Digital & AI: Which Infrastructure and Complex Services Providers Pull Ahead and Why

As part of a recent strategy engagement, we benchmarked >40 global infrastructure and complex services providers to understand how Digital & AI are reshaping their growth and client value delivery.

Firms progress along a three-step maturity curve:

• Automate the house - Most players start by applying AI to internal tasks; knowledge management, bidding, dashboards. Serco, for instance, used AutogenAI to cut proposal-prep time by 85 % and lift win rates by 5 %.

• Transform delivery - Leaders weave digital twins, remote diagnostics and asset-lifecycle tools into live contracts. Mitie now detects 25 % of HVAC issues before clients call the help desk and has reduced faults on critical machinery by 70 %.

• Monetise the edge - Pioneers turn tools into market-facing offerings, and integrate them further into platforms or entire orchestrated ecosystems. Slb's Digital & Integration segment generated 6.6b AUD in revenue globally in 2024, growing 10% year on year.

  
  How firms move up the curve:

• Buy - nearly all players are buying, with some investing billions to acquire new capabilities or complement their offering. Example: KBR's acquisition of LinQuest in 2024 for 1.1b AUD to expand their digital offering

• Boost - a few players double-down on boosting existing capabilities and offerings. Example: Mitie investing >300m AUD over 6y into creating Connected Workspace, a pioneering building information management platform unique to the industry.

• Build - only select players have so far invested in the talent and resources to build a digital offering internally. Example: slb with its Delfi platform, a core part of their Digital & Integration segment, which was the result of decades of research and development of client-facing tools, supported by three research centres dedicated to digital innovation.

  So what for leaders:

• Choose your play - decide where Digital & AI complement your offerings and could be monetised down the road

• Sequence capital - buy for speed, boost to sweat existing assets and de-risk new use cases, build for unique and thus defensible IP

• Partner early - mature players all enter joint ventures with hyperscalers and start-ups to tap into (global) scale for cost efficiency and a head start in deploying transferrable solutions

• Develop talent - Anchor tech strategy in C-Suite, adjust talent strategy and invest in broad team upskilling to drive enterprise-wide adoption
  
  These aren't operational upgrades; they're strategic moves. Some act early. Others wait for certainty. Only one group builds an edge.
  
  Reach out if you'd like to discuss how to move from signal to strategy!