Beyond the Numbers: The Qualitative Levers Professional Services Should Activate

Introduction

In professional services, performance cannot be reduced to numbers alone. While financial and operational KPIs are essential to track profitability, they must be complemented by a more qualitative and sustainable approach.

In 2025, the competitiveness of consulting firms, audit firms and IT services companies (ESNs) increasingly depends on their ability to engage talent, anticipate future needs and build organisations that are agile and collaborative.

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1. Implement cross-staffing

^Cross-staffing means breaking down silos between teams, entities and even countries to maximise the use of internal resources.

Key benefits for professional services firms:

• Reduce reliance on freelancers and the costs linked to bench time.
• Improve utilisation rates and directly impact financial KPIs.
• Harmonise staffing practices across large organisations, creating more fluid collaboration.

According to the benchmark conducted by Napta this year, an international consulting firm that adopted this approach was able to centralise visibility on its skills, increase profitability and professionalise its resource management.

2. Anticipate critical skills

In a fast-changing market, anticipating strategic skills has become a must to secure delivery capacity.

Key benefits:

• Ensure the organisation is ready to meet client needs over the next 12 months.
• Continuously align available skills with business priorities.
• Support better decisions between staffing, training and recruitment.

This qualitative performance indicator strengthens competitiveness, agility and organisational stability.

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3. Strengthen upskilling

According to the OECD, a skill can become obsolete in just two years. For professional services firms, upskilling is no longer optional but vital.

Key benefits:

• Reduce costs associated with turnover and external recruitment.
• Build internal expertise to support future growth.
• Align employees with market opportunities while boosting engagement.

Through smarter mapping of skills and aspirations, several leading firms have accelerated learning and improved both mission quality and profitability.

4. Turn bench time into opportunity

Bench time is often perceived as wasted. In reality, it can be transformed into a lever of value creation.

Key benefits:

• Limit the financial impact of non-billable periods.
• Use this time for training, innovation, CSR or strategic initiatives.
• Strengthen employability and engagement by giving these periods meaning.

Audit and consulting firms that industrialise this approach are now using bench time to reinforce competitiveness and employer branding.

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Towards sustainable performance

These four levers – cross-staffing, anticipating critical skills, upskilling and turning bench time into opportunity – put people back at the heart of resource management. They show that sustainable performance is not only about financial KPIs but also about engaging and developing talent in a proactive way.

In 2025, the most successful firms will be those that combine quantitative performance with these human levers, adopting predictive, collaborative and transparent approaches.

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Conclusion

Sustainable performance is not just a matter of numbers: it depends on how professional services firms anticipate, develop and engage their people.

Want to discover how leading firms are turning these levers into a competitive advantage, with concrete benchmarks and case studies?

‍Download our full white paper to learn more.