Consulting and services: 5 key challenges for driving performance in 2026

Pressure on margins, talent tension, business models more unstable than five years ago: the management of consulting and service firms is changing in nature.

At Beyond Plans, we have been supporting firms facing these transformations for several years, often more structural than technological. Looking ahead to 2026, five key challenges clearly emerge for those who want to maintain control over their performance.

1. Ensuring reliable data to make faster (and better) decisions

In many consulting firms, management data remains fragmented: Excel files on the finance side, poorly connected HR tools, billing separated from sales forecasts. This fragmentation creates analytical gaps, delayed trade-offs, and ultimately, decisions made too late.

However, the quality of management depends directly on the quality of the data. The most advanced organizations have implemented integrated modeling approaches, capable of linking finance, resources, and business activity in real time.

Anaplan is often used as the technological foundation for this approach, provided the models are designed for the consulting business. This is precisely where Beyond Plans adds value: building readable, shared, and governed models that transform data into a genuine decision-making support, rather than mere reporting.

2. Moving away from the annual budget to adopt continuous planning

The fixed annual budget is no longer suited to consulting realities: rapid demand fluctuations, team turnover, changes in daily rates, and ongoing trade-offs between growth and profitability.

Management now needs to operate within a continuous framework, where assumptions can be adjusted without overhauling the entire process. This requires connected planning between finance, HR, and operations, on a common platform.

Every change—hiring, departure, workload or price variation—must be simulated and measured immediately.

According to Beyond Plans’ experience, this shift is not merely technical: it gradually fosters a culture of anticipation, where leaders act on quantified scenarios rather than reviewing results retrospectively.

3. Managing talent as an economic asset

In consulting firms, human capital remains the main lever of value creation… and risk. Attracting, retaining, and developing skills is increasingly complex in a context of heightened competition, new consultant expectations, and more hybrid work models.

HR management can no longer be limited to an administrative view. It must adopt an economic perspective across multiple horizons:

• In the short term, to secure staffing and delivery quality;

• In the medium and long term, to develop key skills and support strategy.

Connected planning allows HR decisions to be directly linked to overall performance: each hiring, mobility, or promotion can be analyzed in terms of margin and capacity impact.

Beyond Plans systematically integrates this economic view of human resources into its Anaplan models dedicated to consulting and services.

4. Integrating AI without delegating decision-making

Artificial intelligence is gradually finding its place in planning and forecasting tools. At Anaplan, the CoPlanner module opens new possibilities: detecting weak signals, recommending adjustments, anticipating workload or profitability imbalances.

But the challenge is not to delegate decision-making to AI.

For consulting firms, value lies in understanding the underlying dynamics: why a margin is deteriorating, where HR tension exists, which scenario is truly sustainable.

A frequently underestimated point of attention concerns team adoption. Algorithmic recommendations are useful only if they are explainable and debatable. Beyond Plans therefore emphasizes training, model transparency, and usage governance, ensuring AI remains a decision-support tool, not a black box.

5. Moving from reporting to continuous simulation

Historically, consulting firm performance has been measured through retrospective indicators: utilization rate, monthly margin, year-to-date results. These indicators remain necessary, but they are no longer sufficient.

Management is shifting toward continuous simulation: comparing multiple possible trajectories before deciding.

Should we hire now or wait? Accept a low-margin assignment to secure workload? Invest in a new skill?

Anaplan models designed by Beyond Plans align with this logic: making data dynamic, explainable, and shared to support collective decisions, rather than isolated trade-offs.

Towards truly integrated management by 2026

By 2026, the performance of consulting and service firms will not depend on a single tool, but on their ability to connect functions, ensure data reliability, and foster a culture of anticipation.

Connected planning, enriched by AI and supported by clear governance, becomes a genuine differentiating factor.

With Anaplan as the technological foundation and Beyond Plans as the implementation partner, firms can build a management model that is robust, agile, and understandable to all stakeholders.