Using AI is no longer enough for enterprise consultants. Carlos Montejo, Vice President, North America Advisory Services and Service Lines, OSF Digital, says organisations that embed AI throughout the consulting lifecycle are delivering faster outcomes, greater efficiency and more tailored services for customers.
You’d be hard-pressed today to find any team in the consulting ecosystem that doesn’t use AI.
But using AI, and deriving maximum value from AI, in the consulting space are two distinct things. And I’d wager a bet that the typical organisation is not taking full advantage of AI tools to streamline its work and create the most value possible for customers.
Allow me to explain by detailing the differences between simply using AI and getting the most from AI tools to power enterprise consulting services.
How average enterprise consultants use AI today
By now, virtually every consulting professional leverages AI to assist with tasks such as:
- Summarising documents
- Taking meeting notes
- Drafting slide decks
- Developing software tools.
These are all key use cases for modern generative and agentic AI technology. Not addressing them using AI tools means falling behind.
How innovative consultants use AI
But the thing is, not falling behind is very different from leading the pack. Consulting teams who are doing the latter don’t settle for using AI for standard tasks.
They go above and beyond by baking AI into core consulting workflows and using it to generate outputs that create direct value for customers.
As an example drawn from my own experience, consider the task of digitally transforming an enterprise asset. Historically, it would have taken several months of engagement with stakeholders simply to formulate a transformation strategy and plan, followed by many more months implementing it.
Using modern AI tools, however, the teams I oversee have rewritten this workflow. While they still conduct meetings with stakeholders to develop a transformation strategy, they use AI to analyse meeting recordings, identify any overlooked questions that still need to be asked and generate strategy documentation.
From there, we also rely on an AI-centric approach to implementing the transformation. And I’m not talking here simply about generating code. We leverage AI to validate solutions and deploy them into customers’ environments.
Since integrating AI into consulting workflows in an end-to-end fashion, my organisation has reduced project completion time by a nontrivial percentage. We’re also able to do more with leaner teams.
Happier consultants, happier enterprise customers
This isn’t just good news for my business. It’s also a win for our customers. They benefit from faster time-to-value, since we can implement solutions for them significantly faster than we could before.
We’re also able to customise our services more extensively and flexibly. For instance, we can take design standard templates, feed them into our AI tools along with information on bespoke customer needs and receive custom design documents and process maps.
I believe that my organisation’s experience proves that customers are eager to work with consultants who truly take AI to the next level. Indeed, most enterprises realise that we’re living in an AI age, and they’re eager not just to bake AI into their own environments and workflows, but also to partner with service providers who take an AI-first approach themselves.
The defining characteristics of a cutting-edge AI consulting strategy
put a finer point on what enterprise customers are seeking from consultants today, they’re looking for partners who go far beyond ‘101 level’ generative and agentic AI use cases. They want providers whose approach to AI is defined by:
- A custom AI platform tailored to accelerating the consulting process. (My company built a solution, called AllAi, to serve this need)
- The integration of AI into all aspects of the transformation process – from discovery, design and planning through to final deployment
- The ability to connect disparate operations (like documentation review and process mapping) into unified, AI-powered workflows
- AI-enabled workflows that are tailored to unique customer needs.
Consultants who embrace AI in this way are the ones who will actually move the needle, for themselves as well as their customers. They’ll dramatically shorten the time it takes to deliver value, while creating solutions with unprecedented levels of impact.
