The consulting industry is productising, and most independents aren’t ready

On this planet of impartial consulting, the ‘product’ has historically been folks. However in in the present day’s shifting panorama, that notion is more and more below strain, because the productisation of data emerges as each a major problem and a compelling alternative, writes Howard Scott, founding father of Studio:Blueprint.

For most of the final decade, the dialog about AI in skilled providers adopted a reassuring script. Senior companions instructed shoppers that AI would make consultants sooner and evaluation sharper. The guide remained the product, and know-how was a greater instrument in the identical arms.

That script has been quietly retired. In early 2026, PwC launched PwC One: a platform the place shoppers entry automated advisory providers immediately. Six providers at launch, with pricing anticipated to maneuver in direction of subscription and outcomes-based fashions somewhat than conventional billing by the hour.

Paul Griggs, PwC’s chief within the US, instructed the Monetary Occasions that anybody who believes they will decide out of AI is “not going to be right here that lengthy”. He was speaking to his personal companions.

Talking at CES in January, McKinsey & Firm world managing companion Bob Sternfels stated the agency now operates 25,000 AI brokers alongside 40,000 people, with a goal of tough parity earlier than the top of the 12 months. These brokers saved 1.5 million hours on search and synthesis work in 2025 alone, and the course is clear: develop the client-facing roles, compress the operational and analytical layers.

The sample extends properly past the administration consultancies.

Throughout the main company holding corporations, 2025 noticed headcount reductions within the tens of hundreds. The largest teams have every introduced restructuring programmes focusing on lots of of tens of millions in annual financial savings, constructed round platform consolidation and AI-led supply. Spend money on AI infrastructure, develop the strategic roles, and compress the operational layers that traditionally absorbed the majority of the workforce.

In keeping with PwC’s newest AI Efficiency examine, 74% of AI’s financial worth is being captured by simply 20% of organisations. The companies on that record are those making these strikes now.

Unbiased consultants

For the impartial consultants and small advisory companies, the instinctive response to those numbers tends to be the flawed one. The actual threat is a shift in what shoppers anticipate.

Most independents aren’t competing with PwC or McKinsey for a similar engagements, and that is still true. The senior impartial who brings twenty years of sector-specific judgment is not being changed by a subscription platform.

However expectations shift regardless. When a consumer can entry automated advisory providers from a significant agency below a month-to-month subscription, the way in which they consider consulting infrastructure begins to vary. The impartial who can’t exhibit that their methodology is structured, their outputs scored, and their worth traceable is now not competing purely on high quality. They’re competing on belief, and belief alone turns into a thinner industrial basis when procurement groups are studying to benchmark in opposition to companies that quote automated outcomes at scale.

The consulting industry is turning its knowhow into merchandise

The independents who really feel this primary will likely be these whose method depends on the belief that have speaks for itself. It typically does, within the room. However expertise that can’t be structured, scored, or evidenced exterior the room is more durable to justify in a market that is beginning to anticipate all three.

What productising truly requires

The massive consulting companies can productise as a result of they spent a long time codifying. Frameworks, diagnostic constructions, scoring methodologies, interview protocols: all documented, all transferable, all structured sufficient to outlive the removing of the person guide from the supply chain.

Unbiased consultants and small companies have equal mental property, however most of it lives in slide decks, workshop guides, and paperwork tailored by hand for every engagement. The pondering exists. The infrastructure to deploy it at any type of scale doesn’t.

Constructing that infrastructure used to imply important capital or a technical co-founder. Some platforms on this house have made the issue worse by requiring hundreds in setup charges and months of guided onboarding earlier than a guide can deploy their first diagnostic. In these fashions, productisation stays accessible solely to companies that may afford to deal with it as a challenge.

The infrastructure hole is closing

Platforms are starting to emerge that handle this immediately. Studio:Blueprint, for instance, lets consultants add their very own methodology and deploy it as a branded, scored, client-facing diagnostic with no onboarding programme and no implementation layer to navigate. The hole between what the most important consulting companies can deploy and what an impartial can entry is narrowing sooner than most folks within the industry realise.

Software program alone is not going to resolve the structural pressures going through small companies in a market reorganising round automation. However the distance between what the most important companies are deploying and what an impartial has accessible comes all the way down to infrastructure, not functionality. The pondering, the frameworks, the judgment: these exist already inside most skilled independents. What has been lacking is a method to construction and deploy them with out rebuilding from scratch for each engagement.

The productisation {of professional} providers is already underway on the companies whose behaviour units the benchmarks your shoppers use to learn the market. Unbiased consultants and small companies have experience that holds actual worth. Whether or not that experience is structured properly sufficient to carry its floor when shoppers begin anticipating the identical infrastructure they see from the companies making headlines is the query that issues now.

Concerning the writer: Howard Scott has spent 30 years in consulting, advertising and digital transformation. He is the founding father of Studio:Blueprint, a agency that helps impartial consultants and small consulting companies codify and deploy their methodology by AI-powered diagnostic and proof instruments.