Introhive Survey: Partners Want AI That Can See Relationships

Introhive, the Fredericton-founded relationship intelligence company, released its 2026 Partner Survey Report, AI and Business Development in Law and Accounting Firms, on Oct. 13. The main finding: firms get a return on business development and AI only when those tools can see the relationships underneath.

Introhive commissioned Thinktiv, an Austin-based growth strategy firm, to design and run the survey. It collected 123 completed responses from partners who both deliver client work and bring in new business: 42 in legal services, 42 in accounting and 39 in other professional services. Respondents were recruited mainly through targeted panel sourcing. The release does not say which countries respondents work in.

A big shift ahead

Partners expect business development to change quickly. Today, 41% say their firm runs structured or AI-driven programs, such as proactive cross-sell identification and key account management. Within 18 to 24 months, 84% expect to be there. The number expecting to run AI-driven business development grows fivefold, from 8 respondents to 40, or about one in three.

The pressure shows. Partners rate business development difficulty at 3.4 out of 5, and the urgency of their relationship intelligence problems at 7.3 out of 10. The biggest sources of friction are knowing where to focus their time (50%), finding the time at all (45%) and spotting cross-sell opportunities (43%).

The gap is in the data

• 78% say their current tools show some relationship information that is hard to act on.
• 70% say firm leadership lacks visibility into the firm's relationship capital.
• Among partners who rated their tools below 7 out of 10, 51% said the tools store records without surfacing insight, or send no proactive alerts.
• Among those using AI for business development, 68% rely only on general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini, which can't see the firm's relationship network on their own. Satisfaction with current AI tools for business development averages 6.7 out of 10.

Measurement lags. Most firms (63%) have no revenue-linked way to measure business development return on investment, and 15% can track revenue with strong attribution. Partners say the most convincing proof would be cross-sell and expansion revenue (44%) and pipeline generated or deals influenced (35%).

Growth starts with relationships firms already have

Asked which single capability they most want done well each week, 47% of partners chose surfacing new business opportunities, ahead of who-knows-whom mapping (24%) and automated data capture (17%). Asked what they could do by combining information from across the firm, they ranked cross-sell opportunities (54%), at-risk relationship alerts (49%) and relationship mapping (46%) highest.

Partners are also open to sharing data with AI when the firm stays in charge. When the firm controls data governance, 83% said yes or maybe to sharing email content with AI tools. Client billing data stayed the most sensitive category, especially in legal and accounting.

"Partners are being asked to use AI to grow their book of business, but with no clear roadmap and the dizzying pace of change, it can feel like everyone else is further ahead," said Introhive CEO Lee Blakemore. "Our research shows partners are not alone. Most firms using AI for business development work with tools that can't see their relationships. The intelligence AI needs is already there, but firms won't expose sensitive relationship data to AI without control over how it's used."

Where the MCP Server fits

The report points back to the MCP Server Introhive made generally available in August. The server brings Introhive's relationship data into compatible AI assistants, agents and firm-built applications, including Claude, Harvey, ChatGPT and Copilot. Access follows each user's existing permissions and the firm's data governance policies. Because the Model Context Protocol is an open standard, the company says that context carries over as firms adopt new models and agents.

Introhive says it is trusted by 20 of the world's top 100 law firms and 36 of the top 100 accounting firms, with users in more than 90 countries. For how the company grew from Fredericton, see our earlier profile.

Sources

• Introhive — "AI Without Relationship Context Won't Deliver BD ROI, Introhive's 2026 Partner Survey Report Finds" (Oct. 13, 2026): all survey figures, the methodology, the Blakemore quote, MCP Server details and customer counts
• PR Newswire — same release
• Introhive — 2026 Partner Survey Report (full report)
• Introhive — MCP Server product page
• Thinktiv: survey firm named in the methodology