While a graduate-heavy ‘pyramid’ staffing model has traditionally prevailed among the biggest players, with a large number of junior consultants carrying out the bulk of client work by volume, ‘diamond’-shaped firms are increasingly asserting bragging rights, claiming their structure is better-placed to withstand the disruptive forces converging on the industry.
These firms subscribe to a model dominated by mid-level, highly skilled professionals, augmented by a range of digital tools – a template that is being widely mooted as the future of consulting as AI strips out entry-level work.
The much-referenced Amara’s Law suggests that we tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the longer term - while rampant overuse of the word means we should be wary of casting any moment as ‘unprecedented’. Still, it’s probably not an overstatement to say the consulting industry faces a period of significant reinvention.
BCG managing director, senior partner and regional chair for EMEA and South America, Matthias Tauber, said that this work still focused on “translating AI from potential into profit… People do see what bots can do and so on but it’s not that easy to switch on and make money [from].”
At the same time, the industry, heavy in the kind of work that AI excels at (synthesising information, analysing data and producing reports), is seen as ripe for disruption by the technology, with a slew of headlines offering a variation on the same theme: AI is coming for consulting.
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