Consultants like to say AI won’t replace them. One firm’s latest move suggests that may not be completely true.
West Monroe, a midsize global advisory firm, has launched six AI agents that produce strategy-style reports for free.
The six agents are publicly available via a website called WestMonroe.ai, launched on Monday, and cover business model risk, competitive strategy, talent strategy, AI maturity, AI use case prioritization, and AI policy.
The idea is to help business leaders test ideas, investments, and strategies before moving into deeper planning and execution, while also demonstrating how much artificial intelligence is changing the consulting industry.
For example, a midsize retailer could use the platform to understand which AI use cases are most relevant to its business, and a private-equity firm could use it to assess disruption risks or opportunities across its portfolio companies.
Users enter a company name or URL and receive an outside-in view of the use cases, disruption, business differentiation, or policies that might affect them — in a 5 to 10-page report.
Bret Greenstein, West Monroe’s chief AI officer and a former PwC AI partner, said the platform offers something more tailored than a generic answer from ChatGPT or another AI tool.
The agents are built with West Monroe’s industry knowledge and experience working with thousands of clients, meaning that “you’re going to get a much better answer than doing it generically yourself,” he said.
‘A democratization of insights’
Depending on the firm and scope, Greenstein said, West Monroe’s agents produce the kind of early-stage strategic analysis that once would have cost clients hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
Now, he said, the marginal cost of producing that first layer of insight has fallen close to zero.
“To lock them behind some sort of list of people or fees doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Greenstein told Business Insider. “There’s a need to bring this information to people and then allow them to take better actions.”
The platform serves as “a democratization of insights,” he said.
The idea for the free agents grew from West Monroe’s internal experimentation with AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Codex, which made it easier for non-engineers inside the firm to build working prototypes for clients.
Consulting work is increasingly shifting toward implementation and transformation, and as the initial research phase became easier, Greenstein said that West Monroe “realized selling these things is not really the point.”
“It’s about helping them to see a path and then helping them go down that path,” he said.
That does not mean West Monroe plans to stop doing strategy work. The free agentic service represents a “phase zero” version of consulting: a way to help companies find the right areas of focus.
Paid work, Greenstein said, starts when the analysis goes deeper and becomes more specific to a client’s data, operating model, workflows, pain points, and implementation needs, before taking action.
But he’s aware that offering free AI consulting might irritate some of West Monroe’s competitors.
“I think it should upset people, but at the same time, they should already know this is coming.”
Disruption to the industry
Across the industry, consulting firms are racing to embed generative and agentic AI into their workflows while advising clients on how to implement the technology.
The shift is challenging long-held pricing and talent models. It is also creating fears of job displacement, particularly at the junior levels of professional services, where employees have historically done much of the grunt work can now help automate.
Entry-level hiring isn’t down at West Monroe, said Greenstein, and despite its new free consulting offering, the AI chief said he does not believe the technology is about to replace consultants.
“Ultimately, judgment, critical thinking, and experience are uniquely ours. Can’t say forever, but for a very long time,” said Greenstein, adding that relationships are the most important thing.
Clients trust consultants at the individual level, he said, and while AI may develop very strong judgment, it cannot be accountable in the same way that people are.
Every step of the consulting lifecycle can be aided by AI, and the moment demands that consultants start to identify less with the mechanics of the job and more with the outcomes they produce for clients, Greenstein said.
The future of consulting is about “rolling up your sleeves and working side by side with clients” to make them better, he said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post A consulting firm is now using AI to give free advice that once cost millions appeared first on Business Insider.
