The Consulting Time Tax
Here’s a number most consulting firms don’t talk about: for every hour of billable client interaction, there are 3 to 5 hours of non-billable work. Research, prep, documentation, deliverable generation. The session itself is the easy part. Everything around it is the bottleneck.
We know because we lived it. Stable Mischief runs AI strategy engagements. Every deep-dive session required hours of industry research, competitor analysis, question framework development, and process assumption drafting. After the session, hours more for process documentation, flowchart generation, automation opportunity analysis, and implementation roadmapping.
So we built aiBA to solve our own problem first.
Before the Meeting: The Prep Engine
Give aiBA a client name and engagement context. It builds your entire preparation package in about 90 minutes — work that used to take a full day.
Industry & Competitive Intelligence
Not a generic industry overview. aiBA produces targeted analysis based on the specific engagement: the client’s competitive positioning, relevant market dynamics, regulatory considerations, and industry-specific trends that will matter in the conversation.
Strategic Question Framework
Built on CLEAR+ methodology with a library of 500+ proven consulting questions, organized by discovery area. Current state assessment. Pain point identification. Process flow mapping. Decision criteria. Success metrics. The questions are specific enough to drive real discovery, not generic enough to bore the client.
Facilitator Guide
A structured session plan with time allocations, transition prompts, and contingency questions. This is the difference between walking into a session with a plan versus walking in with a list of topics and hoping for the best.
After the Meeting: The Delivery Pipeline
Upload the session recording or transcript. aiBA runs it through a 4-pass pipeline and generates a complete deliverable package.
Pass 1 turns raw transcript into structured process narratives. Pass 2 generates color-coded SVG flowcharts from those processes. Pass 3 scans every process for automation opportunities with ROI estimates. Pass 4 sequences everything into a phased implementation roadmap.
The typical output: 15 to 20 automation opportunities, ranked by impact, with implementation timelines and resource requirements.
The Numbers
Before aiBA: 6 hours prep + 2-hour session + 8 hours deliverables = 16 hours per engagement.
With aiBA: 90 minutes prep + 2-hour session + 30 minutes curation = 4 hours per engagement.
That’s a 75% reduction in total engagement time — or the capacity to run 4x the sessions without adding headcount.
Why We Built It as Two Systems
aiBA isn’t one monolithic tool. It’s two specialized systems — Prep Engine and Delivery Pipeline — that wrap around the human conversation in the middle. The consultant is the irreplaceable part. The prep and deliverables are the automatable parts.
This architecture matters because it keeps humans in the loop where judgment matters (the actual client conversation) while automating the structured, repeatable work on either side.
Want to See aiBA in Action?
If you’re running consulting engagements and spending more time on prep than on the conversation, let’s talk.
Request a Demo