AI, the new Business Advisor? And what about the Consultancy Business Continuity?
AI as the new business advisor? And what about the consultancy’s business continuity?
The published article “ The End of Management Consulting as We Know it?” highlighted the increased clients’ needs due to AI introduction as a competitive advantage and the risk of startups, especially those involved with using AI for clients and consultancy.
There is a need for consulting companies to embrace AI and build relationships with AI-focused startups based on the clients’ transformation of their operations, such as real-time decision-making, cost reduction, process optimisation, and strategy development. AI provides insights that enable the strategy to be adapted rapidly, while management consulting must respond quickly to AI disruptions. However, AI can assist consultants in implementing solutions proposed to clients more efficiently.
Companies' needs include transforming operations, real-time decision-making, cost reduction, process optimisation, and strategy development. AI provides insights that enable the strategy to be changed rapidly. However, AI can assist consultants in implementing solutions proposed to clients more efficiently.
The first chapter to consider is “AI for Business - Your Next Virtual Consultant”. The author remarks that AI systems can quickly process massive data sets and derive insight from them. In addition, it can produce patterns or correlations such as response times and customer satisfaction levels or concrete opportunities within businesses that otherwise might take much longer to surface in the companies ( and which would take consultants much longer to spot without AI).
AI can support organisations’ strategic decision-making by simulating potential outcomes based on past data and predictive models, offering insight into possible scenarios, and using historical sales figures, economic indicators, or social media sentiment analysis while mitigating risks. AI could forecast real-time market trends accurately.
Another element to be considered is pattern recognition. It goes beyond structured data, like text or Images. Through natural language processing and computer vision techniques, AI can quickly evaluate customer reviews or social media posts for targets’ sentiment analysis or examine product images to conduct quality assurance tasks.
AI offers many advantages; however, traditional consultants remain essential protagonists. AI cannot understand complex situations, decipher unclear information, or make judgments that differ from previously learned (ML) patterns.
Traditional consulting excels at areas requiring understanding a company’s context, culture, ethics, and any ambiguities inherent to its strategies. Moreover, traditional consultants possess unique capabilities, such as quickly building relationships while sensibly comprehending emotions, climate, and people- something AI systems cannot replicate.
Ethics are vital for the responsible use of AI systems. AI system results can be understood and clarified for improved insight; ethical management ensures proper deployment, another critical organisational aspect.
In another chapter, “Implementing AI in Your Business,” the need for an implementation strategy of AI in companies clearly emerges. From assessing business needs and organisational and technical capabilities through continuous improvements to overcoming implementation challenges, suggested by the author to executives, it appears that apart from data quality, similar implementation processes have already been used within IT, ERP, and, recently, DT. Is Ai implementation a new opportunity for consultants?
Conclusions
AI for companies can be an excellent consulting partner or resource: both work synergistically for maximum effect. AI provides data-driven insights, while traditional consultants possess context knowledge and interpretative abilities; each brings something unique to the client.
It looks like AI is going to revolutionise management consulting in ways that cannot yet be predicted; its effects could ask consultancies to move away from integrated models toward customised service offerings and ask consulting firms to collaborate with AI if they wish to remain viable during AI’s rise as an advisor. In addition, sharing expertise and knowledge to implement a diverse but always a piece of technology into a business could create a specialised service for clients. Consultancy firms wanting to stay during AI rise should adapt accordingly to remain sustainable and stay competitive in a new world.
Could statistics about the industry growth or recovery after Corona hide a possible disruption coming?
