42% of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI in 2024, driving productivity and cost savings

MIAMI: $HCKT #ai--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.

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Fonte: Business Wire