It’s the summer of 2023.
85% of your consulting clients said they were experimenting with generative AI to some degree.
Fast forward to now.
That number is just 13%, with 88% of consulting clients putting themselves in the wait-and-see bracket.
From our experience, it’s a similar story internally within consultancies.
Follow the money
VC analysts tend to offer a pulse check on technology uptake.
Sequoia’s Gen AI ‘Act Two’ is a helpful explanation of the problem i.e., In most cases, the Gen AI available is more a limited demonstration of tech capability, than an impactful and easy-to-adopt solution.
A common comparison is electricity. The slow transition from societal awareness to a practical use case to a widely adopted use case and from there, a subsequent rethinking of how life and work happens.
But just like with electricity, there is a lot to do to go from the allure of short-term ‘bolt-ons’ and their promised productivity uplifts.
This is a large reason why the excitement of last year has subsided.
For both you and your clients.
Instead, VC money is moving into companies that focus on using AI to solve a specific problem for a specific industry.
What does it mean for consultancies?
Medium-term, help clients navigate the AI market in their vertical
Source Global Research calls this out as:
Help decision-makers unpack their thinking and craft a vision of where to play and how to win.
Provide expert insights that help clients better grasp and mitigate the risks.
Guide organisations in pilots and beyond the patchwork adoption they have.
The shift back from wait-and-see will come as vertical solutions mature.
For most companies, this is still likely to start as small use cases that enshrine existing strategy and structure. But it will open the doors to more of the bread-and-butter consulting work of helping clients implement successfully.
Of course, more clients will also expect to see more AI used in the delivery of consulting services. With 30% already stating they see it as essential.
Near term, forge practical expertise around adopting AI solutions
Adopting AI in service delivery is the consulting vertical’s own odyssey. The experience gained from mitigating risks and concerns around data, people, process and tech debt will better inform how consultants advise clients.
Unfortunately for consultants, options are limited.
For several reasons, VC money has not historically flowed into #consultingtech:
Consulting firms are not big IT spenders and are rarely early adopters.
They have stuck to a small number of legacy apps and tools. Becoming accustomed to using generic tools to forge home-brew solutions.
Their buying process is heavily consensus-driven, which leads to long sales cycles.
With AI in particular, the big firms are investing heavily in building their own.
For companies reliant on VC funding, this makes the vertical unappealing. Especially given the time and expense required to correctly train AI models and apply them within workflow solutions built specifically for consultants.
Instead, consultancies are going to need to do what they always have done.
Continuously experiment with how to fit tools built for other industries into their workflow. Often over the course of a client engagement.
Take full advantage of the few companies that do exist to build solutions specifically for consulting.