An outside-in view of the Business Services industry and the performance across 8 key sectors

The 2025 edition of GBSI continues the analytical approach taken in 2024, offering an outside-in view of the Business Services Industry. It assesses performance across eight key sectors using the ‘Sector Index Score’, developed from a thorough analysis of key metrics from a sample set of 280 international companies. The score reflects sector performance in FY24 relative to the FY19 baseline, across four dimensions: growth, profitability, productivity, and cash flow. 

This year’s edition of PwC’s GBSI shows solid improvements across most sectors, with impressive score increases for Legal Services, Digital and Education  Services, and Built Environment Services. The Legal Services sector, in particular, benefitted from favourable demand trends and enhanced billing rates.

In contrast, the Human Capital Management sector  continues to struggle following a partial bounce-back from COVID-19 pandemic. Margin pressures within TICC have also slightly lowered its sector score.

Logistics and Distribution, Professional Services, as well as Testing, Inspection, and Certification sectors remained resilient, maintaining relatively consistent performance across dimensions. 

Priorities for success:

To stay competitive and drive resilient growth, industry leaders are focusing on these key priorities: 

1. Technology adoption is accelerating as companies seek to boost operational efficiency. Integration of generative AI (GenAI) tools into core business operations is also on the rise—a trend expected to reshape industries in the years ahead. 
2. Companies are expanding into previously underserved service segments and geographic markets, with the rise of digital offerings creating new pockets of growth and opportunity. 
3. To strengthen capabilities in emerging domains, many organisations are pursuing strategic acquisitions, laying the foundation for long-term competitiveness. 

These transformative shifts are not only empowering firms to effectively navigate uncertainty but also strategically positioning them for future growth. To learn more about the GBSI and macrotrends impacting the business services sector, download PwC’s Global Business Services Annual Report 2025.

Use the simple interactive comparison tool below to map your company’s key metrics against sector peers. The tool offers a sliding scale to provide approximations for two of the four dimensions (i.e. growth and profitability) used in the creation of the annual GBSI.

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Global industries are undergoing a fundamental reconfiguration, driven by three transformative forces that are reshaping global economic order and putting value in motion: artificial intelligence (AI), climate change, and geopolitical realignment.

This is leading to the emergence of what we call the new domains of growth. In these spaces, as traditional boundaries between industries dissolve, businesses must collaborate in innovative ways.

The core domains are centred around fundamental human needs: How we move, feed, and care for ourselves; build and make things; and fuel and power society. They are supported in their evolutions by three crucial enabling domains—how we fund and insure, connect and compute, and govern and serve.

To navigate this evolving landscape, companies will need to reinvent their business and operating models, adopt emerging technologies, and secure access to critical resources. Business services providers will play an essential role in this reconfiguration. Acting as key enablers, they will help companies build critical capabilities, develop talent, and rethink regulatory strategies, among other priorities essential for preparing for the world ahead.

How business services players will enable transformation of industries

Business services providers will also capture a portion of the new value created within these domains. But to thrive in a world of value in motion, industry leaders will need to recognise the cross-sector possibilities and reimagine the role they will play. At the same time, firms will need to remain mindful of the uncertainties these shifts may bring, especially as companies venture into new markets.

Navigating these challenges and unlocking emerging opportunities will require global Business Services industry leaders to rethink how they deliver value to clients and stakeholders. This reinvention begins with a clear assessment of organisational performance across the four key dimensions: growth, profitability, productivity, and cash flow. From there, firms must identify the key strategic shifts to drive long-term success. In this context, the GBSI aims to serve as a practical tool to help service providers develop a realistic and actionable view of their current position.