AI Consulting – What is It, Who Needs It, How Much Does It Cost?

You walk into a meeting, everyone is buzzing about AI.

Your founder wants you to investigate ways to use AI. They declare that it will make or break your survival in the industry.

People in the meeting are talking about support chatbots that never sleep, algorithms predicting user behavior, and on and on.

Sure, it’s exciting. But it’s also very confusing for most business leaders.

And that’s where AI consultants come into the picture. They help translate this world of possibilities into business reality.

What is AI Consulting?

AI consulting offers expert advice to businesses in order to help them understand, plan, and implement artificial intelligence solutions that solve specific business problems in exchange for a fee. The solutions they advise on come from all areas of AI including chatbots, machine learning, and process automation to name just a few. The benefit of this expert advice is that it is impartial and objective, providing practical solutions based on experience working with other organizations.

An experienced AI consultant doesn’t just understand the technologies used in AI solutions, but how those technologies apply to your industry, goals, and workflows.

What Do AI Consultants Do?

AI consultants can fill various roles, providing valuable insight and assistance in the following ways:

• Conduct requirement analysis and feasibility studies that will inform strategy planning
• Advise on technology selection that is often driven by model selection and business data analysis
• Provide guidance on implementation and integration strategies
• Provide feedback and insight into data readiness, change management, risk mitigation, governance, and ethics
• Help provide support for end users and administrators during the introduction of new AI solutions

An experienced AI consultant will be able to provide both technical and business management thinking with clear communication so that companies can make decisions based on knowledge, not assumption or guesswork.

Why is AI Consulting Important?

AI consultants help businesses in the following ways:

• They provide a wealth of expertise over AI and how businesses successfully implement solutions
• They have experience aligning AI solutions in a way that generates true business value and measurable ROI
• AI consultants bring a lot of experience overcoming challenges related to the integration of AI into legacy systems and existing workflows
• Being such a specialized role, AI consultants will be able to bring the newest trends and emerging technologies to the table in order to help you achieve a competitive edge in your market
• AI consultancy will deliver a cost savings to the organization by helping it avoid costly mistakes and system rework

All of these benefits are produced through any number of AI consulting services.

What Are The Core Responsibilities of AI Consultants?

The core responsibilities of AI consultants include:

• Identifying high impact AI use cases
• Determining how data is being collected currently, and if it is sufficient for their client to develop an AI solution based on
• Accelerate their client’s learning curve on various AI technologies
• Helping their clients develop effective internal communication with stakeholders
• Showing their clients what reports and analytics demonstrate an AI solution’s capability to produce tangible business value

What are AI Consulting Services?

AI consulting services are the actual means by with businesses benefit from the inclusion of hiring a consultancy firm. Because of the general topic, the services are normally broken down into verticals that make them easier to work with, and more cost efficient for clients that prefer to work in phases.

What Are the Different Types of AI Consulting Services?

The main types of AI consulting services can be broken into four categories:

• Discovery, Strategy, and Planning
• Model Development and Technical Implementation
• Infrastructure and Operations
• Specialized & Ongoing Services

AI Discovery, Strategy, and Planning Services

AI consulting services normally begin with the consultant helping the business develop an AI-ready mindset. They provide the framework needed for organizations to realize and take advantage of the possibility AI offers. Through an AI discovery process, consultants will help you clearly define your business needs and objectives, conduct data audits, and develop an ethical framework and governance plan.

Custom AI Model Development and Technical Implementation Guidance

Another service consultants offer are tailored to helping you choose the AI technologies to use, the platforms to operate on, and the primary programming language to select based on its ecosystem and library availability. All of these decisions need to be made ahead of building the solution, typically taken on by a third-party AI solution developer, or a company that the consultant is tightly associated with. Data preparation and custom AI model development also takes place in this step.

Infrastructure and Operations Expertise

Consultants offer services that will help you select the correct infrastructure for your AI solution to run on. Most businesses choose to use cloud computing environments for their cost savings and easy, built in scalability. Some organizations choose to remain on-prem for maximum control. Highly regulated industries will often require some form of hybrid approach. AI consultants can also guide on what needs to be done to tune and operate the AI solution over the long run.

Specialized and Ongoing Services

This group of consulting services range from providing guidance on ethics, security, training, and industry-specific specialized service solutions. For instance, banks and financial services businesses will likely need help with special fraud detection systems that would not normally be of use to the more general client a consultant may work with.

How Are AI Consultants Different From AI Developers?

AI consultants are the strategists that provide advisory services to business leaders for planning, AI potential identification, often have a strong business acumen, and provide recommendations while an AI development company is made up of builders, programmers, and machine learning engineers that code, test, and deploy the final custom AI models or generative AI solutions, often based on insights learned from AI consultants.

Most business leverage both roles, at least for their initial AI projects. AI consultants are best for business looking to understand if and how AI can add value to their businesses and require guidance while AI developers are best for business with a clear vision for what they want and just need their ideas to be turned into usable products to be integrated into their workflows.

How Much Do AI Consulting Services Cost?

The cost of AI consultants will vary based on the size of the project and the pricing models used. The four most common pricing models are:

• Hourly Rates ($150-$500/hour)
• Project-Based Pricing ($5,000-$500,000)
• Retainer Models ($2,000-$50,000/month)
• Outcome-Based Pricing (10%-40% of cost savings/revenue increases)

The geographic region of the project and the size of the firm hired will affect these ranges considerably, but they are realistic ballparks to start with.

Hourly Rates

Hourly rates can vary in price from $150/hour up to $500/hour depending on the expertise and experience of the consultant, and the type of work being done. Hourly pricing models offer the most flexibility but also leads to the most uncertainty around the final total project cost.

Project-Based Pricing

Project-based, or fixed fee pricing models provide absolute certainty around project costs, but often at the expense of overall flexibility. Because of this, the project-based pricing will normally be directly associated with the type and scope of service being offered.

• Small AI Project Assessments: $5,000 – $35,000
• Medium Sized Opportunity Analysis: $25,000-$100,000
• Larger AI Transformation and Implementation Projects: $100,000-$500,000

Retainer Models

Retainer models offer ongoing access to consulting expertise for consistent and always-available support and guidance. This type of model is best for businesses that need regular AI strategy adjustments, guidance, and responsive support. Pricing will be determined by the amount of hours agreed to, normally on a monthly basis. Some examples include:

• Essential support only (5-10 hours/month): $2,000-$5,000/month
• Standard guidance (10-25 hours/month): $5,000-$15,000/month
• Comprehensive partnership (25+ hours/month): $15,000-$50,000/month

Outcome-Based Pricing

A July 2024 study by Leanware reported that 73% of consulting clients prefer outcome-based pricing models. The fee associated with this model is normally 10%-40% of cost savings or revenue increases attributable to the AI projects consulted on. While this pricing model aligns incentives with goals, it requires complex tracking and mutual trust in order to be successful.

What Are The Cost Factors Associated with AI Consulting?

The three main categories of cost factors for AI consultancy are:

• The premium put on the consultants experience level
• The amount of specialized domain knowledge required for a project
• The ratio of strategic vs technical knowledge depth

Experience remains the strongest driver of consultancy costs. Highly regulated or technical industries will often drive a higher premium than more relaxed business types. While the most valuable consultants will have both technical and strategic skill sets, those focused more heavily on strategy often command higher rates than purely technical advisors.

When Should a Business Use AI Consulting Services?

Businesses should consider hiring an AI consultant when:

• They are struggling to collect or use data to create insights and drive decisions in the business
• They are overwhelmed by options, lack a clear strategy to solve defined business problems, or have a history of stalled and failed past projects
• They are having difficulty automating tasks and workflows to improve operational inefficiencies
• They need to differentiate themselves to create an edge, but don’t have the expertise to know what’s being done, and what to do differently to stay ahead of the competition

There is no replacement for expert guidance in these scenarios. Hiring an AI consultant can guide your whole thought process around strategy, technology selection, and how to measure results to demonstrate the actual business value your solutions are creating. A lot of the scenarios that drive curiosity around AI consultancy revolve around a portion of the business known as “management consulting.”

What Is An Artificial Intelligence Management Consultant?

An artificial intelligence management consultant is a specialized role within the broader AI consulting scope that focuses on creating specific strategies for leaders to achieve their ideal business outcomes. AI management consultants are different than general AI consultants in that they really narrow in on advising the senior leadership and c-suite executives over the course of years while generalized AI consultants will typically work with technical and departmental teams over much shorter durations.

What Are The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence Management Consulting?

The main benefits of AI management consulting are:

• An AI management consultant will focus on long-term sustainability by helping leadership create technology solutions that remain relevant as the company’s needs change
• The AI management consultant will aid leadership with the creation of training platforms for durable internal capability improvement so that internal teams can maintain the end product
• An AI management consultant will help leadership monitor and actively manage human and cultural aspects of the implementation to ensure successful integration
• By understanding the overall vision for the business, an AI management consultant can aid leadership in the creation of new revenue streams, and process transformation

What Is Artificial Intelligence Business Consulting?

Artificial intelligence business consulting is a holistic approach to reshaping business operations with embedded AI across the entire company to create transformation. An AI business consultant will work with all business units, their functional leaders, and individual teams to find opportunities, and overhaul operations. Their work will also be multi-year engagements versus the short duration projects of generalized AI consultants.

What Is the Difference Between AI Business Consulting and AI Management Consulting?

AI business consulting is broad in reach, helping deliver artificial intelligence solutions that solves many individual business problems across an entire organization while AI management consulting concentrates more narrowly on helping only business leaders create broader, big picture strategies to drive business value creation with AI.

Both fields address AI adoption, its just a matter of if the focus of the consultant is aimed at helping leadership, or helping implement granular business changes themselves.

What Are Artificial Intelligence Sustainability Consultants?

Artificial intelligence sustainability consulting is an emerging field. These consultants help businesses in two ways:

• They improve the sustainability of AI by reducing the negative impact of the use of any form of AI in an organization
• They use AI technologies to track, analyze, and optimize a company’s ecological footprints, resource usage and waste, and overall environmental impact

AI sustainability consultants help businesses reduce environmental impact and regulatory compliance in heavily monitored industries.

How Do AI Sustainability Consultants Reduce Environmental Impact?

AI sustainability consultants will use a variety of methods to reduce environmental impact, but our consultants adhere to our in-house I.M.P.A.C.T. framework which is:

• Initiate: Initiate conversations with stakeholders that align business objectives with regulatory demands, and the most pressing environmental concerns
• Measure: Establish baselines, begin performing regular assessments, and translate those findings into sustainability metrics that align with business objectives
• Prioritize: Focus efforts on areas that matter the most for both quick wins and long-term sustainability shifts
• Act: Begin forward thinking initiatives that make sustainability-by-design methods the starting point, not the afterthought
• Check: Re-baseline measurements against initial benchmarks, reprioritizing emerging needs, and adjusting to regulatory changes
• Transform: Scale what you’ve learned in smaller pilot programs across more areas of the organization to institutionalize sustainable AI practices

How Does AI Consulting Apply to You?

You may still be confused about AI, and that’s okay. What you need to take away from this is that hiring an AI consultant will help you invest wisely, avoid mistakes, and delivery real business value with the decisions you make.

The question really isn’t if you should work with an AI consultant as much as it is which one will help you realize the most value.