AI Tools Cut Demand For External Consultants Like Accenture

100%.

"AI will replace SaaS" always felt too far-fetched and yet talked about everywhere

"AI will replace lots of consultants [by brining work in-house]" barely mentioned but likely happening a lot more, and a lot more realistic threat to consulting

And YES this could be a second-order effect? New types of consultants for example?

I like this take by @WesEklund

What will be definitely disrputed is consulting that doesn't evolve with the new technology and new needs...

In some ways, I think consulting will be disrupted, but I don't know if it will be as far as we think.

Having someone to talk to face-to-face that is deeply passionate about my problems and wants to work with me to solve it is still valuable.

The consultants that will succeed will just be using really good AI engineering practices under the hood.

@jesusgarci99496 @GergelyOrosz That's where value-based fees come into play instead of traditional time and materials.

@GergelyOrosz On the other hand, increased productivity per human opens up more potential projects that consultants can help with

@GergelyOrosz @WesEklund It also depends what kind of consulting: the experienced, expert, software engineering consultant is still probably cheaper than its AI counterpart.

But with AI they will probably not be able to bill so many hours per project.

@jesusgarci99496 @GergelyOrosz As a business owner, do you really care how long it takes for me to do the thing? The longer it takes, the longer the payback period is.

I think in many ways you can take this post by Tim Ferriss on how AI has affected the self-help book business and apply that to consulting.

Enterprises will depend on consulting businesses to tell them what to do less and less, and will instead use their own internal knowledge, plus subscribed and vetted external knowledge, to make decisions via LLM's.

In the same way mid-level and entry manager roles are going to change a ton, with busy work done by LLMs. If I was a manager of 1-4 people, or just a manager who does admin work, I'd be sharpening up my non-manager skills. Those who don't I'd expect to be unemployed in 1-3 years.

@GergelyOrosz AI likely to modify approach to SaaS rather than replacing it. It just makes easier to develop and deploy SaaS apps and widen the audience that can do that. W.r.t. consultants the low-level research is vulnerable but if it requires institutional knowledge, we may not be there yet

@GergelyOrosz @WesEklund I think it eliminates the very specific body shop style consultancy that SWITCH and Accenture did. I don’t think boutique consulting will die though

@GergelyOrosz SaaS sells software. Consultants sell judgment. AI is getting better at both, but judgment is next.

@GergelyOrosz Customer obsession is still important! Is my Amazon shining through? 😅

@GergelyOrosz survival will depend on justifying existence. This will kill off anything unjustifiable.

@GergelyOrosz Consider the possibility that...

the universe to which consulting could impact has now expanded manyfold as well...???

It’s under-discussed because the layer AI threatens and the layer consulting actually defends gets treated as one thing.

Consulting sold production like the decks, the models, the army of juniors.

Plus it sold legitimation by having a respected name to make a contested call defensible to a board, to regulators, sometimes to itself.

AI can replace production, but not the legitimacy at this point, so it guts the production tier and makes the firms selling judgment and a signature on the decision more valuable.

Then, as the consultant, if you're an expert in your field, you don't want to live by the incentive model of dragging it out so you could bill more hours.

You want to be passionate and insanely focused on what the customer problem is. Go in, solve it as fast as possible, then move on to the next problem.

@GergelyOrosz AI is the best consult

@GergelyOrosz The consulting part that dies isn't the advice but the deliverable, since anyone can automate an 80-slide deck and audit docs.

But what you can't automate is the guts to be held accountable when the call is wrong. A model can't be on the hook for anything: only people can.

@GergelyOrosz AI will never replace SaaS - it will re design SaaS !