After three decades of pretty constant growth, the consultancy boom just hit an AI-shaped wall

The age of consulting as we know it, when armies of associates mercilessly grind through endless slide decks and dashboards, is starting to give way to a new model: part human, part bot.

On Monday, Accenture announced a new partnership with OpenAI to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise for “tens of thousands of its professionals,” embedding the tool across consulting, operations, and delivery work. The company also said it will now have the “largest number of professionals upskilled through OpenAI Certifications.”

The collaboration follows Accenture’s $865 million restructuring plan unveiled in September, in which the company euphemistically disclosed that it’s been “exiting” employees who cannot be re-skilled for AI.

Peak consulting?

The partnership is good news for consultants looking to decorate their LinkedIn profiles with AI badges, but it also reflects a deep shift within the industry, as the traditional model built on adding more people to bill for long hours begins to unwind.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, consulting’s share of total US employment has grown more than 4x since 1990, though it stopped rising around late 2022 — just as generative AI took off on the back of ChatGPT’s debut. The industry’s stall appears more pronounced than other white-collar jobs that hit their plateaus much earlier, from the dot-com crash in tech to the post-2008 slowdown in Wall Street, which have all recently been impacted by the AI boom in quite different ways.

And things could get even worse for the consulting industry before they get better. A new study from HFS Research and IBM found that nearly two-thirds (65%) of enterprise executives say traditional consulting models no longer deliver real value, while 83% say AI-powered consulting delivers more.