Is MBB Mgmt Consulting Work Becoming Less "Strategy" and More "IT/Tech Consulting"?

Great eye on the industry!

Firstly I think it is important to note the MBBs (like all companies) need to keep up with technological advances and leverage them in recommendations and solutions! The technical industry around AI and its different use cases is growing and that is a wonderful thing!

Secondly, MBBs are leveraging these tools and knowledge but they will always have a strategic angle to what is being executed, therefore the skills of traditional consultants will continue I think with the caveat that it will be increasingly important for consultants to understand these new concepts, integrate them with their traditional strategy work and also understand and embrace how to work with technical teams (which are also employed at MBBs) like data engineers and digital architects. If traditional consultants excel in working alongside these technical teams they will go that much further in their careers.

Another small side note, but big in practice, is understanding how to use tech in consulting work, simple example is how consultants leverage ChatGPT for market research, concept validation etc. But the key here is leverage it - not depend on it - so always verifying and digging deeper after using something like ChatGPT is imperative.

I hope that answers your question!
 

You're right to be skeptical — MBB work isn’t becoming pure tech consulting, but it is evolving. While digital, AI, and data-heavy topics are more prominent in cases and client work, the core remains strategic thinking. Under every tech-enabled recommendation (whether it's a digital twin, a GenAI application, or an analytics platform) the big questions are still: 

• What’s the business problem?
• What’s the value?
• How should the organization act on it? 

These are strategy decisions that require C-suite alignment, prioritization, and cross-functional implementation.

That said, the surface-level content of the work may look more tech-heavy — and that's intentional. MBB firms are responding to client demand, often partnering with internal tech or transformation arms to deliver end-to-end work. But even on these projects, generalist consultants play a key role in scoping, structuring, and driving recommendations. You’ll often need to translate between technical teams and business stakeholders, so high-level fluency in digital/AI is increasingly important, but you’re not expected to be a coder or data scientist.

For new consultants, the best prep is to understand how technology drives value — not how to build it. Learn how AI affects a P&L, how digital tools shift customer behaviour, and how tech investments tie back to cost, growth, or competitive advantage. MBB is still about solving ambiguous problems with clear thinking — but the tools and contexts around those problems have modernized. Strategy hasn’t disappeared — it’s just wearing new clothes.

Hi there,

You’re picking up on a very real shift — MBB work has become much more tech-enabled, but it hasn’t stopped being strategy consulting. What’s happening is that digital and AI have become core levers of business strategy, so tech themes now appear in almost every project, even if the underlying work is still strategic.

A few key points:

• The core consulting skills haven’t changed — problem structuring, client communication, hypothesis-driven thinking, and business judgment are still what firms hire for
• What has changed is the toolkit. Strategy today often includes data analytics, automation, and AI, so consultants now collaborate with in-house tech experts and data scientists to design those solutions
• You won’t be expected to code or build models yourself, but you should be able to understand and interpret how digital tools create value — enough to guide clients and link tech to business impact
• Classic strategy work (growth, pricing, market entry, org design, M&A) still exists; it’s just increasingly supported by data and tech-driven execution layers

So no need to learn coding or data science unless you’re personally interested — you’ll gain more by understanding how technology changes business models than by writing Python scripts.

Happy to help you prep – feel free to reach out.

Best,
Evelina

I'll give you the short but truthful answer. You are correct. Even recently I was at an event where one of the MBBs was proud that they were moving into supporting IT implementation.

Now their angle was that they would be coordinating the whole IT process, including other IT implementation firms (but honestly, many Big4 companies do exactly that... the MBB was just trying to sugarcoat the whole thing but in reality showing a misunderstanding on how the IT implementation works in reality).

I was not convinced by this move. And, from a few conversations I had, I wasn't the only (former) MBB consultant there with that perspective. 

Hi there, 

If you have bandwidth and are personally intereted in coding / data sci etc., there is no harm to learn more about these new skills. However, if you are a general consultant now, you don't necessarily need these skills to do the project well. MBB have special teams / experts who focus on such topics and they can be leveraged as part of the project team during project execution. Unless you want to become such specialist / experts, you don't need to learn to do their job; you just need to learn how to work with them in the most effective way. 

Best,

Emily

Wow, that's a big one, and obviously, impossible to tell. 

Actually, I would rather say that the skills that are going to be more important in the future are the ones that have to do less with number crunching or coding (which is likely going to be taken over by AI). 

But I wouldn't worry about this at this point. 

Once you're in the firm you can start specialising in what you feel is relevant for both you and where the market is heading.

Best,
Cristian