By Gertrude Van Horn, CIO & SVP, Cien.ai

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“AI can accelerate analysis, but the real consulting advantage comes from turning fragmented business data into reliable intelligence that drives better decisions.”

– Gertrude Van Horn, CIO & SVP, Cien.ai

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The Information Challenge Facing Consultants

Management consultants have always relied on information to understand businesses, diagnose problems, and develop recommendations. But today, clients have more data than ever, and getting to the right answers is not necessarily getting easier.

Commercial information is often scattered across CRM platforms, financial systems, spreadsheets, and other business applications. Definitions vary, records are incomplete, and different reports can tell different stories.

Before consultants can begin meaningful analysis, they often need to reconcile these sources, establish consistent definitions, and determine which information can be trusted. Valuable engagement time can disappear into data preparation rather than interpreting findings and advising clients.

The challenge is no longer simply accessing information. It is establishing a reliable foundation for making decisions.

AI Makes Analysis Faster. Does It Make It Better?

AI is changing how quickly consultants can research, synthesize information, identify patterns, and develop hypotheses. But faster analysis does not automatically mean better intelligence.

If the underlying data is incomplete, inconsistent, or poorly calibrated, AI can identify patterns that are misleading or generate recommendations based on an inaccurate picture of the business.

Consider a consultant evaluating a client’s sales performance. CRM records, financial data, and pipeline reports may use different definitions of revenue, sales stages, or customer segments. Without understanding those differences, even sophisticated analysis can produce conclusions that look convincing but do not reflect commercial reality.

AI can accelerate the analysis. It cannot eliminate the need to understand and validate the information behind it.

From Information Gathering To Commercial Intelligence

Most leadership teams already know there are multiple ways to improve GTM performance. The opportunity is to move beyond collecting information and establish a consistent view of commercial performance.

That means connecting and evaluating information across pipeline, bookings, revenue, sales activity, and performance, while understanding how each measure is defined and what it represents.

With a more reliable foundation, consultants can investigate the questions that matter to business outcomes:

> How effectively is pipeline converting into revenue?
> Where are productivity and performance diverging from expectations?
> Which segments, products, or customer groups represent the greatest growth potential?
> Are apparent performance problems caused by strategy, execution, or unreliable information?
> Where should leadership focus resources to improve commercial results?

The goal is not simply to produce more reports. It is to establish a dependable basis for diagnosis, prioritization, and action.

How AI-Enabled Intelligence Changes the Work

Cien Agentic helps consultants work with client commercial data by bringing together data readiness, calibration, analysis, and conversational access to insights.

Automatic Data Enhancement (ADE) helps identify and address data quality issues, while CRM connectivity across platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics provides access to relevant commercial information.

Company readiness and calibration assessments provide additional context about whether the available data is suitable for analysis and how business definitions should be interpreted.

Conversational AI makes analytical workflows and findings easier to explore, allowing consultants to investigate commercial questions without relying exclusively on manual reporting.

Cien’s model-agnostic architecture and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) approach also provide flexibility for organizations working within different AI strategies. MCP integrations with Google Workspace and Microsoft Dynamics further support access to information and workflows across client environments.

What Does Success Look Like?

Consultants spend less time manually reconciling information and more time interpreting what it means. They can revisit client performance as new information becomes available, test hypotheses with greater confidence, and focus recommendations on measurable business outcomes.

For consulting firms, this creates an opportunity to make analytical work more consistent and repeatable. For clients, it means decisions are grounded in a clearer understanding of commercial performance.

The next generation of consulting advantage won’t come from having access to more information. It will come from knowing how to turn that information into intelligence clients can act on.

About the Cien.ai Data Exec Series

This article is part of our Data Exec Series, inspired by our work with B2B business leaders, growth consultants, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the aspects of becoming a data-driven executive, ready for the AI revolution. If you are interested in RevOps analytics and Sales Performance content, please check out our Growth Essentials and Practical RevOps Series as well.