Methodology Is Your Moat. Ship It as Software.
Transform proprietary consulting frameworks into AI-powered products that deliver continuous value and recurring revenue.
The Transformation Underway
Every technology wave — ERP, digital transformation, cloud — created new revenue for firms that moved fast. This wave is different. AI changes how consulting itself is delivered, and the most valuable firms are now packaging their proprietary methodologies as software products that generate recurring revenue at scale.
Methodologies Are Becoming Products
Periscope
McKinsey took its proprietary pricing and promotions methodology — IP that once lived in partner presentations and analyst models — and shipped it as Periscope, a subscription analytics platform. A global retailer reported a 1.5% revenue increase and 20% improvement in promotional effectiveness from the platform alone.
NPS Prism
Bain’s Net Promoter Score methodology — decades of customer loyalty IP — became NPS Prism, a subscription benchmarking platform where clients self-serve competitive CX insights. Instead of commissioning a $500K custom loyalty study, clients subscribe.
Service-as-a-Software
EY is explicitly building what it calls a “service-as-a-software” model — packaging consulting frameworks into AI platforms that generate recurring revenue. The firm deployed 1,000 AI agents internally and plans to scale to 100,000 agents by 2028.
The New Leverage Model
The staffing pyramid isn’t shrinking. It’s being re-wired.
The Harvard Experiment
When Harvard Business School tested 758 BCG consultants on realistic consulting tasks, those using AI were 25% faster and produced 40% higher-quality output. The biggest gains came from below-average performers — exactly the junior staff in the traditional leverage model.
12,000 Internal Agents
McKinsey deployed over 12,000 AI agents internally — not to replace consultants, but to handle the research, data synthesis, and formatting that consumed 30%+ of junior consultants’ time. Effective leverage rises without proportional hiring.
Expanded Span of Control
EY is using AI agents to let each senior manager oversee more projects simultaneously. A partner who managed 3 concurrent engagements can manage 5–7. That’s a direct structural increase in leverage.
Same 10-partner firm. Same expertise. AI-augmented leverage model.
AI agents encode methodology so juniors produce senior-level work.
Higher leverage means more billable capacity without proportional headcount.
Same Expertise, New Economics
| Traditional Model | Services as Software |
|---|---|
| $500K one-time market entry analysis | $50K/month continuous competitive intelligence |
| Brand strategy project (8 weeks) | Real-time brand health monitoring (always on) |
| Organizational design engagement | Continuous talent-to-value optimization |
| Revenue tied to headcount & utilization | Revenue tied to platform subscriptions |
| Static PDF deliverables at milestones | Real-time dashboards & AI-driven alerts |
| Feast-or-famine project pipeline | Predictable, recurring revenue streams |
“AI commoditizes execution. Models can research, summarize, and draft. But they cannot invent the frameworks that make analysis strategically valuable. Your proprietary methodology — refined through thousands of client engagements and tacit knowledge that public training data cannot replicate — becomes the irreplaceable core. The tools are commoditizing. The thinking remains invaluable.”
The Big 4 have billions to invest in this shift, but mid-size firms have something they don’t: deep domain expertise and proprietary methodologies refined through years of focused client work. The window to encode that expertise as software — before generic AI commoditizes it — is measured in months, not years. EY plans 100,000 agents by 2028. McKinsey already has 12,000.
Talk to Our TeamThe Services as Software Playbook
This isn’t about giving consultants AI tools to draft decks faster. It’s about transforming your firm’s 20-year competitive intelligence framework into a subscription platform. AnyQuest’s no-code platform lets your domain experts — not engineers — build and deploy AI-powered methodology in weeks.
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Codify
We capture your proprietary frameworks, analytical processes, and quality standards — the IP that lives in partner presentations and senior consultants’ heads.
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Build
Your domain experts build AI agents on AnyQuest’s no-code platform. No engineers required. Your methodology drives the agents, not the other way around.
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Scale
Deploy as subscription offerings. Onboard clients without adding headcount. Junior staff + AI agents produce senior-level output.
Firms Already Making the Shift
Success Story
Accelerating Social Impact Assessment
Assessment time: weeks → days
A social impact consulting firm uses AnyQuest’s AI platform to transform startup presentations and business plans into comprehensive social impact assessment reports — structured analyses aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals, covering impact objectives, beneficiary segmentation, scale metrics, and risk mitigation strategies. AI-powered automation reduces assessment time from weeks to days while producing investor-grade documentation.
Success Story
Transforming Consulting Discovery
Discovery reports: 3–4 weeks → under 24 hours
A major talent-to-value consulting firm replaced 3–4 weeks of manual interview processing and document analysis with AnyQuest’s AI-powered workspaces. Specialized AI agents automatically extract key insights, identify patterns, and generate preliminary analyses. Consultants refine findings with AI assistants and produce comprehensive discovery reports in under 24 hours.
The Question That Brought You Here
Managing Partner / CEO
“How do I double revenue without doubling my team — and make the firm more valuable at exit?”
Chief Strategy Officer
“How do we stay ahead of McKinsey’s Periscope, Bain’s NPS Prism, and the wave of AI-native startups eating our lunch?”
Practice Leaders
“How do I deliver 3x the client work with the same team — without burning them out?”
CFO / Head of Finance
“How do I shift our revenue mix from project-based to recurring — and what does that do to our valuation?”
PE Operating Partner
“Which of my portfolio firms can productize their expertise before AI commoditizes their delivery model?”
Frequently Asked Questions
Stop Scaling Hours. Scale the Expertise.
The question isn’t whether AI will transform consulting. It already has. The question is whether your firm will remain constrained by billable hours — or evolve into an intelligence platform where methodology compounds and scales.
Schedule a Strategy Session