AI is a positive for consulting, but West Monroe’s free tool still worries me

AI will have a positive impact on the consulting industry, but giving away free AI-produced work is the wrong approach. It risks undermining and eroding consultants’ true value, crowding out the tangible, long-term support they are known for with mass-produced, surface-level strategy documents, writes Sam Shar, CEO of enterprise digital transformation firm Trend-Setters Consulting.

West Monroe, a top-50 consulting firm, has started handing out AI-produced strategy documents for free. I’m a strong believer in the power of AI to improve outcomes and results in consulting, but this is sending all the wrong messages to clients. And unless we reverse course, I think the whole industry could face a wave of deep client churn.

West Monroe’s new AI-powered platform sounds interesting. It lets CEOs and business decision-makers explore complex business questions by drawing on the firm’s best practice, experience, and expertise. The idea: a CEO receives an initial report for free, then gets in contact if they want to engage the firm for further work.

But the risk is that this accidentally undermines the client’s perception of consulting and, more importantly, how it fits into their business. In fact, I can imagine a CEO using West Monroe’s tool, liking its outputs, and starting to think: "Well, this is great. This makes consulting look very easy, and I’ll just need this in future, not the consulting firm behind it."

In other words, it risks positioning consulting, in the eyes of the end client, as little more than devising strategies, arguing for them persuasively, and packaging them into a tidy PowerPoint deck. But to my mind, that was never where the value sat. The real value has always come from being willing to hold people accountable for hard outputs, results, and KPIs.

What separates good consulting from the rest, then, is the ability to move the dial: to deliver genuine commercial value, whether by cutting costs or opening new markets to grow revenue. As an industry, we need to do more than produce high-minded, clever strategies that never translate into measurable gains for the client.

In practice, that usually means getting consultants embedded inside a client’s company, so they can see the problems and challenges directly and, ultimately, ensure any new strategy or tech actually translates into results. I suppose this is the flip side of being focused on results: if you’re serious about delivering them, you need people on the ground in the business to do it.

This, then, taken together, shines an interesting light on why I think the West Monroe announcement is so dangerous. Through all the flashy marketing and press coverage, it risks positioning consulting as a "blue-sky thinking" strategic exercise, usually cashed out as a long, interesting PowerPoint presentation, rather than working alongside your client, shoulder-to-shoulder to deliver hard results on the front line.

And it’s all downhill from there: clients are offered AI tools for free to come up with strategies, clients start to think this is what high-quality consulting feels and looks like, and clients start to question the value of having actual, high-value consultancies on their books. Cue high levels of client churn.

Now, I’m firmly of the view that AI can do a lot of that strategic thinking and be a powerful tool for consultancies to draw on. But if we let consulting be positioned that way in the client’s mind, we shouldn’t be surprised when the pointed questions follow: why would I ever use a consulting firm if AI can just do all this for us? And they’d be right to ask.

The real irony is that this same example could, instead, show clients what AI could never do: take ownership of KPIs, work alongside clients to execute on difficult transitions, embed talented people in their businesses to own delivery, and ultimately drive strong outcomes that get businesses from A to B.

We know this is what clients want from their consultants, because the market trends bear it out. Today, McKinsey is under pressure from clients to tie fees to outcomes rather than advice alone – and that share appears to climb every year. Clients are increasingly demanding real, tangible results, not strategies in isolation.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know West Monroe is being savvy here. The idea is that after the decision-maker has used the AI tool and explored a strategy, they’ll hopefully engage the firm to implement it. But that still doesn’t get around the fundamental problem: we’re positioning consulting solely as strategic thinking, and then offering AI to do exactly that.

So what’s the solution? Part of me is reticent about giving this kind of knowledge away for free at all, though I appreciate the marketing logic. But that’s not really the fix.

The real answer is to position consulting as a discipline of action-focused execution – turning strategy into results. That’s the one thing AI can never do, and I worry West Monroe’s latest stunt plays straight into the opposite perception.