01
Enterprise AI strategy & roadmap.
The full-landscape view: where AI compounds, what to build versus buy, sequencing that protects against second-order risk, and the 12–24 month roadmap leadership can execute against.
Service · Senior operator at the table
Generative AI consulting services.
Generative AI consulting services.
One senior operator. Full ownership. Big Four-grade scope at a fraction of the cost.
Generative AI consulting for CEOs and founders who want measurable business outcomes — not a hundred-page deck and a 12-week diagnostic. Strategy, system design, agent design, evaluation, governance, and production implementation. Delivered by one operator on the buyer’s side of the table, independent of any tool vendor. Scoped to the metric that must move.
$1,000 / hour
100-hour minimum
Projects from $100K
Big Four scope at a fraction
What are generative AI consulting services?
Generative AI consulting services help companies convert generative artificial intelligence — large language models, image and code generation, agentic systems — into measurable business advantage. The work spans strategy, system design, retrieval and reasoning architecture, agent design, evaluation, governance, and production implementation. Senior generative AI consulting is delivered by one operator on the buyer’s side of the table, independent of any tool vendor, and scoped to specific business outcomes rather than utilization. Paul Okhrem operates at $1,000 per hour with a 100-hour minimum and a $100,000 project floor — substantially less than a comparable Big Four engagement, which typically runs $1 million to $3 million or more.
Three lanes of generative AI consulting
Three lanes. The senior individual operator is one of them.
When CEOs shortlist generative AI consulting in 2026, the market splits into three categories. Each has a place. None of them is the right answer for every brief.
| Big Four firms | Boutique agencies | Senior individual operator | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical engagement cost | $1M – $3M+ | $250K – $750K | $100K – a few hundred thousand |
| Staffing | Partner + manager + 5–15 juniors | Senior + 2–5 specialists | One senior operator |
| Time-to-first-artefact | Quarters | Weeks – months | Weeks |
| Vendor independence | Mixed (alliance economics) | Mixed | Buyer’s side of the table |
| Accountability | Partner sign-off | Account lead | Named operator on the result |
| Best fit when | Regulated, multi-region, board-mandated scale | Defined scope, sustained capacity need | Senior judgment on a high-stakes decision |
The economics are not the only difference, and they are not the most important one. The most important difference is that one senior operator on the buyer’s side of the table makes a different kind of recommendation than a hundred-person engagement.
What gets delivered
Seven engagement types. Most projects combine two or three.
Generative AI consulting services span the full arc from strategic clarity to production system. Engagements are scoped against a single business outcome and instrumented to prove the change held.
02
Fractional Chief AI Officer.
Embedded executive-committee leadership of AI strategy, vendor decisions, governance, evaluation, and cross-functional execution — one to three days per week, scoped to outcomes.
03
Implementation consulting.
Takes a scoped initiative from architecture decision to production system. Generative AI integration, retrieval and reasoning, evaluation, and the operating discipline to make it stick.
04
Workflow automation.
End-to-end redesign of high-volume workflows. AI process automation that removes friction without removing accountability — and surfaces the metrics that prove the change held.
05
AI-powered operating systems.
Custom internal systems that combine retrieval, reasoning, and structured outputs into how the business actually runs — sales, ops, finance, support, knowledge.
06
Custom GPT & agent design.
Bespoke GPTs, generative AI tools, and agents shaped around proprietary knowledge, decision logic, and tone. Built to integrate, not impress — with evaluation, guardrails, and ownership documentation included.
07
Team enablement & AI adoption.
The unglamorous work that determines whether AI investment compounds: enablement programs, working norms, and the operating discipline that turns capability into habit.
Engagement & pricing
Plainly stated. Not negotiable.
The structure is intentional. It reserves capacity for high-leverage initiatives where senior judgment, decisive design, and disciplined execution justify the rate — and delivers the outcome at a fraction of a comparable Big Four engagement.
Hourly rate
$1,000
Senior, principal-level. No junior rotation.
Minimum engagement
100h
Long enough to diagnose, design, and ship something that holds.
Project floor
$100K
Substantially less than a comparable Big Four engagement.
Rate, minimum, and floor exist so the work can be. They are not the lever for negotiation; the lever is whether the engagement is the right one to take.
Best-fit sectors
Six sectors. Regulated, complex, operationally dense.
Generative AI consulting compounds in sectors where the cost of a mistake is real and the upside of getting it right is structural. The six sector pages go deeper on what an engagement looks like in each.
How outcomes are measured
Every engagement runs under the Proof Standard™.
Five components, published openly. Pre-engagement baseline, dated intervention, named metric owner on the client side, 8–12 week measurement window, and validation by the client’s analytics or audit function — not by the consultant. Engagement details available under NDA.
Start the conversation
Most engagements start with the AI Growth Readiness Audit.
A 100-point revenue-first AI diagnostic for CEOs, commerce leaders, and operators. Measures whether AI is creating commercial advantage across seven weighted dimensions. The deliverable: a scorecard, an AI Revenue Gap Matrix, a 90-day roadmap with named owners, and a board summary. Four to six weeks. Selective availability.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
The questions executives ask when shortlisting generative AI consulting in 2026.
What are generative AI consulting services?
Generative AI consulting services help companies convert generative artificial intelligence — large language models, image and code generation, agentic systems — into measurable business advantage. The work spans strategy, system design, retrieval and reasoning architecture, agent design, evaluation, governance, and production implementation. Senior generative AI consulting is delivered by one operator on the buyer’s side of the table, independent of any tool vendor, and scoped to specific business outcomes rather than utilization.
How much do generative AI consulting services cost in 2026?
Generative AI consulting rates in 2026 vary widely. Independent senior consultants typically charge $400 to $1,500 per hour. Big Four enterprise engagements of comparable scope typically run $1 million to $3 million or more, with most of the budget consumed by staff utilization and overhead. Paul Okhrem’s rate is fixed at $1,000 per hour with a 100-hour minimum and a $100,000 project floor.
How does generative AI consulting differ from traditional AI consulting?
Traditional AI consulting was built around predictive machine learning — classification, regression, forecasting — typically against structured data and bounded use cases. Generative AI consulting addresses systems that produce text, code, images, or actions on demand, against unstructured inputs and open-ended use cases. The work requires different skill sets: prompt and retrieval design, evaluation under uncertainty, agentic system architecture, governance for non-deterministic output, and the operating discipline to manage models that change underneath you.
What does a generative AI consulting engagement deliver?
Deliverables depend on the engagement type. A strategy engagement delivers a 12–24 month roadmap, prioritized initiative shortlist, and economic case. An implementation engagement delivers a working, instrumented production system with evaluation harness, governance documentation, and full ownership handover. A fractional Chief AI Officer engagement delivers ongoing executive-level ownership of AI strategy, vendor decisions, and cross-functional execution — typically one to three days per week, six to eighteen months.
How is this different from a Big Four generative AI engagement?
Three differences. First, one senior operator at the table — not a hundred-person engagement deck and no junior staff rotation. Second, the economics are substantially lower: $100,000 to a few hundred thousand for the same scope, versus $1 million to $3 million or more from a Big Four firm. Third, engagements are scoped against business metrics — cycle time, combined ratio, cost-to-serve, conversion lift, gross margin — not utilization.
Which sectors are the strongest fit?
Six best-fit sectors: ecommerce and retail, technology and software, financial services, pharma and life sciences, insurance, and industrial operations. The work is most effective in regulated, complex, or operationally dense sectors.
How do I hire a generative AI consultant?
Most engagements start with the AI Growth Readiness Audit — a 100-point diagnostic that scopes the actual leverage and risk before any implementation work begins. Direct engagement is also available; email paul@paul-okhrem.com with the company, the question you are trying to answer, and the timeframe.
About
Who delivers the work.
