The notion that AI could replace consultancies is drawing spirited defences from both sides of the debate. AI does, indeed, do a large part of a consultant's job better. But humans can fall back on culture and emotions to drive strategic growth for enterprises. The middle path would be for consultancies to power themselves up through AI copilots to deliver greater insights to their clients. In any case, the business of consulting will undergo a change in terms of billable hours. Much of the analytics will move in-house, available to managers at a voice prompt. Consulting firms will oversee this transition and then have to reinvent their role in driving growth and efficiency. They have decades of context to fall back on, hand-holding businesses through successive waves of tech change.
Consultants usually get a bad rap for being smarter than managers. But a large part of the business has become routine number-crunching. Here, machines have the advantage. Inspired consultants fall back on business experience, cultural underpinnings and emotional intelligence to derive their strategic inputs, which are not threatened by AI. Ultimately, clients seeking results will decide where to take their business. The role of a consultancy is to provide a second opinion. That could well still elude enterprises after implementing AI. The idea of a self-healing business is premature - not all processes can be automated. Businesses will be run by humans, and that makes it a consultative endeavour.
Consulting firms must offer AI-enabled services across the gamut of their offerings. This requires a reset in how they hire and promote workers fluent in AI. Their organisational pyramid will become slimmer, with greater emphasis on strategic vision over analysis. Insights for clients must go further than the efficiency enterprises are expected to gain through AI. These will be critical to brand differentiation as production processes converge. The McKinseys of the world are not going out of business - as long as they manage their own transformation.
Consultants usually get a bad rap for being smarter than managers. But a large part of the business has become routine number-crunching. Here, machines have the advantage. Inspired consultants fall back on business experience, cultural underpinnings and emotional intelligence to derive their strategic inputs, which are not threatened by AI. Ultimately, clients seeking results will decide where to take their business. The role of a consultancy is to provide a second opinion. That could well still elude enterprises after implementing AI. The idea of a self-healing business is premature - not all processes can be automated. Businesses will be run by humans, and that makes it a consultative endeavour.
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Consulting firms must offer AI-enabled services across the gamut of their offerings. This requires a reset in how they hire and promote workers fluent in AI. Their organisational pyramid will become slimmer, with greater emphasis on strategic vision over analysis. Insights for clients must go further than the efficiency enterprises are expected to gain through AI. These will be critical to brand differentiation as production processes converge. The McKinseys of the world are not going out of business - as long as they manage their own transformation.
