Introduction: The Future of AI Intelligence in Business

In today’s business environment, the world’s top consulting firms are now embracing a new technology: that is AI. Now they are becoming technology-enabled partners that help clients harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for real-world impact.

In this blog, we’ll explore how these consulting firms are transforming their workflows and why consulting firms are fully embracing AI, and we'll examine real-world applications, like how they now edit slides with AI and create slides with AI. If you’re working with consulting firms or creating decks and strategy materials, this article will give you an overview of how the consulting world is changing.

How Top Consulting Firms Are Transforming Their Work With AI

Consulting firms are shifting towards becoming true AI-enabled service providers. These firms are moving beyond human-only workflows like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint and using AI in everything: research, analysis, delivery, and presentation.

Now, consulting companies are using AI across almost every part of their process:

• Research and analysis: They are automating large parts of data extraction, document summarization, and slide creation.
• Delivery: Consulting firms are now offering AI-powered services that focus on results. This shift allows them to deliver faster outcomes and measurable impact for clients.
• Slide creation: They are rethinking slide creation; now, AI helps in designing, writing, and formatting presentations automatically and provides more high-value insight and creativity.

For example, one firm reported that its internal AI tool could save up to 30% of consultants’ time on routine tasks.

Why Consulting Firms Are Embracing AI

There are several strong reasons behind this shift toward AI. Here are the reasons:

1. Faster work and cost reduction
   AI helps consulting firms reduce repetitive work and free human resources for higher-value tasks, like summarizing documents or updating slides.
2. Scalability & productivity
   Traditional consulting depends on the number of human workers. But now AI helps firms to handle more projects without hiring more people, increasing productivity and profits.
3. Standing out from the competition
   AI allows consulting firms to create new services, such as data-driven insights, AI-based tools, or subscription models. Such innovation helps them to stay ahead in a crowded market.
4. Improved client value
   With AI, consulting firms can provide faster, deeper insights, automate slide production and reporting, and provide interactive dashboards.
5. Talent evolution
   Future consultants will need to understand AI tools and business strategy as well. That’s why many firms are training their people to use AI in their daily work.

Recent research also highlights this shift; as noted by Harvard Business Review in its piece “AI Is Changing the Structure of Consulting Firms,” AI is fundamentally reshaping how consulting firms operate and deliver value.

Real-World Applications of AI in Top Consulting Firms

To bring the discussion into focus, here’s how top consulting firms are already using AI in their day-to-day work:

• Automated research: AI can read the thousands of pages of data, summarize key points, and highlight patterns in minutes, which used to take days.
• Smart presentation and slide creation: Firms are now using AI tools for building decks, integrating visuals, updating charts when data changes, and aligning story flow.
• Predictive analytics. Firms use AI to predict business outcomes, customer behavior, and market trends, turning strategy into data-backed action.
• Project tracking: AI monitors progress, spots risks, and suggests fixes in real-time. Consultants can now present strategy and live updates inside their slides.
• Internal productivity: Consulting firms build internal AI-enabled engines for reuse: best-practice modules, slide libraries, and narrative templates. This means faster turnaround, better quality, and less duplication of effort.

For consulting teams, AI is becoming a trusted partner, helping them move beyond routine tasks to focus on innovation, strategy, and meaningful client impact.

How AI Is Changing Presentation Workflows for Consulting Firms

Presentations are an important part of consulting work, and AI is completely changing how they’re made and used.

• From manual to smart creation: Instead of building slides from scratch, consultants now generate them with AI in minutes.
• Smarter storytelling: AI suggests the best visuals, charts, and narrative flow, so presentations tell a clearer, stronger story.
• Living documents: Decks can now connect to live data, updating automatically when numbers change.
• Accessible design: Even team members without design experience can build beautiful decks using AI tools.
• Better alignment with business goals: Because AI connects strategy, analysis, and visuals, presentations now reflect the full picture.

At RocketSlide, we’ve seen that in consulting, it is difficult to create and manage slides. By creating or editing slides with AI, we help them to reduce manual effort so consultants can focus on insights, not formatting.

But with the help of AI presentation tools, teams can do something similar; they can seamlessly integrate AI-powered automation into the presentation workflow, letting them focus on insights and client engagement rather than slide production.

The Future of AI in Consulting

The role of AI in consulting in the coming years is only going to grow.  It will become a natural part of how consulting firms work, helping them plan better, move faster, and deliver more value to their clients. Here’s what we can expect next:

• AI inside every client project: Firms will build AI directly into client systems, offering continuous insights.
• Personalized, interactive decks: Personalized decks based on who’s viewing them (CFO, CEO, etc.) or based on real-time data.
• Focus on responsible AI: Firms will pay more attention to ethics, transparency, and data safety.
• Integration with business tools: Decks will connect directly to company data systems like CRM and ERP, becoming living dashboards instead of static PDFs.
• Evolving teams: Future consulting teams will include AI engineers, designers, and strategists working together.
• End-to-end AI workflows: From research to presentation delivery, AI will support every step, helping consulting firms deliver better outcomes faster.

Explore more about presentation automation in our blog, How AI-Powered Templates Are Transforming Presentations.

Conclusion

The transformation of consulting with the help of AI is no longer a future; it’s happening now. Top consulting firms are evolving into AI-enabled firms, positioning themselves as true AI companies that deliver insights, automation, and client value at scale. They are rethinking workflows, streamlining slide production with AI, enabling teams to edit slides with AI, and using AI across research, strategy, implementation, and presentation.

As an AI-powered presentation platform, RocketSlide enables smarter, faster, more impactful decks that reflect the new era of consulting.
If your organization is working with consulting firms or building executive decks, now is the time to ask: Is your partner a consulting firm of the past or an AI-powered consulting firm of the future?