By Ramone Param, Managing Partner at Kennedy Consult and M&A I Advisor to Consulting Leaders, Buyers/Investors I M&A, Strategic Advisory

Kennedy Intelligence announced the release of their 2025 Consulting Industry Navigator report this week. The Navigator - the most comprehensive analysis of the global consulting and professional services industry - is designed for consulting leaders, investors, and other decision-makers who need to stay ahead of the latest transformations shaping the industry.

I highlight a notable summary review by Navigator co-author Nathan Simon of Navigator sections tracking consulting-related M&A, Joint Ventures, Alliances and Organic Growth initiatives by different competitive groups. The below is covered in more detail, along with investment trends shaping the industry in the report.

Please contact info@kennedyintel.com for pricing information and subscription options – if you’re interested in purchasing a copy or would like to discuss the latest trends in the context of your own business strategy.

Consulting Investment Tracks Point to Technical Expertise

Kennedy Intelligence gathers proprietary intelligence and data on investment trends shaping the competitive landscape – including M&A, investments, and alliances amongst consulting firms, and strategic plans for further investments in 2025. Consistent with our overall perspective on consulting, we believe client needs and priorities are the key to understanding the “why” behind current investment activity. Our engagement with clients reveals that their objectives for engaging consulting providers around four overarching strategic agendas (Grow, Optimize, Innovate, and Protect) together with their prioritization of different consultant roles to tackle them are what animates the competitive dynamics driving different parts of the market.

The current constellation of client demand, with buying power migrating down to functional leaders and a focus on technical expertise, is setting the course for where both the consulting market growth and consultancy investment priorities are pointing.

Investments by consultancies broadly align with one of two strategies. One is market penetration: extending the footprint by bolting on new functional, geographic, and industry domains. These strategies involving extending an existing role to new clients, always have been and always will be part of the consulting landscape. The other strategy puts the consulting business model in play. It involves acquiring new capabilities to perform different roles for clients with the endgame being both a broader and deeper, more intensive engagement with clients.

Business model investment strategies ultimately revolve around acquiring the capabilities to create real-world outcomes for clients. Experience and Business Building outcomes have become less prominent areas for investment, both because clients broadly are less focused on Growth and consultancies have already bulked up substantially in these areas. Investments targeted at clients’ Optimize agenda, on the other hand, are evolving as outcomes increasingly entail combining traditional Performance Improvement domain expertise with more tech-driven Process Automation, especially involving AI. Accenture’s acquisition of Germany-based Camelot is a good example of this.

The standout this year, however, are investments in engineering disciplines that require deep technical expertise to create innovation outcomes for clients. This is different than the old growth play masquerading as innovation. It is about fundamentally changing the client value chain and the operations technology that powers it.

We see two important implications. One is that consultancies will increasingly encounter the professional services arms of engineering companies and will need to grapple with the brand implications. The other is that the unfortunate reality of investing in new roles is that earning a return is not automatic. Our analysis of thousands of investments made over the past decade reveals essentially zero correlation between the volume of investments a consultancy makes in a capability and the extent to which clients view them as differentiated in it.  Capitalizing on growth opportunities requires both the right combination of consulting roles and the go-to-market system to “get the power to the road.”

If you’re interested in purchasing the Consulting Navigator report, learning more about our perspectives in the context of your own strategy and discussing the latest consulting industry trends that Kennedy Intelligence is monitoring and analyzing with our team, please get in touch.

2025 Consulting Industry Navigator Report & Data Subscription

Kennedy Intelligence’s 2025 Consulting Industry Navigator Report offers 120 pages of data-rich research on market trends and growth drivers for consulting services and implications for consulting providers, with detailed proprietary market size and growth rates by Client Functions, Client Industries, Geographic Regions and Provider Service Delivery Models.

The report provides a detailed look at professional services industry growth by client functions, industries, geographies, and service delivery, with market share and growth rate breakdowns of leading firms. The report also tracks and analyzes internal and external investment activities of hundreds of providers by six competitive groups. Our clients tell us the Navigator is a vital planning tool and knowledge source to inform professional services firm’s executive leadership, corporate development teams, internal knowledge managers, as well as investors seeking objective, data-intensive analysis of the global consulting industry.

Navigator customers who also subscribe to the Consulting Navigator Data Service receive access to all Navigator data and market sizing and growth forecasts via Excel data lakes, with a mid-year refresh of all data and forecasts. This feature allows clients to incorporate Kennedy's proprietary content data into their own modeling and knowledge platforms. Subscribers also receive access to our senior analysts and Kennedy leadership to discuss specific market trends and data points.

Please note: This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. The intelligence has been gathered from a variety of public and non-publicly available sources. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of any affiliate organization. Any opinions or views expressed are as of the date written and are subject to change without notice and may be updated or modified at any time.