Consulting in the Al era

Consultants undertaking a journey from being AI users to creators. By Juhi McClelland

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Artificial intelligence is projected to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Yet, despite this promising future, fewer than half of organisations are seeing a positive return on investment from their AI investments today — even as 89% plan to increase spending.

Amid this disconnect, the consulting business must chart a new course — not just by adopting AI, but by rearchitecting how consulting operates in the age of AI.

Many organisations see AI as a tool for automation and cost-cutting, but the real value lies in augmenting human talent. As the only consulting firm at scale within a global technology company, IBM Consulting, for example, has flipped the paradigm — turning its 160,000 consultants across 75 countries into AI creators rather than mere users. Imagine 160,000 consultants today enhanced by 1.6 million AI-powered digital workers.

This transformation isn’t just a shift — it’s a reinvention. An AI-powered delivery platform today allows consultants to integrate AI seamlessly into their tasks, from refining business cases to generating code, thus delivering faster and smarter solutions.

PRODUCTIVITY BOOSTER

Rather than replacing consultants, AI makes them even more essential.

Today, more than 2,000 AI assistants and agents have already been created by IBM consultants, supporting tasks from project management and software testing to industry-specific problem solving.