The Hackett Group Study Finds GBS Leaders Betting on AI to Close Widening Productivity Gap

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading Gen AI consultancy and enterprise digital transformation firm, today announced findings from its 2026 Global Business Services (GBS) Key Issues Study, showing that GBS organizations are accelerating AI adoption to counter unprecedented productivity pressure, with early deployments already delivering measurable gains in service quality, customer experience, and employee engagement.

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AI delivers broader value than cost savings alone. Early Gen AI deployments are yielding measurable results across multiple dimensions. Organizations report a 13% improvement in customer experience, 11% gains in both employee engagement and service quality, and a 10% increase in productivity. Cost reduction and full-time equivalent (FTE) savings have been modest at 7% and 9%, respectively, suggesting that AI’s primary value lies in enhancing service delivery rather than simply cutting expenses. These benefits extend to outsourced operations as well. Business process outsourcing (BPO) providers leveraging Gen AI are delivering value beyond traditional labor arbitrage. This includes improving customer experience, service quality and employee engagement for their clients. The relationship is shifting from transactional to transformational, with organizations expecting partners who deliver automation and AI-driven solutions, not just cost savings.

The study finds the GBS workload is forecast to grow by 15% in 2026, outpacing projected staffing growth of 10% and budget increases of just 7%. This creates a 5% productivity gap and an 8% efficiency gap – the most significant imbalance GBS leaders have faced in years. In response, organizations are deploying Gen AI and automation as strategic transformation engines to reimagine how work is structured and delivered – not incremental productivity enhancement tools.

“Facing this kind of pressure, the organizations that will come out ahead are those that move beyond adopting AI as a surface-level add-on and instead use it to fundamentally reimagine how work gets done – combining digital innovation with operational resilience,” said Martijn Geerling, Europe Applied Intelligence practice leader and GBS Applied Intelligence program leader at The Hackett Group.

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