Bain & Company enhances leadership of its digital practices--AI, Insights, and Solutions and Enterprise Technology--amid high client demand

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Dec 10, 2024, 08:00 ET

Bain deepens leadership bench of its AI practice as technology- and AI-enabled revenues drive 30% of its business and are on course to climb to more than 50%
The firm estimates that AI is central to more than 25% of its work, a figure it expects to increase significantly within the next few years

BOSTON, Dec. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Bain & Company today announced significant enhancements to the leadership of its digital practices—including AI, Insights, and Solutions and Enterprise Technology—to further scale and deepen these crucial capabilities as the firm continues to experience high and rising client demand across these areas.

With a fast-accelerating role for AI, digital, and data in securing transformational results for clients in every industry, Bain is continuing to see rapid expansion and development of its AI practice and its client work on all aspects of artificial intelligence strategy and implementation. Tech- and AI-enabled revenue already amounts to 30% of the firm's business in 2024 and is expected to reach half of total revenue in the coming years.

Bain announced today that Chuck Whitten has rejoined the firm as the global head of its digital practices to lead its work across Bain's digital capabilities, including artificial intelligence, data science, enterprise technology, innovation, and design, with a focus on ensuring the effective adoption and integration of these digital capabilities across all of Bain's core practices and client work.

Whitten returns to the firm from Dell Technologies, where he served as Co-chief Operating Officer, following a previous 22-year career with Bain, including as a member of the firm's Board, chair of its strategy committee, and managing partner for Bain in the US Southwest, where he more than doubled the firm's business in the region. Having previously served hundreds of clients across the globe on strategy, company transformation, M&A, and operational improvement, in his new role, Whitten will lead the firm's work to help clients navigate technology disruption and create competitive advantage through digital and AI transformation.

In additional key changes to the leadership of the firm's AI capabilities, Bain announced that Sarah Elk will take on the role of Americas leader of its AI, Insights, and Solutions practice to continue to grow and drive value for clients across the region. She previously served as global leader of the firm's People and Organization practice. Elk will collaborate closely with the practice's leaders—Florian Mueller for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), and Richard Fleming for Asia-Pacific (APAC)—to ensure that fast-evolving client needs are met by harnessing the full breadth of these extensive capabilities.

Stuart Sim will lead the global delivery team with responsibility to drive and grow its more than 1,500-strong AI, data, analytics, architecture, and engineering teams. Stuart will lead the growth of the firm's delivery hubs across onshore, nearshore, and offshore locations and reinforce the firm's leadership position in premium technology/AI consulting talent.

Roy Singh will be responsible for AI strategy and solution development for the firm. He will work with the firm's AI ecosystem to develop market-leading AI solutions that drive value for the firm's clients.

Miles Cook will lead the firm's alliance partnership group, managing relationships with third-party firms who support Bain client projects. In the digital arena, this includes Bain's partnerships with AI labs, cloud service providers, SaaS application vendors, and AI, technology, and business services providers, providing Bain clients with access to the best suite of partnerships during a period of rapid ecosystem change.

"These changes accelerate Bain's rapidly growing work with clients globally on cutting-edge AI initiatives," Christophe De Vusser, Bain's Worldwide Managing Partner, said. "Our world-class leaders are helping clients meet this moment of technology-driven disruption and achieve their full potential. Together, we're reimagining industries with new value propositions only possible in the AI era."

De Vusser added: "These leaders have been instrumental in scaling our AI work, building the talent in our digital teams, and innovating how we deliver AI solutions in Bain's uniquely collaborative way. Our leaders will continue expanding our AI programs and co-engineering solutions with priority ecosystem partners."

AI rapidly reshaping Bain's client activity and 25%-plus of its internal work and processes

Bain is rapidly growing digital teams across its AI, Insights, and Solutions and Enterprise Technology practices. It has also grown its wider digital and AI ecosystem to more than 700 partner organizations, including key alliances with OpenAI, Microsoft, AWS, Google, SAP, Salesforce, and IBM.

The firm's fast-expanding client work on AI extends across all of its industry practices, working in close collaboration on client requirements with experts in its AI practice teams. Recent client work includes activity, such as work with the major French retailer and supermarket group Carrefour, which has deployed three innovative AI-driven tech solutions based on OpenAI's ChatGPT technology: an advice chatbot for shopping on its website, description sheets for Carrefour brand products on its website, and support for purchasing procedures. Other clients Bain has recently worked with on cutting-edge AI innovations include The Coca-Cola Company, American Express, Citizens, State Farm, and CVC.

Bain has also moved rapidly to make pioneering internal use of state-of-the-art proprietary AI tools, now deployed worldwide to equip its 19,000-strong multi-disciplinary teams with a powerful suite of AI technology. It has made 15 key AI-powered tools and solutions, and more than 200 additional AI-led innovations, available to its teams to enhance their efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness.

Bain estimates that AI is central to more than 25% of its work, a figure it expects to increase significantly within the next few years, as teams find innovative value through embedded AI capabilities.

Christophe De Vusser commented: "Across Bain, AI is redefining how we work – enabling us to deliver smarter, and more effective results for our clients. As leaders in this space, we're driving these advancements forward, and the pace will only intensify as AI evolves."

The scale of change that AI is bringing to Bain consulting teams is exemplified by team members having embraced the AI wave and used ChatGPT to create more than 4,000 'MyGPTs'—customized AI tools, tailored to support specific tasks, executing with enhanced efficiency and accuracy. An example is the 'Answer Copilot,' which learns from the firm's wealth of existing insights and data sets and is able to apply these to deliver differentiated insights. Bain has created an internal marketplace to make it easy for teams to find the best MyGPTs for their needs.

At the core of the firm's internal AI solutions enabling 'Bainies' worldwide is Sage, a proprietary information agent platform powered by the latest models from OpenAI, which provides Bain consultants with the ability to generate in seconds insights drawn from the firm's accumulated proprietary data and expertise. In addition, Bain has implemented a full range of other AI-powered tools, such as Microsoft Copilot and ZoomAI. Other examples include an AI tool to categorize datasets and provide sentiment analysis, a tool for pulling insights out of customer calls, and a platform that automates frequent high-level analyses. These tools allow teams to focus on finding insights rather than continuously recreating the same foundational materials. The majority of all client projects now involve the use of a generative AI powered tool.

Bain is continuing to develop still more AI tools and solutions for use internally and with clients, while also prioritizing deployment of AI across its organization responsibly, securely, and safely. The firm is embedding an AI Responsible Use Policy across its teams, has announced a detailed AI policy to implement its goals and principles for responsible and ethical AI use, and is a participant in Microsoft's Responsible AI Partner Initiative.

"We are already seeing extraordinary results for our clients from our teams' rapid and enthusiastic adoption of our growing suite of AI tools," said Ramesh Razdan, Bain & Company's Global Chief Information Officer. "As the technology continues to develop at an unprecedented speed, we are making sure to stay at the forefront of AI use by equipping our people with solutions and capabilities that are right at the cutting edge by embedding continuous innovation and execution in our DNA," he said.

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About Bain & Company

Bain & Company is a global consultancy that helps the world's most ambitious change makers define the future.

Across 65 cities in 40 countries, we work alongside our clients as one team with a shared ambition to achieve extraordinary results, outperform the competition, and redefine industries. We complement our tailored, integrated expertise with a vibrant ecosystem of digital innovators to deliver better, faster, and more enduring outcomes. Our 10-year commitment to invest more than $1 billion in pro bono services brings our talent, expertise, and insight to organizations tackling today's urgent challenges in education, racial equity, social justice, economic development, and the environment. We earned a gold rating from EcoVadis, the leading platform for environmental, social, and ethical performance ratings for global supply chains, putting us in the top 2% of all companies. Since our founding in 1973, we have measured our success by the success of our clients, and we proudly maintain the highest level of client advocacy in the industry.

SOURCE Bain & Company