Part 1: Is digital consulting dead?

AI has accelerated those fears. It’s not just another new tool. It’s changing how work gets done, who does it, and what clients expect. Some parts of digital consulting are already being challenged. Others will follow.

This piece is an attempt to make sense of where we are, and where we might be heading.

First, I’ll look back at how digital consulting became so valuable.

Then, I’ll talk about what’s changing now, and what’s driving it.

From there, I’ll outline three possible futures.

And finally, I’ll share what I believe will stay the same, what must change, and how we move forward.

Let’s start with what worked.

The golden age of digital consulting (2005–2022)

For nearly two decades, digital consulting was a model that made sense.

Most organisations were dealing with legacy systems, slow delivery, siloed teams, and growing pressure to “go digital.” They didn’t always have the skills or speed to respond. That’s where we came in.

Consulting firms offered something valuable:

Smart, multidisciplinary teams that could step in and make progress.

Strategists, designers, developers, and data people,working together to solve real problems.

Workshops. Sprints. Roadmaps. Prototypes. Code. Outcomes.

We weren’t just giving advice. We were building.

Often faster, better, and with more focus than internal teams could manage on their own.

Clients trusted us because we helped them move.

We made the complex clearer.

We turned ideas into products.

We got stuck in.

The commercial models were straightforward:

Fixed price. Time and materials. Retainers. Squads on long-running programmes.

Headcount matched scope. More people meant more value delivered. More hours meant more revenue.

This was a high-trust, high-touch, high-cost model. And for a long time, it worked.

But it was also built on a few assumptions:

• That value comes from people
• That progress comes from scale
• That time is a fair way to measure work

Those assumptions weren’t wrong. But they weren’t built to last forever.

Years the AI disruption begins (2022–2025)

Something shifted in 2022.

We’d seen hype before, cloud, mobile, data, Web3. But this felt different. When large language models hit the mainstream, it wasn’t just a new tool for a small group of specialists. It was a new capability for everyone.

Designers started using AI to generate ideas and interfaces.

Developers were getting code suggestions as they typed.

Consultants were using it to analyse documents, summarise research, and write faster.

Even clients were experimenting, creating strategy decks, user stories, pitch copy.

Suddenly, the barrier to entry for creative and technical work dropped. A lot.

And with that came new questions.

Not just “How do we use this?” but “What does this mean for how we work?”

“Do we still need a team of five to do this?”

“Why are we paying for hours when tools can do this in seconds?”

Those questions are valid. And they’re only going to grow louder.

The promise of AI is huge, but uneven.

Some tasks are already faster and cheaper. Others—especially the complex, messy, human ones—aren’t going anywhere. At least not yet.

We’re in a strange in-between phase.

Clients expect more. Teams are experimenting.

But delivery models haven’t fully caught up.

And most consulting businesses still rely on people, time, and scale to make the numbers work.

This is the tension:

Expectations are rising faster than our ability to reinvent.

Everyone can see the change coming. But few are truly ready for it.

What will stay the same and what must change

Before we talk about where things could go, it’s worth stepping back and asking:

What actually changes, and what doesn’t?

Not everything gets rewritten. But some things absolutely do.

What will stay the same

Clients will still face complexity.

They’ll still have legacy systems, fragmented data, unclear strategies, and pressure to deliver more with less.

They’ll still need help making sense of change.

They’ll need clear thinking, fast decisions, and practical ways to move forward.

They’ll want partners who understand both the big picture and the detail.

Human skills will still matter.

The ability to ask good questions.

To connect the dots.

To tell a story that lands.

To build trust in a room.

Consulting has never just been about delivery. It’s also about perspective, clarity, and momentum. That won’t change.

What must change

How we deliver that value will change.

What clients are willing to pay for will change.

And what we look like as teams and firms will change.

• Team sizes will shrink. You won’t need five people to do the job of two. AI will handle more of the heavy lifting, so teams will get leaner by design.
• Pricing will shift. Clients will expect to pay for outcomes, not hours. Tools, not time.
• Speed will become standard. What used to take a week will take a day. Maybe less.
• More value will come from IP. Proprietary tools, accelerators, agent-based workflows. These will matter as much as your people.
• The role of the consultant will evolve. Less doing, more orchestrating. Less execution, more integration. The ones who thrive will be the ones who can blend human and machine thinking in a way that makes clients feel confident and in control.

The fundamentals—helping clients solve hard problems—aren’t going away.

But how we do that work? That’s already shifting.

Three scenarios for the future of digital consulting

There’s no single path ahead. The future won’t play out the same way for everyone.

Some clients will still need deep, human-led consulting. Others will build their own capabilities and need much less help from the outside. Some firms will adapt. Others won’t.

These three scenarios aren’t predictions.

They’re lenses. Different ways this could play out.

And in reality, we’re already seeing a mix of all three.

Scenario 1: Consulting 2.0 – Reinvention & resilience

Firms get serious about redesigning how they work.

They use AI to streamline delivery, reduce team sizes, and build smarter tools.

They shift away from selling time and toward selling results, platforms, and products.

Consultants aren’t replaced, but they don’t work the same way either.

They orchestrate projects with AI support.

They blend human judgment with machine-generated insight.

They focus more on context, integration, and speed.

The firms that make this shift become faster, leaner, and more valuable to clients.

They look less like traditional agencies, and more like software companies with a consulting edge.

Scenario 2: The great in-housing – Disintermediation

Clients build internal teams.

They adopt AI tools.

They automate big parts of what they used to outsource.

They don’t want long discovery phases or expensive squads.

They want enablement, capability-building, and practical support to go faster on their own.

This doesn’t mean consulting disappears. But the role shifts.

Trusted advisors focus on strategy, transformation, change management, and governance.

Work becomes more about helping clients do the work themselves.

Scenario 3: Death by inertia – Decline of the legacy model

Firms stick to the old ways of working.

They keep selling large teams and billable hours.

They assume the model will hold.

But it doesn’t.

Clients move on.

Margins shrink.

Talent leaves for startups or product companies.

And consultancies slowly fade into niche relevance.

This isn’t about a single big collapse.

It’s about slow decline—death by a thousand missed opportunities.

A strategic call to action

This isn’t just about where the industry might go.

It’s about whether we’re ready to go with it.

Reinvention sounds good in theory. But in practice, it’s hard.

Not just for the firms that are growing.

For the ones trying to survive, it’s even harder.

The past couple of years have been rough.

Margins squeezed. Pipeline volatility. Layoffs. Delayed decisions.

Many firms are still recovering, still rebuilding.

When you’re trying to stabilise the present, reinventing the future feels like a luxury.

But it isn’t.

Because the firms that don’t move now—regardless of where they’re starting from—will fall behind fast.

Most consultancies were built for delivery, not reinvention.

They’re optimised for utilisation, revenue, and client satisfaction.

That makes it incredibly hard to change direction, even when everyone agrees it’s needed.

Even when the will is there, the system resists:

• Teams are fully booked or stretched thin.
• Targets leave no room for real experimentation.
• Change happens in pockets, not across the business.
• And nobody knows how to reinvent and hit this quarter’s numbers.

Inertia doesn’t come from complacency.

It comes from survival mode.

But the successful consultancies of the future won’t just be leaner versions of today’s firms.

They’ll be different at every level.

They’ll deliver differently, with smaller, AI-augmented teams.

They’ll price differently, based on outcomes, IP, and speed.

They’ll scale differently, through tools, platforms, and automation.

They’ll hire differently, think differently, and show up differently.

So what now?

If you want to stay relevant, the work starts now:

• Create protected space for experimentation. Don’t wait for “capacity.” Make it.
• Invest in AI-native workflows and tools. Not plug-ins. Real operational change.
• Redesign pricing models. Shift away from selling hours toward selling outcomes and IP.
• Bring delivery and leadership closer together. Reinvention isn’t a side project. It’s the core business.
• Be honest about what’s no longer working. And let it go, before the market does it for you.

This is the moment.

Because the signal to act isn’t coming.

It’s already here.

And if you’re not already reinventing—

There’s a good chance you’re already dead. You just don’t know it yet.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.