Alison Pohle

So it essentially gives the AI companies a bigger workforce because they have people working on the tech on their behalf.

So we don't know the exact details of how the deals were done, but in terms of the pricing structure, yes, it's different.

So a lot of the pricing is done based on outcomes.

The firm gets paid partly based on whether there's a specified result.

Now, what that result is in the age of AI is difficult to determine.

So they're kind of figuring that out together.

But rather than billing for time and materials or all the resources that they're using, they're having these outcome-based pricing models where it's very much based on implementing the tech and making sure that the strategy is executed.

A lot of companies haven't yet seen the returns on AI, including from their work with the consulting firms.

So a lot of clients were not really pleased with the results that they were getting, and they felt like the consulting firms were learning on the job with the tech.

In this case, there is a more direct relationship with the AI companies where, in theory, an open AI forward deployed engineer, for example, will be working right alongside the consultants to troubleshoot in real time as opposed to the consultants having been trained and then needing to go implement it on their own.

So there is some hope that this arrangement will be different or lead to better outcomes for the clients.

But yeah, up until this point, a lot of CEOs had said in surveys that they haven't really seen a big financial impact from all these AI projects yet.

I think it's going to become more product focused where really the consulting firms have to have AI as part of their strategy and the implementation also has to be part of the strategy as well.

But not only that, they have to show that they have a plan and that there is

an outcome that's associated with it.

So in the past, consulting firms were able to say, here's the strategy, now go ahead and do it and our work here is done.

They didn't have to make sure that it succeeded, so to speak.

Now the clients need to see results in order to justify the expense.

At the same time, I do think that there will be

a shrinking of the industry where there won't be as many junior consultants needed to do a lot of this work.