Why AI-Led Expert Deployments Will End Big Consulting Bloat

Walk the halls of any major enterprise IT organization and you’ll hear the same frustrations over and over again. It’s impossible to miss. But now IT executives are saying the quiet part out loud:

“The consultants they send us know less about the product than we do.”

“We had to teach them how to deploy the software.”

“They’re learning the software on our dime.”

These are not one-off complaints. This is The Model. It’s designed this way.

For decades, Global System Integrators (GSIs) have optimized for one thing: billable hours.

Everyone knows this is how it works: They drop one or two senior experts on a project, then backfill with a school bus full of junior consultants who have little experience with enterprise software.

After a while, when consultants start getting up to speed, they pull the consultants off and put them on other customers’ projects.

Customers are left holding the bag: stalled projects, wasted time, wasted money, and frustrated teams.

This is what I call Big Consulting Bloat.

And it’s everywhere in the halls of Enterprise IT.

The Broken Model: Big Consulting Bloat

Peel back the curtain on how GSIs are built, and the flaws jump out. Their business model isn’t designed for customer outcomes. It’s designed for one thing: billable hours.

Every project becomes a pyramid. A handful of senior experts at the top, and a stack of juniors learning on the job while billing enterprise rates. The math is simple: deploy as many junior consultants, for as long as possible, at the highest rates, all the while learning on the customer’s dime.

For customers, this is frustrating. Here’s what they get:

• Endless scoping cycles that burn weeks before anything gets delivered.
• Bloated staffing models where seniors parachute in, then vanish, leaving rookies behind.
• Opaque contracts and change orders that hide the real costs until later.
• Misaligned incentives where customers want results fast, but GSIs want to stretch the project.

These aren’t accidents. They’re features. And this isn’t how a few projects go wrong. This is how the entire system is designed to work.

The Real Cost: Lost Trust

It’s easy to tally up the wasted hours and bloated invoices. But the real damage runs deeper.

When IT leaders feel like they’ve been sold a team of “experts” but end up babysitting rookies, trust erodes. And everyone loses.

The next time a vendor or partner promises value, they roll their eyes.

ISVs lose credibility because their “delivery partners” can’t execute.

Channel partners lose deals because they can’t guarantee outcomes.

And inside the enterprise, the very teams that pushed for innovation get burned out and cynical.

Instead of accelerating transformation, the Big Consulting Bloat slows it down.

Instead of enabling adoption and building confidence, it creates resistance and destroys trust.

This is more than wasted time and money. It’s wasted momentum. And momentum is the one thing enterprise IT can’t afford to lose.

Enterprise IT is at the Breaking Point

Everyone in the ecosystem knows this truth. Executives know it. Analysts know it. Even the consultants stuck in the pyramid know it.

Big Consulting Bloat isn’t just inefficient. It’s unsustainable.

The Big Consulting model was designed for another era when tech cycles moved slowly and customers had no choice but to pay the toll.

But that era is gone.

Today, SaaS moves at cloud speed. Enterprises can buy the most advanced AI, data, cybersecurity, and cloud platforms in minutes.

But they can’t deploy them with the same speed. And that mismatch is the breaking point.

The IT consulting industry is at a tipping point.

SaaS is Easy to Buy, Hard to Deploy

Buying enterprise software has never been easier. A CIO can spin up world-class AI, data, cybersecurity, or cloud platforms in minutes.

But adoption at scale, integrating with legacy systems, securing data, aligning to business processes, this is where things break down. That’s why McKinsey says that 70% of digital transformation projects stall or under-deliver.

For Enterprise IT executives, the choices are limited.

ISVs Can’t Scale Services: Vendors make great software. But customers struggle post-sale. Most ISVs don’t want to be in the services business. It doesn’t scale and it distracts from building software. So they hand deployments off to GSIs and channel partners and watch adoption lag, ARR leak, and renewals slip.

Channel Partners Lack Bandwidth: VARs and distributors want to attach services to every deal. They want to add more value than just an easy purchasing route. But they can’t scale the delivery capacity. The sell too many products with not enough expertise to go around. When demand spikes, quality falls apart.

Enterprise IT Is Out of Patience: CIOs and CISOs don’t care about billable hours and consultant utilization. They care about outcomes. They want secured networks, optimized data platforms, deployed AI. They want results, not excuses, and they want them now.

A Market Ripe for Reinvention: Exploding SaaS adoption. Services that can’t keep up. Vendors stuck between innovation and execution. Customers fed up with delays.

That’s why the $1.2 trillion IT services market isn’t just broken, it’s ready for reinvention.

And that’s where the vision for what comes next begins.

The Vision

If the old model is collapsing, the question is obvious: what takes its place?

At Entelligence, our vision is simple: Unlock the power of the world’s leading enterprise technologies.

That means no more shelfware. No more licenses sitting idle. No more platforms purchased but never adopted. Technology only matters when it’s deployed, scaled, and optimized.

For 28 years, we’ve been doing exactly that: serving as a white-label services provider for the world’s leading ISVs, helping their customers deploy and adopt critical technologies.

But now the game has changed. AI makes it possible to do what we’ve always done — only faster, smarter, and at cloud scale.

And for the first time, we’re bringing that capability directly to the enterprise.

What we’ve perfected for ISVs, we’re now leading into the market ourselves pioneering the shift to Click-to-Deploy.

Welcome to the Click-to-Deploy Era

Just as AWS changed infrastructure with “one-click provisioning,” the next wave will change services with Click-to-Deploy.

In this new era, software won’t just be sold, it will be deployed, adopted, and optimized instantly with just a few clicks. It’s about outcomes, not billable hours.

No more bloated scoping calls. No more staffing pyramids. No more consulting bloat.

Instead:

• AI-led scoping delivers instant clarity on what needs to happen.
• Certified experts execute with precision from day one.
• Outcomes are transparent, measurable, and guaranteed.

This isn’t an evolution. It’s the creation of a new category: The Execution Layer for SaaS.

And after 28 years of powering ISVs behind the scenes, Entelligence is now bringing that capability directly to the enterprise, leading the way into the Click-to-Deploy Era.

How the New Model Works

The old consulting model was built on utilization and hours. The new model is built on one thing: outcomes.

At the center is the Click-to-Deploy Execution Layer for SaaS, a platform that combines AI-led automation with certified experts.

Here’s how it works:

AI-Led: Instant Clarity: Scoping happens in minutes, not months. AI ingests vendor playbooks, architecture standards, and enterprise context to generate precise deployment maps. No wasted time. No black-box thinking. Just speed and precision.

Expert-Delivered: Certified talent, ready on Day One. AI maps the journey, but execution still requires expertise. AI doesn’t replace consultants, it helps them deliver at the speed of the cloud. Instead of armies of rookies, enterprises get certified professionals who know the software cold. Customers stop paying to “train the consultants.” Experts arrive ready to deliver.

Outcome-Obsessed & Transparency Built In: Every project runs on a live dashboard with real-time status, milestones, and outcome metrics tied directly to vendor playbooks. No more mystery. No more invoices without proof of progress.

No Consulting Bloat: No more big consulting pyramid scheme. No vague contracts, no endless change-order games. AI scopes. Experts deliver. Dashboards prove it. Outcomes, not hours.

The model works because it’s aligned:

• Enterprises get speed and outcomes.
• ISVs get adoption and renewals.
• Channel partners get scalable, white-labeled services.
• Consultants get recognition and fair pay.

The Execution Layer brings it all together.

The Stakeholders

Every market transformation has winners and losers. In the shift from on-prem to SaaS, vendors and customers won. Legacy hardware providers lost. The same dynamic is about to play out in services.

In the old GSI model, the losers were obvious: enterprises stuck with stalled deployments, ISVs left holding the bag when adoption lagged, partners shut out of services revenue, and consultants trapped in a pyramid where their expertise was wasted. The only winners were the GSIs — and their win came at everyone else’s expense.

With Click-to-Deploy, everyone wins:

ISVs: More ARR, Less Headcount. Capacity that scales instantly, without adding headcount or OPEX. Deployments run the way architects designed them. Adoption sticks, customers realize value, and ARR grows.

Channel Partners: Stronger Relationships, Higher Margins. White-labeled services they can trust, aligned to vendor playbooks with no channel conflict. Customers win, partners deepen relationships, and loyalty grows.

Enterprise IT Leaders: Speed, Savings, Outcomes. Instant scoping, certified experts from day one, and outcomes at half the cost. Projects finish faster, savings are real, and value is guaranteed.

Consultants: Recognition and Better Work. Matched to projects where their skills matter. Paid for the value they create. Recognized for the outcomes they deliver. The work they want, the pay they deserve, the credit they’re owed.

The Future

Look 5–10 years ahead and the writing is on the wall: big consulting pyramids won’t survive.

It doesn’t mean that consulting will go away. It just means that the economics are changing.

Just like Airbnb changed vacationing. Hotels didn’t go away, but travelers now have more choices just a click away.

With Click-to-deploy:

• Scoping will be handled in minutes by AI + proven architectures.
• Project staffing will be transparent expert matching.
• Delivery will run proven playbooks and
• All projects will be tracked on live, transparent dashboards.

Platforms will replace pyramids. And every license will come with deployment guaranteed. Outcomes will be the new normal. Billable hours will be a thing of the past.

This isn’t consulting as usual. This is the Click-to-Deploy Era. And it’s happening now.

Our Click-to-Deploy Vision

The consulting industry has had its run. For decades, it thrived on complexity, opacity, and bloat. But the world has changed. Software has changed. Services haven’t.

Until now.

Enterprise technology now moves at cloud speed. AI, data, cybersecurity, and SaaS platforms are too critical to wait months — or years — for value. Customers don’t want armies of consultants. They want outcomes. Now.

That’s why our vision is clear: unlock the power of the world’s leading enterprise technologies.

And that’s why we built Alex — the first Click-to-Deploy Execution Layer for SaaS.

• AI-led → projects scoped instantly and accurately
• Expert-delivered → certified specialists on day one
• Outcome-obsessed → transparent, measurable, guaranteed

The $1.2 trillion IT services industry won’t be reformed. It will be replaced — by players who deploy, scale, and optimize SaaS at the speed of the cloud.

Big Consulting Bloat is over. The Click-to-Deploy Era has begun.

Learn more about Alex ->