From 90% production and 10% analysis to 10% production and 90% analysis

Assume a consultancy firm’s the client with 50 teams and 1,000 employees. Picture for yourself how far you – with your small consulting group - would come in two weeks having only MSOffice and an online forms supplier (say, SurveyMonkey) available. In these two weeks, you would be relatively hard-pressed to come up with a problem definition, send out the survey, process all the incoming data, and also deliver a high-level PowerPoint roadmap of what the organization should do next.

With artificial intelligence at your side, you would be way past that point. Additionally, in those same two weeks, algorithms calculate a smart improvement target. You would have sent out dashboards to the 50 managers as well as to the 1,000 employees. You would see the clickstreams building up. Other algorithms would nudge managers and employees to have them quickly on the right track concerning the best use of their dashboards. You would notice how the managers conduct the first workshops. You’d see the first notes taken by the managers. You’d notice how the first employees reach out to colleagues. You’ll see the transformation the client so desperately needed, unfolding in front of your very eyes.

In the MSOffice/SurveyMonkey version, it's 90% production. It is creating a questionnaire and waiting until the responses to the survey are coming in. There are some juniors pulling all-nighters to get all the tedious Excel work done. They are creating and reviewing the PowerPoint. And it's 10% analysis: how many PowerPoint sheets do you need to give the client for a high-level first impression?

With artificial intelligence, it's only 10% production. It is reusing a tried and proven questionnaire that only needs no or only minor modification and sending out the access link to the client contact for further forwarding within her organization. Setting some dashboard preferences. Assign the managers' names to the team dashboards. And it's 90% analysis. Or better: tracking the alerts. The A.I. allows consultants to focus on the signals and decide where to intervene next.

If the same two weeks deliver many more far-reaching insights, the consultant creates more value. Hence, the amounts billed to the client reflect that.