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We just released our first industry research report analyzing data from AI Maturity Index - based on 1,700+ professionals in services industries.

The question we set out to answer: Will AI kill consulting?

The data reveals something more nuanced and more urgent than a simple yes or no.

There's a brutal divergence happening right now - advanced AI users are saving 5x more time than beginners, and the gap is widening every quarter. The consultants who crack this code will charge more and work less. The rest will compete on price until they can't pay rent.

You can access the full report here: https://app.ai-maturity-index.com/ai-research/2025/consulting-ai-maturity-benchmark

Your expertise is becoming worthless.

Not because you're not smart. Not because your clients don't need help. But because the thing you've spent a decade building—deep knowledge in your domain—can now be approximated by someone with no experience, a good prompt, and a $20/month ChatGPT subscription.

The consultant who charges $300/hour for market research reports is competing with a junior analyst using Claude, who can produce 80% of the same output in one-tenth the time. The tax specialist billing for hours of regulatory research is up against AI tools that scan thousands of documents in seconds. The strategy advisor whose value prop was "I've seen this before" is facing AI systems trained on millions of case studies.

This is the paradox destroying professional services: AI is simultaneously commoditizing expertise AND creating unprecedented opportunities for consultants who understand the shift.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: You have about 12 months to figure out which side of this divide you're on. The consultants who crack this code will charge more, work less, and dominate their markets. The rest will compete on price until they can't pay rent.

I know this because we've analyzed 3,300+ professionals across 106 countries. Over 1,700 of them work in professional services. The data shows a brutal divergence happening right now—and most consultants are on the wrong side of it.

Advanced AI users in professional services save 13.83 hours per week. Beginners save 2.84 hours. That's not a 50% difference. It's a 5x multiplier.

Think about what that means in practice:

Marcus, a strategy consultant at a Big 4 firm in Germany, used to spend two full days researching for client presentations. Market sizing, competitor analysis, industry trends—the usual deliverables that bill well but feel like grunt work.

Now? Four hours.

He hasn't gotten dumber. The work hasn't gotten easier. He just figured out how to use AI tools to handle the research scaffolding while he focuses on the synthesis and strategic recommendations that clients actually pay for.

His AI maturity score: 87 out of 100.
His weekly time savings: 12 hours.
His tool stack: ChatGPT Enterprise, Copilot, Gamma, Notion AI.
Just four tools, used systematically.

The result? He took on two additional projects without working more hours. His billing went up. His stress went down. His clients got better strategic insights because he stopped drowning in spreadsheets.

Meanwhile, his colleague Stefan—same firm, same role, similar experience—is still doing research the old way.

Stefan's AI maturity score: 34.
Time saved: About 2 hours per week, mostly from autocomplete in email.

In 12 months, Marcus will be a partner. Stefan will be wondering why he's not getting promoted despite working 60-hour weeks.

This is happening across the entire professional services sector. Not slowly. Right now.

Professional Services ranks #5 out of all industries in AI-driven productivity, with a score of 61.87. That sounds good until you realize Marketing & Advertising is crushing everyone at the top, and the gap is widening every quarter.

More telling: Professional Services ranks #2 in innovation scores (38.69). You know what that means? Consultants are GOOD at experimenting with AI. They're just terrible at turning those experiments into systematic productivity gains.

We see this pattern everywhere in the data. Consultants try six different AI tools, get excited about the possibilities, then... nothing changes. Three months later, they're back to their old workflows, billing the same hours, fighting the same capacity constraints.

The problem isn't that AI doesn't work for consulting.
The problem is that most consultants approach AI like tourists, not residents.

They pop in to play with ChatGPT when they have a spare moment. They use it for one-off tasks. They never build it into their actual workflow. And then they wonder why they're not seeing the transformational results they read about in LinkedIn thought leadership posts.

Our research identified three patterns that predict AI failure in professional services:

58% of low performers spread themselves across five or more AI tools, never mastering any of them. They're addicted to novelty but allergic to depth.

James, a managing partner at a 12-person boutique consulting firm in the US, almost fell into this trap. His team was using "AI" in the loosest possible sense—someone tried Jasper, someone else had ChatGPT open, another person was experimenting with Otter.

No standards. No shared workflows. No systematic improvement.

Then James made one critical decision: He picked one person—Sarah, a senior consultant—and made AI productivity explicitly her responsibility. Not as a side project. As THE project.

Within six months, the firm's average AI maturity score went from 42 to 68.
Average time savings per consultant: from 3 hours to 11 hours per week.
Client capacity: up 35% with zero new hires.

67% of AI initiatives fail because organizations never define what success looks like. They just expect "AI" to magically make things better.

Priya, a tax senior associate in India, avoided this trap by getting ruthlessly specific.

Her baseline: 6 hours per week on research.
Her toolset: Claude, Excel Copilot, Thomson Reuters AI.
Her metric: reduce research time.

Result after 8 weeks: 60% reduction in research time.
30% more client queries per week.
Error rate dropped from 3% to under 1%.

"My senior partner was skeptical," Priya said, "until he saw I could find obscure rulings in minutes, not hours."

Most of AI initiatives have no clear owner. Everyone's responsible, which means no one's responsible. While list of challenges is long.

This is where most consulting firms are dying right now. They buy enterprise AI tools, announce them in a team meeting, then assume adoption will happen organically.

It won't.

James’s firm succeeded because he made Sarah the owner.
Marcus succeeded because he took personal ownership.
Priya succeeded because she didn’t wait for her firm—she just started.

Here's what successful consultants figured out:

AI doesn't replace expertise. It amplifies it.
But only if you rebuild your value proposition around outcomes, not hours.

The old model:
Expertise × time = value.

The new model:
Expertise × AI execution = value.

Marcus isn't selling research hours. He's selling strategic insights.
Priya isn't selling compliance hours. She's selling accuracy and speed.
James isn't selling consulting hours. He's selling a firm that delivers partner-level thinking at senior-consultant speed.

This is the shift. Not "I use AI" as a footnote, but "AI-enabled outcomes" as your core value prop.

The consultants who make this shift can raise rates while working less. The ones who don't will be undercut by someone younger, cheaper, and better at prompting.

You don't need a year-long transformation program.
You need 30 days.

The productivity gap is widening every quarter.
Marcus’s 5x advantage is accelerating. Stefan is falling further behind.

Clients won’t say “AI consultant vs non-AI consultant.”
They’ll say “fast with better insights” vs “slow and generic.”

Expect three shifts:

You have two paths:

Marcus chose Path 2.
Priya chose Path 2.
James chose Path 2.

Their expertise didn’t become worthless—
it became priceless.

Which path are you choosing?

Sending good vibes your way,

Iwo