42% of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI in 2024, driving productivity and cost savings
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) strategic consultancy and executive advisory firm, today released findings from its 2025 Key Issues Study, revealing that global business services (GBS) organizations are rapidly advancing their AI adoption. In 2024, 42% of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI, and 63% of these early adopters reported measurable gains in productivity, cost savings, and service quality. With AI’s transformational potential now proven, GBS leaders must accelerate deployment or risk falling behind.
“Leading GBS organizations have begun to adopt Gen AI as a foundational lever to achieve their objectives,” said Martijn Geerling, principal and GBS Executive Advisory practice leader at The Hackett Group. “They are moving from an ‘early adoption with multiple Gen AI POCs (proof-of-concepts)’ to adopting Gen AI at scale.”
In fact, two-thirds of GBS leaders believe Gen AI, including the use of AI agents, will fundamentally reshape structured work this year. GBS technology budgets are set to increase by 10%. Looking ahead, 71% expect a transformational impact on unstructured tasks by 2027.
Gen AI raising GBS performance to new levels
Forty-two percent of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI in 2024, while another 26% explored limited use cases. The results? Approximately 63% of these early adopters met or exceeded expectations, citing benefits such as:
- Up to 25% improvement in quality and productivity
- Better customer and employee experiences
- Meaningful reductions in operating costs and full-time equivalents
In 2025, GBS leaders increasingly expect Gen AI to support their top business objectives such as:
- Achieving cost leadership – 60% view AI as critical to cost-reduction strategies.
- Elevating value creation – 70% focus on AI-driven spend and working capital management.
- Expanding service penetration – 47% plan to scale shared services to additional business units and countries.
Leaders expect to accelerate Gen AI deployment within nearly every GBS function in 2025, with the most activity in finance, information technology, human resources and procurement shared services. The nature of GBS means they will play a unique role in shaping and facilitating greater adoption of Gen AI across the enterprise.
Breakthrough improvement requires overcoming key obstacles
While it will come as no surprise to GBS executives, The Hackett Group’s study confirmed that teams must find a way to do more with less. A widening efficiency gap looms – workloads are set to increase by 11% in 2025, while budgets will only grow by 7%, leaving GBS leaders with a 4% shortfall to bridge. Many are turning to Gen AI and AI agents as a solution, with a 10% increase in technology investment planned for 2025. However, significant barriers to adoption remain. The biggest perceived challenges include process complexity (73%), unrealistic expectations (71%), data quality and technology issues (71%), AI talent shortages (67%), and change management issues (64%).
To fully capitalize on AI and deploy with speed, The Hackett Group recommends that GBS leaders cultivate a business culture that embraces co-intelligence, set realistic performance expectations, reskill/upskill talent and evaluate the use of AI agents to support your existing talent pool.
Download the full 2025 GBS Agenda report here.
About The Hackett Group®
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is an IP and platform-based, Gen AI strategic consulting and executive advisory firm that enables Digital World Class® performance. Using AI XPLR™ and ZBrain™ – our ideation through implementation platforms – our experienced professionals help organizations realize the power of Gen AI and achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of their Gen AI journey.
Our expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from benchmarking the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 89% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 55% of the FTSE 100. Visit us at www.thehackettgroup.com.
Trademarks
The Hackett Group®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group®.
Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward-Looking” Statements
This release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability of The Hackett Group to effectively market its digital transformation, our ability to transition our capabilities to support generative artificial intelligence (AI)-related consulting services and solutions and other consulting services, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions, including the LeewayHertz acquisition into our operations, our ability to manage joint ventures and successfully cooperate with our joint venture partners, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250408714931/en/
In 2024, 42% of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI, and 63% of these early adopters reported measurable gains in productivity, cost savings, and service quality.
