Catalant

We put 5 leading LLMs through rigorous consulting work — tasks designed by seasoned practitioners with deep functional credentials across commercial, operational, and supply chain excellence. The results? Anthropic Claude Opus 4.7 led overall, with strong performance across commercial and operational excellence. Google DeepMind Gemini 2.5 Pro took the top spot in procurement and supply chain. No single model dominated every domain. But the more important finding isn't the rankings. It's the nature of the errors. Models applied statistically sound methods that were wrong for the specific context. They missed outliers with real dollar consequences. They ignored physical operating constraints that experienced practitioners would treat as non-negotiable. These are the kind of judgment gaps that close with years of actually doing the work. Which raises the obvious implication: the ceiling on how good AI gets at complex consulting tasks is set by the ceiling on the expertise of the people training it. Catalant Director, Strategic Solutions Diana Rumman dug into this data in her latest article. Read the full findings here: https://lnkd.in/ggbRdrcp #consultingAI #AIinconsulting #LLMtraining #modeltraining

Too many companies are still doing "AI theater." Surface-level experiments. Productivity tools deployed without strategy. Pilots that never scale. All designed to signal innovation without actually delivering it. We surveyed Catalant's Practice Community — a group of elite independent consultants who are currently in the field advising executives, running implementations, and cleaning up the pilots that didn't make it — to find out what's really happening inside leading companies. The result: a ground-level view of how organizations are actually deploying AI, what's working, and where they're falling short. Get your behind-the-scenes look at what the experts are seeing. Take a look at the data: https://lnkd.in/gVzj2kUV #AI #AIstrategy #enterpriseAI #AIimplementation

When it comes to stalled transformations, the strategy is rarely the problem. The danger zone is the middle — that unglamorous time after the initial excitement has faded. When a gap opens between the plan and its delivery, velocity is lost. Catalant consultant Carlos Castelán explains how leaders must shift their focus toward the systems that sustain progress to bridge the gap and build momentum: • Pay down operational debt early: Clear out legacy friction and outmoded processes to fund future growth. • Build ongoing habits: Embed new behaviors into existing rhythms until they become automatic. If your transformation feels stuck, resist the urge to revisit the strategy. Instead, look at the mechanics of your execution. Are you managing a mandate or building momentum? Read the full article from Carlos: https://lnkd.in/gUj2srh9 #transformation #momentum #leadership #changemanagement

Most transformation strategies don’t fail because the vision is wrong. They fail because the "how" is unclear. According to Catalant consultant Vaibhaw Raghubanshi, treating transformation as a finite project with a fixed deadline is a fundamental error in a high-velocity market. To stay ahead, Vaibhaw argues that leaders must install a Transformation Operating System (TOS) — an execution architecture that collapses decision latency from weeks to hours. By moving beyond the traditional PMO and creating a nerve center that senses, decides, acts, and learns in a continuous loop, organizations can hardwire value realization into their culture. It’s a shift from "execution theater" toward building genuine institutional adaptability. Learn what a TOS looks like in practice and how to move from static planning to a high-velocity operating rhythm: https://lnkd.in/eYVbsmNT #businesstransformation #transformationstrategy #strategyexecution

Contact centers are getting smarter — and it's not just about chatbots. Catalant consultant Mitchell Goldstein breaks down where AI is moving the needle for contact centers through capabilities like real-time agent assistance, intelligent routing, sentiment analysis, and much more. Now is the time to see what impact AI could have on your organization's customer experiences and how next-gen technologies can make every interaction more efficient and more effective. Read now: https://lnkd.in/gyNPSprc #contactcenter #contactcenterAI

This Oxford grad turned down McKinsey and Morgan Stanley to write about why the smartest people keep "selling out." He interviewed 212 consultants and found the same pattern: It starts with prestige and real problem-solving. You're in the room. You're doing the work. Then you make Partner. Now you're not solving problems — you're selling them. Your calendar is pitches and politics. The actual work goes to new grads while you become a business development engine. One partner told him: "Because I never saw my children, I told myself I'd work a few more years so I could at least buy them a house in return." That's not success. That's captivity. This is why Consulting 2.0 exists. Expert consultants can stay in the work they're good at — without the firm structure that turns them into salespeople. They control their calendar. They choose their projects. They solve real problems. The consulting model wastes expertise by extracting the best operators from the work. We're building the alternative. Source: Fortune https://lnkd.in/e2K_K7Zy #consulting20 #consulting #independentconsultants