At TCS, we don’t just help businesses transform. We help them become perpetually adaptive enterprises, built to evolve continuously and confidently in a world of constant change.
Our expert, committed team put our shared values into action – every day. With the best talent and the latest technology we help customers turn complexity into opportunities and create meaningful change.
We are a digital transformation and technology partner of choice for industry-leading organizations worldwide.
At TCS, we believe exceptional work begins with hiring, celebrating and nurturing the best people — from all walks of life.
Atul Jagnale
Chief Technology Officer, UK and Europe, HiTech, TCS
Hari Venkat Rao G.
Head, Design and Innovation, CTO Office, Services, Technology, Software and Services, TCS
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Professional service firms across the spectrum — from staffing, audit, and engineering services to strategic consulting — struggle to break out of a commercial model that constrains them to linear growth. Their value is measured by inputs and not outcomes. Only by adding headcount and more billable hours can they increase revenues, and unless they boost utilization rates, profits flatline.
It's an age-old dilemma, but the paradigm is set to change as AI frees firms from the shackles of the past.
A new breed of ‘super worker’ is arriving to sit at the heart of an operating system that will transform service businesses. The specialist domains skills of highly skilled employees with deep domain knowledge will be supercharged by the augmentation of agentic, generative, and predictive AI. This creates a pathway by which firms shift from an execution-led business model to one that’s intelligence-driven and that transforms the value they deliver to clients.
The catalyst for this transformation is Intelligent Choice Architectures (ICAs). These are AI-powered systems designed to enhance decision-making. Rather than nudging decision makers to make better choices, ICAs are designed to reshape the entire decision environment. The result is better outcomes across the enterprise.
ICAs combine the expertise of human consultants with the computational power of AI. Routine tasks that professional service firms must complete such as data mining, mapping, presentation prep can now be automated. Consultants are freed to focus on higher-value work.
ICAs are not just a way of boosting efficiency, though that may be one of their initial value metrics. They also enable service businesses to scale without adding bench strength and to find new ways to create and measure value.
Traditionally decision makers have looked for optimal solutions – a single ‘best’ answer. ICAs give businesses the power to generate multiple routes to achieve their goals. They allow decision makers to consider a broader range of better options and to see and measure the various trade-offs. By watching results, measuring the impact of individual decisions and the overall health of the decision-making environment, they learn and refine. Decision making quality improves over time.
Professional service providers across the spectrum will reap the benefits of ICAs.
Let’s consider the case of an auditor: Traditionally the auditor would base assurances on sample data using a small fraction of the full body of information to serve as a proxy for the balance that time and scale restrictions limit. Because the level of interactivity with the data is limited, the auditor’s report is packed with caveats that dilute its reliability. Decision-making is therefore compromised and sub optimal. Now by using ICAs and the vast computational power available via AI agents, the auditor can consider large data sets in their entirety rather than relying on shaky samples. This means their final report is more robust. It will hold more weight and this in turn increases the audit form’s value to the client, and thereby its fee-earning potential.
Or imagine the M&A consultant: Merger and acquisition is a business activity fraught with unpredictability and ‘what if’ scenarios. What looks great in a spreadsheet can quickly unravel in the face of reality. As a result, much M&A can fail to deliver its expected value leaving all parties frustrated, out of pocket, and with their credibility tainted. M&A advisory is thus another area where ICAs have immense potential. ICAs can be used to present human decision makers with a much wider range of contingencies and possible outcomes. This gives dealmakers a better understanding of risks and their mitigations. When they offer more nuanced advice and better choices, consultants become more respected and valued by their corporate patrons.
Staffing and recruitment firms benefit too. ICAs help decision-makers (in this case hiring managers) reframe their choices in ways that eliminate blind spots, eliminate outdated hiring practices, and uncover hidden pools of talent. An internal online talent marketplace is one way an ICA may be used to improve hiring and resourcing decisions. This involves eliminating the biases of individual mangers, presenting mangers with a more diverse pool of candidates and interleaving multiple criteria. Walmart, the world’s largest private employer, has developed an ICA model that is designed to give hiring managers better choices and offer employees new pathways to find promotion and career progression. The goal is to uncover hidden talent gems previously overlooked. Staffing firms can learn from this experiment. More details on Walmart’s approach and success are available in the report published by TCS and MIT Sloan Management Review.
Professional service firms that adopt ICAs will enjoy many benefits. These include:
This new operating system continues to prioritize human skills and knowledge earned through experience. By augmenting it with AI via ICAs professional services firms will achieve more and deliver great value to their enterprise customers.