Horizontal AI isn't working for Consulting — Here's Why.
A common conversation starter we get is, "Why does consulting need a vertical AI solution?"
Most enterprise tools work across industries and don’t need a consulting-first solution, so why should AI be any different? We thought it would be helpful to share our insights on this—and the lessons behind them.
Consulting data is complex, and AI comprehension is difficult.
Consulting data is known to be more visually complex than most other verticals, setting a higher bar for AI comprehension. This contrasts with most text-only use cases used in different verticals, such as parsing an email thread or parsing structured data in Jira tickets.
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for extracting insights from consulting data requires more than keyword matching or entity recognition. It goes beyond the obvious, involving a blend of semantic understanding, contextual reasoning, and robust data extraction, not just text retrieval.
While various horizontal solutions could theoretically invest enough effort to catch up with the frontier of AI document comprehension, they haven’t. This is because companies in their primary markets of focus –product-led organizations—don’t require it.
Consulting firms don’t operate like SaaS Companies. Their Gen AI Platform shouldn’t either.
Product-led businesses follow a similar operational structure shaped by feature release cycles and predictable organizational structures. Consulting firms are on the other end of the spectrum, as seen in their project-based engagements, dynamic resourcing setups, etc.
This subtle distinction shows up very clearly in everything from how CRMs track client relationships to how firms allocate resources and structure engagements. Unfortunately, most horizontal solutions shoehorn firms into data structures and operating paradigms made for different types of companies, overlooking their nuances.
To truly enhance consulting workflows, AI enterprise search must adapt to how firms work—not the other way around.
Back to the opening question: “Why does consulting need a vertical AI solution?”
Instead of forcing the adoption of horizontal enterprise search platforms that overlook how consulting firms operate, we built Kenley to leverage your institutional knowledge and operating models. This thesis is beginning to pay dividends for the most innovative firms, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what it means to build a Consulting-First AI Platform.
Till next time,
Kenley Team
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