Our AI Operating Model
How AI Collaboration Enhances Enterprise Thinking
As transformational consultants leading our clients on their AI journey, it’s important that we practice what we preach as we navigate the same AI adoption complexities ourselves.
We leverage AI through a human-centered, intentional and disciplined delivery-proven approach:
Responsibly: We do not risk our clients’ data or compromise privacy/security.
Resourcefully: We use secure out-of-the-box tools (Copilot and Claude Co-Work) and custom-built LLMs we trained on our own data and processes. We also monitor the changing dynamics of the AI tool landscape to thoroughly assess the benefits of adding additional tools.
Efficiently and Discerningly: We drive value with intelligent efficiency without substituting AI outputs for consultant-led enterprise thinking.
This is an earned and shared understanding across our organization, a system of thinking that adapts as AI continues to advance.
Our Guiding Principles in the Intelligence Era
How We Maintain Our Value Proposition
We must protect the value we bring to our clients. AI creates possibilities for more expedient work products, higher quality outputs, and rapid iteration. But if mis-used, it threatens the basis of our value proposition.
If we default to AI-generated outputs without applying judgment, context, and experience, we erode the very differentiation clients expect from us. Our advantage has never been production alone. It’s how we frame problems, make decisions, and guide execution. AI should accelerate that work, not replace the thinking, judgement, and expertise that underpin it.
Excelerate Acceptable Use Cases
Drafting & rewriting support (not final)
Brainstorming & ideation (human-led)
Analysis & risk/pressure testing
Synthesis & summarization (qual/quant)
Research & getting up to speed
Automation of repetitive/tedious tasks
Enhancements for existing deliverables
Safe/responsible use & accountability
Visualization & structure (plans, WBS, graphics)
Like Porcupines, Very Carefully
Mis-Use Cases
Overreliance / crutch / letting AI lead thinking
Misrepresentation / claiming AI work as ours
Replacing human voice/connection/emotion
Unverified/unreviewed outputs & citations
Low-quality, generic, subtle AI-slop final project delivery outputs (recommendations, artifacts)
Security/privacy violations (confidential data, public LLMs)
Inappropriate/off-scope uses
Maximizing our Singularity
The Custom AI Tools We’ve Built
In addition to enterprise solutions (Claude and Copilot), we deploy custom-built, closed-loop secure LLMs, trained on our own content and guided by our best practices. We built our custom tools on Excelerate standards—they have context to our project types and scope, are outcomes-oriented in how they have been designed and trained to process inputs and structure outputs. These include:
Interview/Input Session Synthesis: Generates tailored outputs at two stages in the discovery or research phase of a project. First, it designs purpose-driven interview questions as a starting point for our teams to expand upon and refine. It’s trained on our project types, project opportunity statement, client context, and our team’s first-hand research methodology expertise and best practices. Then, it synthesizes raw interview notes into clear, structured take-aways to amplify our consultants’ analysis of key insights.
Presentation Coach: Evaluates final draft client deliverables against Excelerate’s Delivery Excellence standards and our custom-developed storytelling approach during the internal review process, before anything reaches the client. This ensures the narrative, structure, and message are executive‑ready by providing targeted, standards‑based feedback that reinforces what “Excelerate‑quality” looks like, not just generic slide or executive summary formatting advice.
Go-to-Market (GTM) Sales Enablement Tools: Translate early sales inputs into clear opportunity statements and delivery‑informed pricing estimates grounded in client context, project type, and size. By embedding Excelerate’s delivery assumptions and commercial judgment, they improve consistency between sales intent and delivery reality.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Creator: Converts ambiguous project scope into a clear, visual, deliverable‑oriented structure aligned to how Excelerate delivers work. It provides an immediate foundation for planning, staffing, and execution using Excelerate‑relevant logic rather than generic PM templates.