What International Services Week 2026 Revealed About the Future of Professional Services

Last month, I wrote that professional services is entering its most disruptive period since the internet rewired knowledge work. After a full week of conversations, research, and community activation during International Services Week 2026, that point feels even clearer. 

AI is reshaping how services organizations staff work, manage delivery, measure performance, and define value. The firms that will lead through this shift are building for speed, but they are also investing in judgment, accountability, and trust. That’s the conversation Certinia set out to help lead, and this year’s Services Week showed just how urgent that work has become.

As a founding partner of International Services Week, Certinia helped bring together a global community of services leaders, practitioners, researchers, and partners for five days centered on one theme: “Accelerating with AI. Leading with Judgment.” Across the week, that idea showed up in every format—executive perspectives in bylines, analyst and partner-led webinars, LinkedIn Live conversations, customer stories, and employee activations. 

It also gave us the opportunity to show how Certinia sees the industry changing: AI is moving deeper into the operational core of services businesses, and the next generation of market leaders will be the ones that pair that acceleration with stronger governance, better data foundations, and more deliberate human-in-the-loop oversight.

Defining the AI Challenges Services Leaders Face (and How to Solve Them)

That point came through clearly in the perspectives Certinia experts published throughout the week:

• Our CEO DJ Paoni’s byline in Inc. (AI Makes Your Business Faster. Is Your Business Wiser For It?) made the case that AI without a connected data foundation only accelerates organizational blind spots. He argued that CEOs must treat net revenue retention as a leadership responsibility, not just a customer success metric, and build cross-functional operating models where AI amplifies experienced judgment instead of compounding fragmentation.
  
  
• Our CPTO Raju Malhotra’s articles in AIThority (Your AI Is Working. That Might Be the Problem.) and The AI Journal (Your Firm Has Two AI Problems. Most Leaders Are Only Solving One.) pushed the industry to separate probabilistic, client-facing AI from deterministic, auditable management AI.
  
  
• In Diginomica (Turning AI pilots into measurable ROI and professional services growth) our VP of Value Advisory Sridhar Parameshwaran focused on what it takes to move AI pilots into measurable ROI, showing how AI can change the specific metrics that drive a services bottom line—revenue growth, margin resilience, and cash flow—when it is anchored in unified operational data.
  
  
• On Certinia’s own blog, Sr. Content Manager Sarah Johansen’s analysis of the 2026 SPI Research Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report translated the latest industry data into practical signals for leaders managing AI adoption, operational maturity, and changing market conditions. (Analyzing the 2026 SPI Research Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report)
  
  

  DJ Paoni’s Inc. piece was one of many Services Week articles that took the AI conversation beyond hype, focusing on NRR, operating discipline, and the leadership decisions that will define the next era of services.

• Our COO Robert Cesafsky’s separate Diginomica piece (Professional services built its tech stack for timesheets - AI changed the rules) examined why traditional, timesheet-centric tech stacks break under the weight of agentic AI and outcome-based contracts, arguing for purpose-built services operations systems that restore real-time visibility into whether projects are profitable
  
  
• Steve Frost, Head of Industry & Executive Advisory for Customer Success at Certinia, shared in Customer Success Collective (The handoff quietly killing your NRR (that doesn’t happen in customer success)), how weak handoffs between sales, professional services, and customer success quietly erode NRR long before renewal, and why treating that transition as a mere administrative step discards the context customer success teams need to prevent churn. Retention is won or lost across handoffs, and services organizations that want healthy NRR must design for outcome continuity, not last‑minute heroics.
  
  
• Also on the Certinia blog, our CFO Erin Sawyer brought the finance lens into the conversation, showing why utilization, margin, billing velocity, and AI investment discipline need to be read together as indicators of services business health (The Financial Signals Every Services Executive Should Be Watching in 2026).

Our live conversations pushed that thinking further:

• In the Services Week 2026 keynote with IDC (The Services Dialogue: Bridging the Gap Between AI Expectation and Operational Reality) analyst Mickey North Rizza and Certinia CBO Prasad Narasimhan Sulur examined how agentic AI is reshaping the levers that define services performance, from pricing and backlog quality to client experience and profitability.
  
  
• Our first LinkedIn Live conversation with SPI Research’s Connor Budden, diginomica’s Jon Reed, and Prasad Narasimhan Sulur (Can You Measure How Well Your AI Agents Are Working?) focused on a question that many services leaders are only beginning to confront: how to evaluate whether AI agents are performing well in real operating environments. The group examined the emerging challenge of defining performance standards, measurement frameworks, and ROI expectations for agentic AI in professional services.
  
  
• Certinia also showed up in New York for Consulting Magazine’s 2026 Top Consultants Professional Series, where Prasad joined the faculty for a session that looked at the shift toward outcome‑based, AI‑enabled consulting models and outlined what firms need to get right on AI governance, delivery redesign, and talent strategy to capture value in this new landscape.
  
  

  Certinia CBO Prasad Sulur spoke at Consulting Magazine’s 2026 Top Consultants Professional Series event during Services Week

• Our second LinkedIn Live chat (Everybody Is Accelerating with AI. Not Everyone Has The Right Direction) shifted the discussion from measurement to governance and accountability. In that conversation, Raju Malhotra joined Salesforce’s Lisa Eisenberg and PwC’s Quinton Pienaar to look at what responsible AI deployment requires in production environments, including rules-bound AI, hybrid human-agent workflows, and clear ownership over decisions that affect the business
  
  
• We took the conversation to theCUBE for an interview featuring Certinia’s Prasad Narasimhan Sulur and PwC’s Matt Cook, moderated by theCUBE Research’s Scott Hebner. Together they explored how AI is changing the economics of professional services, why trust and governance now sit at the center of every consequential AI deployment, and how firms can redesign their operating models so AI supports—not replaces—human judgment.
  
  

  theCUBE interviewed leaders from Certinia and PwC about the dual imperative to accelerate with AI and lead with trust

Together, these discussions pointed to a broader truth for services leaders: AI creates the most value when it is designed into the operating model, measured with discipline, and governed with clear accountability.

Making Trusted AI Tangible for Customers

Services Week also gave us the chance to ground the conversation in real examples. 

• Our partner webinar with Diabsolut (Building AI You Can Trust: A Strategic Deep Dive of Agentforce and Veda Frameworks) focused on what it takes to move from AI pilot to production-grade systems that services organizations can trust.
  
  
• The discussion between BTS and VFP Consulting (Connecting the Dots: How BTS Built an AI Copilot to Solve Global Support Challenges) showed how AI can solve a very practical challenge by unifying fragmented knowledge across global support environments and surfacing answers in context. Those examples matter because they move the industry beyond abstract enthusiasm, to showing what trusted AI looks like when it is embedded in real workflows and tied to real business outcomes.

Building Skills, Giving Back, Strengthening Partnerships

Just as important, Services Week reinforced that the future of professional services will not be defined by technology alone. Inside Certinia, we used the week to bring employees into that conversation through AI Accelerator workshops, Bring Your Own Mug talks, keynote watch parties, and other internal activations across our global offices. 

Shane Ward, Vice President of Professional Services at Certinia, conducts a “Bring Your Own Mug” informal coffee chat designed to build transparency, connection, and culture across the workforce.

We also made community impact part of the week in a meaningful way. Through multiple CareerVillage.org advice-a-thons, 89 Certinia volunteers contributed 1,391 pieces of advice, representing an estimated 348 hours spent helping students navigate career decisions. In doing so, we had the chance to support the next generation of professional services talent and share practical advice with students and early-career individuals who may not otherwise have access to the resources, industry exposure, or role models that help open doors into these professions.

Certinians around the world gathered for “Advice-a-thons” to share career advice with students on CareerVillage.org

We also took time to celebrate the relationships that make our ecosystem strong. During Services Week, our team headed to Salesforce Tower in Sydney to share some treats with our partners, sponsoring a Messina gelato cart and using the moment to connect, collaborate, and celebrate the relationships that make the ecosystem special. 

At the Salesforce Tower In Sydney, Services Week participants celebrated and connected over Messina gelato, a cult-favourite Sydney gelato brand.

Where the Industry Goes From Here

International Services Week 2026 helped sharpen the industry’s understanding of what comes next. Professional services is moving into a market defined by AI-powered execution, connected operational data, and a higher premium on human judgment. Certinia is proud to help lead that conversation through the ideas we shared, the discussions we hosted, the partnerships we deepened, and the communities we served. 

Thank you to all 35 companies that participated in International Services Week 2026 and helped make the week as substantive, collaborative, and forward-looking as it was. The industry moves faster when leaders are willing to share what they’re learning in real time.

The full library of Services Week content is available at ServicesWeek.com and I encourage you to go check it out. But the more important question is what happens after the articles are read, the sessions end, and the buzz fades: which services organizations will turn these ideas into better operating models, stronger judgment, and more trustworthy outcomes for their clients?