MBB / Big4 & co transformation and operations consultants (especially freelancers): what's your real-life experience with AI so far?
Hello!
As per the title, I'd like to hear from fellow former MBB and Big4 consultants, especially if they are now freelancing.
Recently I have been getting the usual project proposals for transformation of ops/processes and/or organisational aspects.
They want you to have a look at overall strategic direction, headcount and spans of controls, processes and their performance, governance, team management, IT tools etc. All good.
But together with these "classics", I'm now seeing requests for "agentic AI workflows", "Gen-AI assisted processes" and the like.
How do you relate and respond to the apparent expectation that somebody that comes from a managing consulting background (even with experience in spec gathering, process design and maybe a bit of testing of IT systems) should pretty much come in and do IT development work to embed AI agents and the like in the fabric of the business?
Or is it a case of clients just expecting the typical "layer" role that bridges the business needs with the technical stuff doing that will do the actual implementation?
What's your experience of the client expectations in that department?