“You need an AI strategy” has become consultant shorthand for “we’d like to sell you an engagement.” But what does AI strategy consulting actually involve? When is it valuable, and when is it expensive wallpaper?

What AI Strategy Consulting Typically Involves

Most AI strategy engagements follow a similar structure:

Phase 1: Assessment (Weeks 1-3)

The consultants assess your current state:

• Technology landscape (data infrastructure, existing AI, technical debt)
• Organisational capability (skills, experience, culture)
• Business context (competitive position, strategic priorities)
• Prior AI efforts (what worked, what didn’t)

This involves interviews, document review, and sometimes surveys or assessments. The output is usually a current state report with findings.

Phase 2: Opportunity Identification (Weeks 3-5)

Based on the assessment, consultants identify AI opportunities:

• Use cases mapped to business value
• Prioritisation frameworks
• Feasibility assessments
• Initial business cases

This phase often includes workshops with business leaders to validate opportunities and build alignment.

Phase 3: Roadmap Development (Weeks 5-7)

The strategy takes shape:

• Multi-year roadmap with initiatives phased
• Resource and investment requirements
• Governance recommendations
• Capability development plans
• Quick wins vs. strategic bets

Phase 4: Delivery and Handoff (Weeks 7-8)

Final deliverables, presentations to leadership, and transition to execution (often a separate engagement).

Total elapsed time: 6-10 weeks typically. Investment: $150K-$500K for mid-sized engagements, more for large enterprises.

When AI Strategy Consulting Is Valuable

Strategy consulting makes sense in specific situations:

When You Genuinely Don’t Know Where to Start

If your organisation has done little with AI and leadership lacks technology background, external perspective helps. Consultants bring pattern recognition from multiple engagements that accelerates learning.

When You Need Executive Alignment

Sometimes strategy consulting is really about building consensus. An external party facilitating conversations, presenting options, and driving decisions can be more effective than internal efforts.

When You Need to Spend Money

Budget cycles sometimes require consultants. If you have Q4 budget that disappears if unspent, strategy work is a reasonable investment that sets up future execution.

When You’re Planning Major Investment

If 2026 includes significant AI investment ($5M+), spending $200K on strategy to ensure you invest wisely is reasonable insurance.

When the Politics Require It

In some organisations, external validation is necessary for internal proposals to succeed. This is expensive but real.

When You Can Skip It

Strategy consulting is often unnecessary:

When You Already Know What to Do

If you have clear AI opportunities, business cases, and internal capability to execute, strategy consulting is overhead. Go directly to implementation.

When Your Problems Are Execution, Not Strategy

Many organisations have strategies they haven’t executed. Adding another strategy document doesn’t help. Fix execution before commissioning more strategy.

When You Lack Execution Capability

Strategy without execution is shelf-ware. If you don’t have resources to implement recommendations, don’t pay for recommendations.

When You Want Permission Rather Than Insight

Sometimes organisations hire consultants to validate decisions already made. If you know what you want to do, do it. Don’t pay consultants to agree with you.

How to Get Value from Strategy Consulting

If you do engage strategy consultants:

Be clear about what you need. Generic “AI strategy” scopes often deliver generic strategies. Specific questions get specific answers.

Ensure access to the right people. Strategy work requires input from senior leaders and subject matter experts. If consultants can’t get access, quality suffers.

Demand specificity. Generic recommendations (“invest in data quality”) aren’t actionable. Push for specific initiatives with timelines, resources, and owners.

Build internal capability alongside. Have internal staff shadow the engagement. The learning may be more valuable than the deliverables.

Connect strategy to execution. Either plan for implementation during strategy, or have clear handoff to execution teams.

Questions to Ask Strategy Consultants

Before engaging:

“What will we have at the end that we can’t produce ourselves?” If the answer is vague, the value is vague.

“Who will actually do the work?” Partner-level salespeople often hand off to junior staff. Know who’s delivering.

“What similar engagements have you delivered?” Ask for references and outcomes.

“How do you ensure implementation after strategy?” Strategy that doesn’t execute is waste. What’s their model?

“What happens if we disagree with your recommendations?” Good consultants adapt; mediocre ones push their standard frameworks regardless.

The Quality Spectrum

Strategy consulting quality varies enormously:

High-quality engagements produce specific, actionable recommendations based on deep understanding of your context. They build internal capability and alignment. The strategy actually gets implemented.

Mediocre engagements produce generic recommendations that could apply to any company. Lots of frameworks and slides, little real insight. The document sits on a shelf.

Poor engagements are essentially research projects where consultants learn on your dime. You get frameworks from their last client with your logo added.

The difference is usually the specific team, not the firm brand. A strong team from a lesser-known firm beats a weak team from a prestigious brand.

For AI strategy specifically, AI consultants Brisbane with deep technical expertise alongside business consulting capability tend to deliver better outcomes than pure strategy firms or pure technology firms.

Alternatives to Strategy Consulting

Consider alternatives:

Internal strategy development: If you have capable internal resources, use them. External perspectives can come from research, peer networks, and advisors.

Targeted advisory: Rather than a full strategy engagement, engage experienced advisors for specific input. More focused, less expensive.

Implementation-led strategy: Start implementing and let strategy emerge from learning. Works for organisations with execution capability and tolerance for iteration.

Peer learning: Join industry groups, attend conferences, talk to peers at similar organisations. Real experience often beats consultant recommendations.

Final Thought

AI strategy consulting can be valuable or wasteful depending on your situation and the quality of engagement. The decision isn’t whether consultants are good or bad – it’s whether this engagement, with these consultants, for this purpose, delivers value you can’t create internally.

Be honest about what you actually need. Many organisations need execution help more than strategy help. Many need to implement what they already know rather than commission more research.

If you do engage, demand specificity, ensure quality, and connect strategy to execution. Strategy documents don’t create value. Implementation does.