McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte’s New Competitors Is Quick and Pushed by AI

Two units of gamers have lengthy dominated the consulting world.

There’s MBB, which is McKinsey & Firm, Bain & Firm, and Boston Consulting Group. After which there’s the Large 4: PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and Ernst & Younger.

Now, a brand new wave of AI-driven startups is difficult that dominance by making consulting companies extra accessible.

Lots of the founders of those new corporations come from the standard consulting realm. They informed Enterprise Insider their experiences not solely give them marketable expertise however have additionally helped them determine new alternatives within the business.

They’re boutique corporations. They’re much smaller than the established ones, usually run by groups starting from just some folks to a couple hundred. They’re additionally extra specialised, specializing in areas like pricing technique, price discount, or refining slide decks.

And, importantly, they’re all in on AI.

Lots of them stated their strategies assist them scale back old-school forms, provide extra aggressive charges, and make the human aspect of consulting work simpler.

Listed below are eight boutique corporations which can be, to various levels, difficult the traditional consulting mannequin.

Xavier AI

Xavier AI describes itself because the world’s first AI technique advisor.

In accordance with Joao Filipe, cofounder of Xavier and a former McKinsey advisor, the Xavier AI chatbot can present clear, actionable enterprise information and deliverables, like a 60-page marketing strategy, a gross sales presentation, or an in depth advertising technique.

Filipe stated Xavier AI has its personal proprietary reasoning engine that’s tailored for enterprise use circumstances and may present detailed sources with out the hallucination you may discover with different chatbots. He stated Xavier can present each technique suggestions and actionable plans for implementation.

“99.9% of companies might actually by no means afford McKinsey or any of the MBBs,” Filipe informed BI. “We created Xavier AI in order that anybody might have the facility of a consulting agency at their arms once they want it.”

Xavier AI formally launched in April, however Filipe stated he is been piloting it with totally different purchasers, together with a world financial institution utilizing it to analysis potential purchasers and higher perceive their wants.

Since its launch, Filipe says enterprise has been booming. He stated the corporate’s income has doubled month over month, and he expects that progress to proceed via the remainder of 2025.

Consulting IQ

Consulting IQ was born out of the pandemic as an antidote to the variety of small and midsize companies failing.

“We noticed so many small and midsize companies collapsing for causes past their management,” Diego Medone, the founder and CEO of Consulting IQ, informed Enterprise Insider.

There are an estimated 400 million corporations around the globe, 99% of which belong within the micro, small, or midsize class, Medone stated. However, he stated, 65% of small and midsize companies fade away earlier than 12 months 5.

“That is 260 million corporations worldwide,” he stated.

Medone, a longtime administration advisor who rose to associate at KPMG, started conducting analysis.

He stated he and his workforce of former McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants carried out 10,000 interviews with small and midsize corporations in america, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific. The goal was to study firsthand from enterprise house owners the challenges and dangers they face every day.

They used that info to formally launch Consulting IQ in 2024. The platform positions itself as an AI-powered boutique advisor devoted to the wants of small and medium-sized companies.

As soon as a consumer registers on the platform, they supply a number of primary particulars about their enterprise — who they’re, the place they function, and their challenges. Then they’re going to see a listing of over 5,000 preloaded prompts in subjects starting from branding to enterprise technique to gross sales. Customers can converse with the instrument for insights on the best way to optimize their operations.

The workforce’s consultants are at all times refining the AI platform, Medone stated. “The consultants aren’t doing something manually throughout interactions — that is 100% AI,” he stated. “What they’re doing is completely fine-tuning the algorithms, filtering what’s vital and what’s not, to keep away from hallucinations and guarantee relevance.”

Consulting IQ runs on a subscription mannequin beginning at $9 a month. The Miami-based firm has partnered with Visa, Mastercard, and JPMorgan Chase.

Perceptis

Alibek Dostiyarov, a former McKinsey advisor, and Yersultan Sapar, a former engineer at Apple, cofounded Perceptis.

The corporate goals to assist smaller and midsize corporations compete with larger business gamers through the use of AI to streamline a number of the extra tedious processes in consulting, like proposal writing.

Perceptis is now centered on the enterprise growth aspect of consulting. Its AI-powered working system can do business analysis, determine alternatives that align with their consumer’s skillset and background, and create detailed, customized proposals that the consumer can use to win a job.

Dostiyarov informed BI earlier this 12 months that plenty of the inner processes accomplished at consulting corporations are heavy with guide labor and “lend themselves virtually completely to what GenAI is able to doing.”

He additionally stated Perceptis might make smaller corporations, which do not sometimes have inner AI instruments, extra aggressive out there.

The corporate informed BI this week that whereas initially serving boutique administration consultancies, it is now shortly increasing to serve IT companies, system integrators, software program builders, monetary companies, design corporations, and actual property companies.

Perceptis had raised $3.6 million in funding as of January.

Genpact

Genpact, knowledgeable companies firm that expects to generate $5 billion in income this 12 months, has made a serious push over the previous 12 months to place itself as a frontrunner in AI technique.

Sanjeev Vohra, the corporate’s chief know-how officer — who spent greater than 20 years at Accenture — stated AI transformations have to start internally.

Final 12 months, Genpact launched “Shopper Zero,” an initiative to design, take a look at, and refine AI options in-house earlier than rolling them out to its 800-plus purchasers.

One instance is “Amber,” an AI-powered chief listening officer that has dealt with greater than 500,000 worker interactions prior to now 12 months.

“She’s dynamic. She works 24/7. She would not relaxation, and she or he’s speaking to folks,” Vohra stated. Genpact has additionally deployed a collection of AI finance instruments that it says can lower bill processing from weeks to hours.

Since launching Shopper Zero, Vohra stated, Genpact has trimmed almost $40 million from its working bills. Now, the corporate is piloting those self same options with purchasers.

Vohra stated purchasers wish to see the worth they’re getting from investing on this know-how.

“Let’s assume you are spending $100 proper now for a sure course of — can it occur in $80? Can it occur in $70 within the subsequent one or two years?” He stated. “That is what the C-suite is searching for.”

SIB

SIB focuses on serving to purchasers like restaurant teams, hospitals, universities, and authorities companies discover financial savings in fastened prices — bills that stay static no matter how a lot an organization produces.

SIB CEO Shannon Copeland informed BI that these are sometimes present in areas that “escape scrutiny,” like charges for telecommunications, utilities, waste elimination, delivery, and software program licenses. In accordance with his LinkedIn profile, Copeland is an alum of Accenture and Deloitte.

SIB has grown since its 2008 launch in Charleston, South Carolina. It is now a nationwide agency serving lots of of purchasers, starting from Kroger and Marriott to governments like San Diego County. It just lately added over a dozen Fortune 500 corporations and personal fairness corporations. Since its launch, SIB says it has recognized greater than $8 billion in price financial savings.

Copeland stated that, not like conventional consulting corporations, SIB operates beneath a contingency mannequin. “If we do not discover financial savings, we do not receives a commission,” he stated, including that the agency would not cost charges upfront.

SIB makes use of AI brokers to watch invoices, vendor contracts, and billing patterns. The agency’s consultants use the ensuing insights to barter higher contract phrases or restructure their vendor relationships.

“You could possibly consider us as half AI, half old-school operator,” Copeland stated.

Along with cost-cutting, the agency additionally focuses on strengthening relationships, a cornerstone of conventional consulting.

“We truly encourage distributors and purchasers to return to high-trust, high-accountability partnerships through the use of information as the place to begin for higher collaboration,” Copeland stated. “Working with robots truly makes people hear to one another extra. It is ironic, but it surely works.”

Monevate

Monevate’s motto is easy — deal with one factor and do it nicely.

The agency focuses on pricing technique for software-as-a-service and high-growth tech corporations. It additionally works with non-public fairness corporations to evaluate the industrial viability of potential investments.

In accordance with his LinkedIn profile, James Wilton, an alum of McKinsey, Kearney, and ZS Associates, based Monevate in 2021. Wilton now serves because the Agency’s managing associate. The agency has 16 full-time consultants and has helped over 50 SaaS, tech, and AI corporations prior to now three years.

“Most of our purchasers are backed by enterprise capital or non-public fairness, and more and more, we’re working with groups constructing AI merchandise and options,” Wilton informed BI by electronic mail.

Wilton stated purchasers normally flip to Monevate once they’ve hit a wall with their present technique as a result of their product has modified or the market has advanced. “We design and implement fully-baked pricing methods, together with packaging, value structure, and value ranges,” he stated.

Wilton stated the impetus to launch the agency got here from the gaps he noticed in conventional consulting. “Shoppers usually complained about suggestions that by no means went wherever, excessive charges that solely the biggest corporations might afford, no pores and skin within the recreation, rigid supply fashions, and extremely variable service high quality relying on the workforce,” he stated.

Monevate retains its focus slim, however that is allowed even its most junior consultants to change into “deep pricing specialists,” Wilton stated.

He added that the agency’s work is “slim by consulting requirements, and it means strolling away from different kinds of labor, but it surely permits us to be actually nice at what we do.”

Keystone

Keystone is a technique consulting agency that advises know-how corporations, life science corporations, governments, and regulation corporations. Its purchasers embody main companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Intel, Novartis, and Amgen.

The agency was based in 2003 by Greg Richards, a mechanical engineer by coaching and an alum of Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, who now serves as an advisor to Harvard Enterprise Faculty, and Marco Iansiti, a physicist and professor at Harvard Enterprise Faculty.

Iansiti informed BI that Keystone tends to be extra “geeky and nerdy” than conventional consulting corporations. “We like to sort of get deep on the tech aspect of issues,” he stated. The workforce contains information scientists, AI specialists, and teachers.

Whereas many consulting corporations are embracing generative AI, which is commonly used to automate day-to-day work like writing emails or reviewing paperwork and contracts, Iansiti stated Keystone is focusing extra on operational AI.

Operational AI is used to rework core enterprise capabilities like managing provide chains, stock, pricing, and forecasting. In 2023, the agency launched “CoreAI,” a workforce devoted to utilizing AI to automate and enhance these areas.

“We get excited concerning the time period deep enterprise on this,” Iansiti stated. “Deep enterprise is admittedly the thought of utilizing deep studying fashions which can be embedded round essential working processes within the enterprise.”

The agency’s “worth add,” he stated, lies in constructing this sort of “fairly distinctive operational AI” for its purchasers.

Fusion Collective

Fusion Collective is an IT consulting agency that gives a spread of consulting companies to purchasers, together with technique and administration recommendation, cloud transformation, and AI alignment.

The agency was based by Blake Crawford, who labored on enterprise structure at MTV Networks and Viacom, and Yvette Schmitter, an alum of Deloitte, PwC, and Amazon Internet Companies, the place she led three cloud migrations, together with the biggest within the firm’s historical past.

Schmitter stated that in her expertise, purchasers are searching for AI recommendation from consulting corporations earlier than they’re prepared.

“We have now organizations who’re working at 99 miles an hour, hiring these corporations to construct these AI technique paperwork, 165 pages of lovely PowerPoints, proper?” she stated. However these corporations nonetheless cannot “operationalize” AI, she stated. “Why? As a result of the fundamental infrastructure is not there. Any kind of vulnerability that they’ve in safety, their cloud infrastructure, is simply exacerbated by AI.”

In the long run, purchasers selected consultants primarily based on belief, their networks, and present enterprise relationships, she stated.

“I actually imagine {that a} true associate is one who’s going to let you know the reality. Inform it like it’s even when it hurts proper?” Schmitter stated. To that finish, she stated she asks purchasers who come to her about AI technique to have a strong grasp of their infrastructure footprint, information governance insurance policies, and safety earlier than they speed up adoption.

The underside line is that Fusion Collective likes to maintain its recommendation actual. “If corporations haven’t mastered the basics, you are not prepared for AI, and you are not prepared for a military of consultants to return in to do stuff,” Schmitter stated.

Slideworks

Slideworks is not essentially going after consulting corporations’ enterprise, although it focuses on one thing lots of the huge guys are identified for: making highly effective slides.

Slideworks presents what it calls “high-end” PowerPoint templates and “toolkits” created by former consultants for Bain, BCG, and McKinsey.

Whenever you work as a advisor at a top-tier agency, “you might be schooled day by day in greatest follow displays and slide design,” the corporate says on its web site. The concept is to supply entry to a library of slides and spreadsheets for areas together with technique, provide chain administration, and “digital transformation.”

In a February weblog put up, Alexandra Hazard Kampmann, a Slideworks associate, wrote that “administration consultants are sometimes made enjoyable of as ‘slide monkeys.'” But, she added, the slide is a “essential purpose” why McKinsey and BCG consultants have so many Fortune 500 corporations as purchasers.

Slideworks presents a “consulting toolkit,” which incorporates 205 slides and prices $129. It additionally presents a “consulting proposal,” which has 242 slides plus an Excel mannequin and prices $149.

There are additionally operations, mergers and acquisitions, enterprise technique, and product technique templates.

Slideworks says it has greater than 4,500 prospects globally, together with Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and the professional-services corporations Deloitte and EY.

Unity Advisory

Some high UK executives from Ernst & Younger and PwC are becoming a member of forces to launch a brand new agency known as Unity Advisory in June, the Monetary Instances reported. The agency will probably be chaired by Steve Varley, who spent almost 19 years at EY, and led by CEO Marissa Thomas, who labored at PwC for over 30 years, in accordance with their LinkedIn profiles.

It’s backed by as much as $300 million from Warburg Pincus, a personal fairness agency, and can deal with tax and accounting companies, know-how consulting, and mergers and acquisitions.

“CFOs are open to a brand new proposition,” Varley informed the FT. “The Large 4 are a cultured bunch of service suppliers, however persons are searching for a proposition that’s tremendous client-centric, has actually low administrative price, is AI-led slightly than primarily based on legacy infrastructure and, crucially, has no conflicts.”