ESSENTIAL SKILLS PLAYBOOK

Professional
Services
 P.3 P.5 P.7
Introduction Insight 1 Insight 2
Digital disruption will Technology will
happen from the inside out. complement, rather than
Table of contents replace, human expertise.

P.8 P.9 P.10

Insight 3 Now is the time to invest Appendix
The war for talent must be in growth.
fought on many fronts.

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 2

Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the professional
services industry. The resulting accelerated digital transformation
is enabling the application of automation and other technological
advances—and it is creating exactly the kind of tension that allows
professional services companies to innovate and grow.
Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services
While the pandemic’s anticipated long-term effects on digital
transformation are incalculable, the following notable sources of
disruption to the professional services industry stand out:
Software development
Firms are shifting away from developing custom
systems for clients and toward a software-as-a-
service (SaaS) model that requires their own bench
of development and innovation talent.1
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the underlying infrastructure of
digital transformation, giving companies the ability
to deploy applications faster, improve collaboration,
experiment, and innovate.2
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have the
potential to exponentially increase the scale and
speed at which professional services organizations
can synthesize information and produce insights.3
Cybersecurity
As companies embrace emerging and transformative
technology, professional services firms need to
adopt new security practices and procedures to
minimize the risk of data loss.4
3
Digital transformation is disrupting the professional services sector itself by providing resources
that challenge the industry to increase its innovation and offerings. Digital transformation also puts
an even greater premium on the industry being able to attract talent knowledgeable about the
technological underpinnings of this change. These employees must appreciate that, at its heart,
digital transformation is not about technology, but rather about producing business innovation and
excellent client service.

Organizations that clearly understand where the industry falls in regard to in-demand skills have
a key advantage in meeting ongoing digital transformation head-on. They can proactively build a
talent strategy that cultivates employees who are smart enough, agile enough, and flexible enough
to meet whatever demands arise in the future.

In this report, we’ll share an in-depth look at what is projected to happen with job growth and digital
skills in the post-pandemic economic landscape of the professional services industry.

The Coursera Industry Skills Report explores skill trends worldwide and benchmarks
skills proficiencies in business, technology, and data science across over eighty-
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hundred governments using the Coursera platform.

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Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 4

INSIGHT 1

Digital disruption will happen

from the inside out.

Digital-first competencies are critical in every industry, but especially in professional services,
where knowledge and expertise in a given domain are the main currency. Leading firms
disrupt themselves from within by upskilling strong generalists or subject-matter experts to
operate more effectively in the technology age, understanding that anything less will threaten
their growth.

“Consultants today need to think like innovators,” said Alison Lands, a skills
transformation consultant at Coursera. “They’re most valuable when they take their
foundation of deep industry knowledge and build on it with digital innovation that can drive “Professional services
new revenue growth and streamline and automate the value they deliver.” consultants need to be ahead
of the curve, not at the curve.
The pandemic was a catalyst for adopting digital-first processes. Eight in ten business-
Their role is to help guide and
development employees said they had to shift quickly to new sales strategies because
of changing social and economic conditions. These workers are also more likely than those advise clients through these
in other industries to use marketing automation and have higher adoption rates for sales- changes rapidly, and they
process automation, videoconferencing, and opportunity management.5 can only do that when they
have a grasp on the skills and
The rapid shift to online business operations and relationship-building during the
pandemic became an inflection point for professional services firms, amplifying the knowledge about the landscape
need to retrain and upskill employees with twenty-first-century technology skills. Doing of business technology
so empowers teams to make savvy use of data to satisfy customers and stay ahead of the themselves.”
competition. Virtual collaboration and sales automation deliver insights that are difficult
to capture in offline interactions, thus allowing firms to better track the buyer journey and
develop more personalized proposals.
MARIE BRETON
Skills Transformation Consultant, Coursera

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 5

INSIGHT 1 – Digital disruption will happen from the inside out.

“Professional services consultants need to be ahead of the curve, not at the curve,” said Marie
Breton, a skills transformation consultant at Coursera. “Their role is to help guide and advise
clients through these changes rapidly, and they can only do that when they have a grasp on the
skills and knowledge about the landscape of business technology themselves.”

As the adoption of new technologies increases, professional services companies realize they
need people with these new competencies. But finding qualified workers is getting harder. A key
reason, according to one recent report, is a shortage of individuals in the professional services
talent pool who have the types of technology skills needed for digital transformation.6

The imperative remains, however. “If you don’t have an active pipeline of talent for positions like
data scientist, database administrator, software engineer, or tech support,” Breton said, “your
business isn’t going to grow as fast as it could.”

The pandemic was a

catalyst for adopting
digital-first processes.

80%
of business-development employees
said they had to shift quickly to new
sales strategies because of changing
social and economic conditions.5

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 6

INSIGHT 2

Technology will complement, rather than

replace, human expertise.

Digital transformation is not about replacing professional services organizations in synthesizing

information and producing insights. Rather, it’s there to increase the speed and scale at which
professional services organizations can do so—which is only possible when data literacy is
embedded across the enterprise.

Indeed, a Gallup survey pinpointed the characteristics of the “new star employee” for
professional services firms. These “pseudo-data scientists” understand how to meld their
technological and human expertise, and they can quickly pick up new digital skills.7 In other
words, every employee must have a mindset of innovation, flexibility, and agility. Data and
analytics do not trump gut instinct, experience, and expertise. Rather, technology enhances
and unleashes these abilities. “Innovators in professional
services are thinking about how
“Human brainpower has always been the primary engine of professional services, and that has
not changed,” Lands said. “What advanced technology and digital transformation do is expand
they can design and scale their
the potential of human brainpower. But in order to pull that off, you have to empower those offerings with digital products
smart people with the data and technology that can deliver these insights at scale.” and services—and that requires
a base-level upskilling in how
Integrated and automated analytics will allow professional services organizations to
technology and data science
speed up business-process improvement.8 However, that will require firms to continue to
develop big data analysis techniques, including data modeling and data mining. are applied to the industry.”

Professional services is one of the primary industries hiring data scientists,9 a trend driven
largely by its embrace of analytics. In a sector compensated based on its ability to find and ALISON LANDS
communicate value in a given domain and help organizations execute on it, individuals who Skills Transformation Consultant, Coursera
can use data to generate deeper insights will be amply rewarded.

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 7

INSIGHT 3

The war for talent must be fought

on many fronts.

Professional services firms are in a war for talent, and they are competing against nearly every
industry for employees with technological prowess. The effect is already evident: Two out
of three consulting firms don’t have enough workers, causing some of them to pass on
jobs, Bloomberg reported.10 Recruiting and retention have become more difficult as well.
The problem isn’t going away anytime soon: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates a
14 percent increase in management consulting employment from 2020 to 2030, compared
with 8 percent for all occupations.11

With at least half of all employees needing major reskilling by 2022, according to the World
Economic Forum, the solution to professional services firms’ hiring woes may be already
on their payrolls.12

“There’s no guaranteed way to hire or acquire your way out of this problem,” Lands said.
“The most successful professional services firms are training their own technology- and data
“With a resident workforce
science-oriented business minds from the ground up. With a resident workforce already expert already expert in your business,
in your business, you get the talent you need with the experience you want, and they’re on the you get the talent you need
ground and effective much faster than a new hire.” with the experience you want,
Professional services organizations that use upskilling as pre-employment training also
and they’re on the ground
can tap into nontraditional talent who have the ability but not the credentials, or into and effective much faster
high-potential talent who are ready to advance. than a new hire.”
“Talented people who didn’t attend a top MBA program, transitioning veterans, individuals with
criminal backgrounds—proven upskilling programs allow professional services organizations
ALISON LANDS
to broaden the lens of where they source talent and uncover hidden potential,” Lands said.
Skills Transformation Consultant, Coursera

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 8

CONCLUSION

Now is the time to invest in growth.

Digital transformation is in full force, and the more skilled and in-demand professional services
workers become, the more their employers will struggle to fill available positions.

Investing in human capital and training programs to close digital skill gaps is imperative for “When professional services
professional services companies in the post-pandemic economy. Their charge is to transform practitioners think outside
corporate learning into something that is a part of employees’ jobs. The very talent these firms seek
the box, they can experiment,
to hire demands that ongoing learning is intertwined with their day-to-day work.
iterate, and fail fast. Armed with
Digital transformation is not a project with a conclusion, but a journey, on which the need for new skills in technology and
employees with cutting-edge skills will remain constant. To meet the challenge, professional services data science, they can bring
firms must embrace training and skill-building as part of their corporate DNA. Those that take this
that creativity and curiosity
approach will position themselves as the industry disruptors; those that don’t may find themselves
being disrupted. back into the business domain
to drive innovation.”

Take a deeper dive into the state of digital MARIE BRETON

skills in the professional services sector with Download Now Skills Transformation Consultant, Coursera
Coursera’s Industry Skills Report.

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 9

Appendix

1. “Killing Strategy: The Disruption Of Management Consulting,” CB Insights, October 8, 2020, https://www.cbinsights.com/research/disrupting-
management-consulting/.
2. Keith White. “Digital Transformation Is Shifting From Cloud-First To Cloud Everywhere.” Forbes, Sept. 13, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/
forbestechcouncil/2021/09/13/digital-transformation-is-shifting-from-cloud-first-to-cloud-everywhere/
3. “The state of AI in 2020: AI adoption and impact,” McKinsey & Company, November 17, 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/
mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/global-survey-the-state-of-ai-in-2020
4. “Protecting against the changing cybersecurity risk landscape,” Deloitte https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/advisory/articles/
advanced-cyber-threats.html
5. Susan Johnston. “3 Trends Impacting Revenue Growth at Professional Services Firms,” Salesforce, October 27, 2020, https://www.salesforce.
com/blog/professional-services-trends-in-revenue-growth/.
6. “2021 Professional Services Industry Trends: Survey Results and Analysis,” Alithya, January 20, 2021, https://www.alithya.com/en/insights/
reports-and-presentations/2021-professional-services-industry-trends-survey-results-and-analysis.
7. Jake Herway. “Professional Services Firms: This Is Your New Star Employee,” Gallup, February 11, 2021, https://www.gallup.com/
workplace/284249/professional-services-firms-new-star-employee.aspx.
8. “Trends Transforming the Management Consulting in 2021,” Linchpin, September 23, 2021, https://linchpinseo.com/trends-in-the-
management-consulting-industry/#recruiting-new-talent.
9. Rashmi Karan. “Top Industries Hiring Data Scientists in 2021,” Naukri Learning, September 27, 2021, https://www.naukri.com/learning/
articles/top-6-industries-hiring-data-scientists-in-2020/.
10. Matthew Boyle. “The Consulting Business Booms Just as Consultants Disappear,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/
news/articles/2021-07-29/the-consulting-business-booms-just-as-consultants-disappear.
11. “Occupational Outlook Handbook: Management Analysts,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 8, 2021, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
business-and-financial/management-analysts.htm.
12. “The Future of Jobs Report,” World Economic Forum, 2018, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf

Essential Skills Playbook: Professional Services 10

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