After the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the marketing team at Reckitt Benckiser, maker of Lysol and Mucinex, was convinced that the new AI technology could help their business. But the team was unsure how, so it turned to the Boston Consulting Group for help.
Reckitt’s request was one of hundreds received by Boston Consulting Group last year. It now earns a fifth of its revenue – up from zero two years ago – through AI-related work.
“There’s a genuine thirst to understand what the implications are for their businesses,” said Vladimir Lukic, Boston Consulting Group’s managing director for technology.
The next big tech boom is a long-awaited gift for careless advisors. From the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company to IBM and Accenture, sales are up and hiring is ramping up because companies are in desperate need of tech Sherpas who can help them understand what genetic AI means and how it might help their businesses.
While the tech industry looks for ways to cash in on genetic AI, consultants are starting to cash in.
IBM, which has 160,000 consultants, has secured more than $1 billion in sales commitments related to its generative artificial intelligence for consulting work and its watsonx system, which can be used to build and maintain AI models. Accenture, which provides consulting and technology services, did $300 million in sales last year. About 40 percent of McKinsey’s business this year will be related to genetic artificial intelligence, and KPMG International, which has a global consulting division, has gone from making no money a year ago from work related to creating artificial intelligence. , targeted more than $650 million in business opportunities in the United States connected to technology over the past six months.
The demand for technology-related advice is reminiscent of the industry’s dot-com boom. Businesses bombarded consultants with solicitor requests in the 1990s. From 1992 to 2000, sales for Sapient, a digital consulting firm, grew from $950,000 to $503 million. Subsequent technological changes, such as the move to mobile and cloud computing, have been less rushed, said Nigel Vaz, chief executive of the company, which is now known as Publicis Sapient.
“In the mid-’90s, CEOs were saying, ‘I don’t know what a website is or what it could do for my business, but I need one,'” Mr. Vaz said. “This is similar. Companies say, “Don’t tell me what to make. Tell me what you can make.”
Consulting firms are trying to show what they can do. In May, Boston Consulting Group hosted a one-day conference at a Boston convention center where it set up demo booths for OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI technology leaders. She also presented some of her own AI work in robotics and programming.
Booming AI sales are helping the industry find growth after a post-pandemic lull. The management consulting industry in the United States is expected to generate $392.2 billion in sales this year, up 2 percent from last year, according to IBISWorld, a research firm.
The work that consultants are hired to do varies from business to business. Some consulting firms are advising companies on regulatory compliance as regions such as the European Union pass laws regulating artificial intelligence. Others are drawing up plans for AI customer support systems or developing guardrails to prevent AI systems from making mistakes.
For businesses, the results were mixed. Genetic AI is prone to giving humans incorrect, irrelevant or irrational information, known as hallucinations. It is difficult to ensure that it provides accurate information. It can also be slower to respond than a person, which can leave customers confused about whether their questions will be answered.
IBM, which has a $20 billion consulting business, has addressed some of these issues in its partnership with McDonald’s. Companies have developed a voice system with artificial intelligence to take orders. But after customers reported the system made mistakes, such as adding nine iced teas to an order instead of the one Diet Coke called for, McDonald’s ended the project.
McDonald’s said it remains committed to the future of digital ordering and will evaluate alternative systems. IBM said it is working with McDonald’s on other projects and is in discussions with other restaurant chains about using voice-activated AI
Other IBM programs have shown more promise. The company partnered with Dun & Bradstreet, a business data provider, to develop a productive AI system to analyze and advise on supplier selection. The tool, called Ask Procurement, will allow employees to conduct detailed searches with specific parameters. For example, it could find minority-owned memory chip suppliers and automatically generate a request for proposals for them.
Gary Kotovets, head of data and analytics at Dun & Bradstreet, said his team of 30 needed IBM’s help to build the system. To reassure customers that the answers Ask Procurement provides are accurate, it insisted that customers can trace each answer back to an original source.
“Hallucinations are a real concern and in some cases a perceived concern,” Mr Kotovets said. “You have to overcome both and convince the client that they are not hallucinating.”
Over seven weeks this year, McKinsey’s artificial intelligence group QuantumBlack built a customer service chatbot for ING Bank, with guardrails to prevent it from offering mortgage or investment advice.
Because the chatbot’s viability was uncertain and McKinsey had limited experience with the relatively new technology, the firm did the work as a “joint experiment” under its contract with ING, said Bahadir Yilmaz, head of analysis at ING. The bank paid McKinsey for the project, but Mr. Yilmaz said many consultants were willing to do speculative genetic AI work without pay because they wanted to show what they could do with the new technology.
The project was labor intensive. When ING’s chatbot gave incorrect information during its development, McKinsey and ING had to determine the cause. They traced the problem to issues like outdated websites, said Rodney Zemmel, a McKinsey senior partner who works on technology.
The chatbot now handles 200 of the 5,000 customer questions daily. ING asks people to review every conversation to make sure the system doesn’t use discriminatory or harmful language or innuendo.
“The difference between ChatGPT and our chatbot is that our chatbot cannot be wrong,” said Mr Yilmaz. “We have to be safe with the system we’re building, but we’re close.”
Over four months this year, Reckitt worked with the Boston Consulting Group to develop an artificial intelligence platform that could generate local ads in different languages and formats. At the click of a button, the system can convert an ad for Finish dishwashing detergent from English to Spanish.
Reckitt’s AI marketing system, which is being tested, can make local ad deployment 30 percent faster, saving the company time and some tedious work, said Becky Verano, Reckitt’s vice president of global creative and capabilities.
Because the technology is so new, Ms. Verano said, the team is learning and adapting its work as new technology companies release updates to their image and language models. He credited the Boston Consulting Group with bringing structure to this chaos.
“You have to constantly move to the latest trends, the newest findings, and learn every time how the tools are responding,” he said. “There’s no exact science to it.”
