AI-Driven Efficiency at Rawson Consulting
Clients and colleagues often ask me what I think of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what it may mean for the management consulting industry. The advent of AI has undoubtedly had a rapid impact on the global technology industry. While some AI products and benefit claims, once sufficiently poked, prove to be nothing more than ‘vapour ware’, there are some areas where it’s going to reap more significant benefits than others.
As for consulting, our view is AI tools are already providing benefits for those that stay ahead of the pack. Consultants must think creatively about how they integrate or intersect AI with their service offerings to deliver additional value to clients. However as useful as AI tools are, there will always be a need for trusted human advisers to provide human judgement over complex decision making, deliver stakeholder and change management, provide ethical considerations and cross industry expertise.
Impact on the consulting industry in practice
In 2018, at Probity Consulting, we explored Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – basically workflow on steroids - with UI Path and established an RPA practice with a development house in Auckland. We developed RPA strategies and implemented bots for a range of clients from banks to polytechs. These bots had installed machine learning capability where they learned to detect familiar patterns and action them once authorised. What we didn’t fully realise is that we were watching the advent of AI.
AI is reshaping both the way consultants work and the types of services they provide. Some specific ways we are seeing AI affecting the landscape are:
Data Analysis and Insights
AI can analyse vast amounts of data far more quickly and accurately than humans, providing consultants with deeper, real-time insights. This allows consultants to identify patterns and make more informed, data-driven recommendations to clients.
Personalisation and Client Services
AI can help create more personalised solutions for clients by analysing client-specific data, predictive and industry trends based on historical data, and market conditions. This leads to more tailored recommendations and more precise strategies.
New Service Offerings
AI enables consulting firms to offer new services, such as AI-driven digital transformation strategies, technology implementations, or advanced automation solutions for reporting. Some consulting firms are even expanding into their own AI-based products or platforms.
Automation of Routine Tasks
AI can reduce administrative burden by automating many of consultants manual repetitive and time-consuming tasks. This includes data entry, report generation, financial analysis, and even some aspects of market research. This automation allows consultants to focus more on higher-value, strategic tasks.
Changing the Talent Landscape
AI may shift the skill sets needed in the consulting industry. While traditional skills like strategy development and client relationship management will still be valuable, the demand for tech-savvy consultants who understand AI, data science, and analytics will increase.
What Rawson Consulting is doing to leverage AI
At Rawson Consulting we have used AI tools to directly improve our client experience. We have improved the time taken to undertake application market scans, quality assure content and undertake data benchmarking to improve the time to delivery of quality outputs. We have used AI driven business process mapping software in our process re-engineering practice, and we use an AI note taking tool to record and transcribe our online meetings.
Overall, we’re seeing that AI is transforming the management consulting industry, making it more data-driven, efficient, and innovative, but it also requires firms to adapt to stay competitive.
Pitfalls of AI
"Consulting firms must ensure that their consultants are trained to work alongside AI tools effectively and protect company and client data at all costs."
While AI has many benefits, it also presents challenges. For example, consulting firms must ensure that their consultants are trained to work alongside AI tools effectively and protect company and client data at all costs. Ethical concerns about AI’s role in decision-making and job displacement must also be carefully managed.
A recent presentation by Bastion Security Group highlighted some concerning areas where AI was creating vulnerabilities across misinformation, manipulation and social engineering as well as data privacy risks. A concerning example cited a finance worker at a multinational firm based in Hong Kong who was tricked into paying out $USD 25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call. In another example, chat bots have been proven to ‘hallucinate’ providing incorrect data to customers up to 27% of the time. Air Canada have been embroiled in a legal battle as one of its chat bots promised a discount to a group of customers that was incorrectly applied. A Canadian court ruled the airline had to pay out.
Humans are still needed
While some AI tools are proving useful, there are some critical areas that AI cannot replace:
01
Complex
decision-making
AI provides insights, but human judgment is needed for nuanced, high-stakes decisions.
04
Customisation, strategy and delivery
AI gives recommendations, but humans design and implement tailored business strategies, corporate change programmes and projects.
02
Stakeholder management
AI can’t replace the relationship-building and negotiation skills of trusted advisers.
05
Ethical considerations
AI lacks ethical reasoning, which is essential in business decisions.
03
Local and
industry context
AI can provide global industry insights pulling from deep databases. However, AI cannot provide tailored accurate data on information that is not publicly available or more nuanced. For example, AI can’t replace the in-depth knowledge and experience of humans on the ground; about recent implementations in particular industries or similar size companies (the successes and failures), the specific local context that made the biggest impact or the current competence of teams or individual resources.
No doubt you are spammed regularly with AI related updates. There is a lot to keep on top of. Here are just a couple of stories that we’ve had a keen interest in at RCL and which we believe will be significant this year.
Picks for 2025
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The recent news of the release of China’s Large Language Model (LLM) DeepSeek-R1 is causing noise as it is a far more open in terms of access and use and reportedly more cost efficient comparison to western models. However, it’s had its initial critics in the transparency of its data and whether the significant savings in its development process are as astonishing as they seem on face value.
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The Government Chief Digital Officer has just released the Public Service AI Framework the aim of which is to ‘’support the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across the New Zealand Public Service’’. While the content provided is at a high level, it is a step in the right direction.
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One of the most exciting uses for AI is speeding up discovery in the natural sciences. Perhaps the greatest vindication of AI’s potential on this front came last October, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper from Google DeepMind for building the AlphaFold tool, which can solve protein folding, and to David Baker for building tools to help design new proteins. Expect this trend to continue this year, and to see more data sets and models that are aimed specifically at scientific discovery.
Geek out
Finally, a cool geek tech moment. Ray-Ban and Ferrari have teamed up with Meta to create the limited-edition AI powered Ray-Ban Meta for Scuderia. The accessory comes with a dedicated app that allows you to listen to music through the speakers placed on the temples, make phone calls or send messages, take and share photographs using the built-in camera, and even livestream what you are literally seeing through your own eyes on social media. Thanks to Meta’s integrated artificial intelligence, these sunglasses’ countless functions can be simply activated through voice commands, as well as via the touchpad.
Our people are highly capable industry experts
Rawson Consulting draws on the extensive experience of its team, who for the past 15 years have successfully delivered digital and corporate transformation advisory and delivery to an extensive range of public and private sector organisations across New Zealand. Our team are passionate about helping you succeed.