, but there are other parts of these services that are being commoditised and automated, which will pull down their overall growth rates.

Services such as strategy, operations, and HR & change consulting, which have traditionally been the sole preserve of consulting firms, are now being offered by other types of firms, attracted not just by the high margins traditionally associated with this type of work, but also the ability to exert greater influence over the upstream leadership agenda. We estimate that these services account for approximately 8% of the Australian market. Overall, we think that they’ll grow at about 8% this year and next, but that headline figure masks higher growth in strategy—partly the result of higher transactions activity, but also of clients revisiting their business and operating models in the aftermath of the crisis—and somewhat lower growth in operations, as clients who invested heavily in this area at the peak of the crisis seek to consolidate the lessons learned and build up their own in-house capabilities.

But this last comment hints at the factor most likely to limit growth in the Australian market.

That clients should prefer to be self-sufficient isn’t a new phenomenon: It’s not untypical for organisations that have made especially extensive use of external support to experience a certain amount of professional “fatigue”. But client self-sufficiency puts extra pressure on the labour supply, making it harder for professional service firms to maintain their competitive advantage—having and keeping better people than their clients. The rapid pace of technology change is exacerbating this, creating acute skills shortages in specific areas for both clients and suppliers alike. So, too, does the fact that some highly qualified people, fed up with constant Zooming, may decide not to return to the workforce. Moreover, the “war for talent” was already especially intense in Australia before the crisis, with many Australian nationals seeking work experience abroad after university, and professional services firms highly dependent on employees from other parts of the world choosing to base themselves in the country for two to three years. Clearly, travel restrictions have prevented Australians from travelling abroad to work, but this isn’t enough to offset the loss of overseas workers now that demand is growing. Finally, as clients expect more in-person engagement and with many other major professional markets, such as the US, seeing rapidly-rising demand, we should expect to see more “protectionism”. Branches of professional firms in local countries will become less willing to help their colleagues in other parts of the world.

Australian professional services firms can (and some already are doing so) invest more in the education system, increasing the number of people entering the workforce with the types of skills needed. But this will take time. Greater automation of the more routine tasks still performed by junior people is already underway and will certainly help a little, though it won’t help with the shortage of experienced people the Australian market is currently experiencing. Increasing fee rates would allow firms to offer more money to potential recruits, but the salary inflation will start to spiral upwards. Acquisitions can provide scarce capabilities, so we should expect to see more large firms snap up smaller firms than they might have considered in the past—McKinsey’s acquisition of 40-person strong Hypothesis being a good example—and may pay more for the privilege of doing so. Ecosystems of partners may create some structural flexibility, but most alliances aren’t exclusive. With all this in mind, a better and more likely short-term solution will be to change the nature of work; developing tools and innovative processes that reduce the amount of time required. Clients would love this: Many organisations have emerged from the crisis with the belief that they can do more, and more quickly, than they had imagined. But it would be better for professional services firms, too, as it would allow them to meet demand without compromising their margins.

And, as other geographies start to experience the same constraints on growth that Australia does, it’ll become the model elsewhere, too.

All updates

Data & analytics: The key to successfully responding to economic uncertainty? 15th August, 2022
The talent crisis in professional services: still here 5th August, 2022
Investment in transformation remains strong, but will professional firms be able to leverage this? 22nd July, 2022
Economic uncertainty starts to take its toll 8th July, 2022
Professional services firms need to start adapting to a multi-shock world 24th June, 2022
Anticipating a slight slowdown in the rate of growth 10th June, 2022
The impact of the professional services market pandemic recedes, but slowly 20th May, 2022
The outlook for professional services by sector in 2022 6th May, 2022
Strategy consulting in an age of crisis 22nd April, 2022
How the Russia-Ukraine war may change client needs 1st April, 2022
Initial thoughts on the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war 18th March, 2022
Tax services: Who stands to benefit from post-crisis growth? 4th March, 2022
Demand for professional services in the healthcare market: Growth through specialisation 18th February, 2022
Productivity improvement consulting and the impact of an inflationary environment 4th February, 2022
The impact of Omicron—and what this tells us about the professional services market in 2022 21st January, 2022
The top three sectors for professional service firms in 2022 26th November, 2021
What price recovery? 11th November, 2021
Supply chain shocks: What impact will they have on demand for consulting? 28th October, 2021
The Central & South America professional services market: In a permanent state of “recovery”? 15th October, 2021
Delivering a more tangible professional service 1st October, 2021
Professional services in the GCC: Post-pandemic resurgence 17th September, 2021
Trying to solve the consulting industry’s value problem 3rd September, 2021
The post-pandemic financial services market 20th August, 2021
Programme management: Why does a potentially valuable service underperform? 6th August, 2021
The consulting market in H1 2021: Outperforming expectations 23rd July, 2021
Pharma and life sciences: From strength to strength 9th July, 2021
Operational improvement services 25th June, 2021
Important lessons from Australia 11th June, 2021
Betting on risk 28th May, 2021
Strong performance in the consulting industry in Q1 2021 14th May, 2021
A fast recovery in the US professional services market 30th April, 2021
How fast will the public sector market for professional services grow in 2021? 16th April, 2021

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