Why asset-based consulting is crucial for digital enterprises

“The things you are doing, no matter how seemingly unique, has been done before. Take advantage of, and perhaps expand upon, your predecessors work.” — Heacock, Paul (2003)

Traditionally, consulting has been defined by how many smart people you can deploy on projects to get the best outcome. Lately, we see a trend in consulting led by IP solutions/products driven by the latest technologies. An asset is nothing but a reusable framework, processes, solution, or product that was traditionally being built on client engagement. The business environment today is as dynamic as ever. Hence one cannot rely only on traditional ways of solving problems. Asset-based consulting can help achieve scale and faster turnaround time to reach the solution. Let’s discuss why asset-based consulting might be way forward:

Low Build Time — Faster Deployment Cycle

As existing assets come with pre-built components, they just need customization to best suit the business requirements. Customizations typically involve steps like a reconfiguration of business rules (if any), algorithm parameter fine-tuning, validation of results, integration, and changes in end-user views to best suit the persona. Customization is usually much faster to achieve compared to building the solution from scratch.

Optimized for Performance at Scale

Typically in consulting engagements, solutions are built as a pilot and then tested for scale, making the whole development process lengthier. On the other hand, pre-built assets are designed and tested for scale and hence limit the possible chance of failure. Most of the assets are platform agnostic.

Lesser Unknowns — Tried and Tested Approach

Pre-built assets are already tested in various scenarios and hence guaranteed to work for those scenarios. Also, given output is driven by machines, so it reduces the chance of any human error.

In the pure consulting approach, learnings from engagements typically do not flow to other engagements that increase the chances of repeated mistakes. Assets usually cover all the tribal knowledge and learnings from different engagements and hence get better over time. Also, the up-gradation of technology, algorithms, or framework is much faster and easier in asset-based approaches.

Do we still need consultants?

Yes — We still need consultants! However, we can leverage our consultants to solve more contextual problems that are difficult for a machine to do. They can help re-define and re-design problem statements to suit business needs for non-repetitive and un-common issues. Consultants will also play a major role in the contextualization of solutions to solve the business use case in the best possible manner.

Ever Changing User Requirements

The rate at which business users are consuming information is changing dramatically, and a solution with an interactive interface where users can interact through voice/chat is the need of the hour. Earlier, executives used to rely on analysts to build reports, but today they want these reports at their fingertips and are willing to go beyond and find new insights in data. The traditional way of solving the problem might not augment well with changing demand, and hence technology-led solutions might be the need of the hour.

Read how augmented analytics is helping decision-makers in effortless decision-making.

Product or Solution | A trade-off between automation and flexibility

Products are often highly customized to solve a particular type of problem; while they are fast to deploy, they do not provide much flexibility in terms of architecture or functionalities. Solutions, on the other hand, can provide flexibility to be customized based on different business needs. Given that the same business is run differently from one company to another and they might also have different target segments, it is less likely that the same approach will fit both companies.

How BRIDGEi2i is helping clients with asset-based consulting

BRIDGEi2i brings together data engineering, advanced analytics, proprietary AI accelerators, and consulting expertise to drive business actions for digital enterprises. We use multiple proprietary algorithms and frameworks to help our clients with best-in-class solutions with a faster turnaround time. Our AI accelerators are generalized frameworks that can be utilized across multiple industries and domains. Accelerators simplify and democratize the consumption of insights. They recommend the right business actions, enabling faster and more accurate decision-making across enterprises. We have four AI accelerators:

Converserᵀᴹ:

Converser makes it easy for every business user to consume data & insights as well as provide information.

Optimizerᵀᴹ:

The AI-powered Optimizer uses Machine learning and AI frameworks to enable business users to plan their operations optimally.

Watchtowerᵀᴹ:

AI-powered Watchtower leverages proprietary self-learning algorithms to map the causal structure of key performance indicators, alert you to business anomalies, identify their root causes and determine their impact.

Recommenderᵀᴹ:

Recommender leverages multiple data sources to deliver highly personalized and granular recommendations to users across multiple channels.

These AI Accelerators are designed to be platform-agnostic and can be deployed in AWS, GCP, Azure, or on-prem. All the accelerators come with ISO-certified security features. They are designed for performance at scale for different sizes of problems and can be consumed using multiple visualization platforms. Accelerators generate personalized insights and come with various control features to overlay business rules on top of algorithm output.

To know more, you can read how ML Ops is helping BRIDGEi2i scale machine learning.

Conclusion

• Asset-based consulting is gaining significant traction in the last few years and is likely to grow further with the advancement of analytics and the explosion of data.
• Assets can vary in their maturity from one vendor to the other vendor in terms of the level of automation, analytical depth, and augmentation it can provide for decision-makers.
• In today’s world, the pace is crucial, and assets that provide optimum value-added insights are the need of the hour.
• Consultants are likely to play a vital role in strategic decision-making and will continue to help enterprises drive more value.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment!