Isabelle Bousquette and Mark Maurer

Consulting firms over the past three years have wagered billions on the hope they would play an essential role in the AI boom, helping the world's largest corporations transform themselves with the new technology.

Done right, it could prove to be a boon for an industry already hurting from macroeconomic pressures and layoffs. Collectively, firms made billions of dollars in artificial-intelligence-related commitments and put out aggressive campaigns designed to capitalize on corporate FOMO, or fear of missing out. "Nobody makes AI work for your business like PwC, " said one PricewaterhouseCoopers ad. Their slogan: "We don't just bring promises. We bring results."

In the early days their pitch seemed to be working. But then reality set in.

Clients quickly encountered a mismatch between the pitch and what consultants could actually deliver. They found that consultants, who often had no more expertise on AI than they did internally, struggled to deploy use cases that created real business value.

Sometimes consultants built successful proof of concepts, but couldn't scale them across the business. That was the case at pharma company Merck, said Chief Information and Digital Officer Dave Williams.

"We love our partners, but oftentimes they're learning on our dime," he said.

Consulting firms continue to pull in revenue from generative-AI-related work, with global spending on such consulting hitting $3.75 billion in 2024, up from $1.34 billion in 2023, according to Gartner estimates. Some believe consultants' contributions to AI deployment could be more effective in four to five years, when the technology is more mature and they have a solidified playbook. Until then, many clients remain frustrated.

Consultants vs. the 'kid in college'

Advisory heavyweights -- including Big Four accounting firms Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst & Young and pure consulting firms McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group -- for years have helped enterprises get up to speed on technologies like the cloud and perform vital but unsexy tech implementations, like enterprise resource planning systems.

That expertise hasn't translated into a playbook for deploying something as cutting edge as generative AI in the enterprise at scale, tech leaders said.

"When you think about something that's just so new, you can't really buy that experience," said Greg Meyers, chief digital and technology officer at Bristol-Myers Squibb.

"If I were to go hire a consultant to help me figure out how to use Gemini CLI or Claude Code, you're going to find a partner at one of the Big Four has no more or less experience than a kid in college who tried to use it," he said, referring to generative AI tools from Google and Anthropic.

Six months ago, the pharmaceutical company ended a yearlong engagement with a big consulting partner aimed at using generative AI to produce educational content for doctors who prescribe their medicines. The company is now pursuing the use case on its own.

Former consultants and partners from large advisory operations such as Deloitte, Bain, EY, McKinsey and PwC said the AI boom hasn't spurred the surge of client demand they anticipated.

"They overpromised," said Magesh Sarma, chief information and strategy officer at AmeriSave Mortgage. When it came to building real use cases, he said, "we discovered that they really also had no idea how to do these things." He added, "They were just as good or as bad as what we would have been able to do in house."

"I can't tell you how many times I heard, 'Man, they came in, they charged us $20 million and what I feel like we got was a very long report on where AI is going without any real practical application,'" said Pat Petitti, CEO of Catalant, a platform for freelance consultants.

Consultants also are contending with the fact that enterprises today are much more digitally and technically savvy in the past.

"Healthcare is a very complex environment...and we found that our internal team is best equipped to come up with those use cases," said Tilak Mandadi, CVS Health executive vice president of ventures and chief experience and technology. "Our approach was not, let's go hire a bunch of consultants to tell us what to do with the GenAI."

Large consulting firms are in a "position of great vulnerability," in part because they were too slow to hire enough people with AI competence, said Michael Mische, a former principal at KPMG who now teaches classes on consulting at the University of Southern California. "Overall the consulting industry is not leading AI. It's behind AI," he said.

Some AI wins

To be sure, companies said they still see some value in engaging consultants. These firms can show them what's working in other industry segments and act as an extra set of hands where needed.

PwC and Deloitte declined to comment for this article. Accenture, KPMG, EY, McKinsey, Bain and BCG told CIO Journal and CFO Journal they are seeing increasing demand for their AI services and said clients are getting value from them.

KPMG had $1.4 billion in potential AI-related U.S. advisory projects as of July, including biddable contracts and expansions of work for existing clients, compared with roughly $500 million two years ago, a spokesman said.

Accenture, which unlike other major consultancies is publicly traded, in its most recent quarter reported a $100 million increase in new generative AI bookings quarter over quarter. That is down from a $200 million quarter-over-quarter increase the previous two periods.

Consulting firms remain bullish on their promise. McKinsey Senior Partner and Chair for North America Eric Kutcher said he regularly tells CEOs that if they can leverage generative AI effectively, they can double their share price in the next five years.

But several firms also acknowledged that little of that promise has come to fruition yet. Kutcher said while some clients have started on the transformation journey, few are taking advantage of AI's full potential today.

Deloitte is a sponsor of CIO Journal and CFO Journal.

The AI acid test

Both corporate executives and their outside advisers generally agree that with or without consultants, businesses haven't fully transformed with generative AI. Deploying enough use cases at scale to drive meaningful efficiencies that translate into cost savings as well as increased revenue is hard work that will take time, which could, ultimately work in the consulting industry's favor.

Generally, large companies will be willing to pay consultants to deploy technologies that are reliable and predictable and less relevant to competitive advantage. Generative AI isn't in that category today, but some uses of it could be in four to five years, said Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source Global Research, which tracks the consulting industry.

"You've got a generation of CIOs that are going to be quite skeptical about consultants' ability to deploy AI...However, from the consulting firms' point of view, there will be a second wave and this is where they will make most of their money," she said.

"The problem at the moment is that consulting firms have tried to put themselves at the cutting edge," she said, "and it's not really where they belong."

Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com and Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com

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September 08, 2025 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

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