The AI Consulting Podcast

Today's guest is Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant, the AI services giant. Babak joins us on today's podcast to discuss how large language models might bring value to the enterprise. In this conversation with Daniel Faggella, CEO and Head of Research at Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research, Hodjat explores how a series of specialized models could streamline entire segments of business workflows. He paints a compelling vision of how these models might work together to improve quality across entire parts of a job, not just isolated tasks. If you're interested in how AI can add value to business, this episode offers a valuable perspective. To discover more AI use cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more, join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1.

In today’s episode, we speak with a founder who profitably grew by finding product-market fit early in a profitable niche. Our guest is Siva Pullabhotla, Co-Founder & CEO at Docskiff Inc. Docskiff focuses on contract intelligence in the procurement space. In this episode, Siva discusses the kinds of assumptions you should begin with if you’re looking to find a product-market fit fast. He also talks about pivoting based on your initial customer engagement to double down on success and use it to fuel your growth. As a past Catalyst member and current Emerj Plus member, we are grateful to have Siva in our community and here on the show. Join Emerj Plus at emerj.com/p1 to discover more AI use-cases, best practice guides, white papers, frameworks, and more.

This week’s guest is Rick Oppedisano. Rick is a member of our Emerj Plus community and the Founder and CEO of Delta Bravo, an AI consulting firm based in the United States. In this episode, he shares his founder’s story, highlighting what it looks like to meet a giant enterprise customer, like Rolls Royce, and how to build those kinds of enterprise relationships for the long term. He also discusses the types of hurdles you can expect to run into and how to overcome them as a small firm. If you’re interested in unlocking our AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and specific resources for AI consultants, visit emerj.com/p1.

Our guest this week is Michael Zipursky, CEO and Founder at Consulting Success. Consulting Success is a firm dedicated to training consultants of various skill levels. Michael had previously run several consulting firms himself, and in this episode, he shares his insights on the best initial steps to get a consulting firm off the ground. He further discusses what to do first, how to determine what to sell, how to get feedback from the market, and how to go to market efficiently. If you’d like to learn how to get more involved in serving your clients with AI-related projects, be sure to download our PDF brief called “Beginning with AI - 3 Critical Insights for Non-Technical Leaders” at emerj.com/beg1.

This week’s guest is Christoph Hardt, Co-Founder and Managing Director of COMATCH. COMATCH is a platform matching consultants, mostly strategy consultants, to customers around the globe with their initial focus in the EU. The company now boasts over 100 employees and, through their success, has gained access to thousands of consultants and gained a sense of how smaller, independent consultancies are winning business. Christoph also shares his perspective on where artificial intelligence and data are making their way into the strategy consulting world. If you’re interested in unlocking our AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and specific resources for AI consultants, visit emerj.com/p1.

This week’s guest is Michael Segala, CEO at SFL Scientific. SFL Scientific is a fast-growing AI consultancy in the Boston area with about 40 team members after six years of business. After receiving his Ph.D. from Brown University in 2013, Michael held several data science positions before founding SFL Scientific. Michael has interfaced with cutting-edge startups, S&P 100 companies, the U.S. Department of Defense, and others, and he brings that experience to bear in this episode. He also discusses how AI services firms can find a balance between education and delivery for their clients. If you’re interested in unlocking Emerj’s AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and other resources for AI consultants, visit emerj.com/p1.

This week’s guest is Christopher Pavlak, a Specialist Master of AI Ethics at Deloitte. He is also a leader in AI ethics efforts with Deloitte at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the DOD. Today, Chris speaks about the transition into AI consulting. Chris also talks about his own career experience and how he was able to frame his past experience in a way that enabled him to land a job in his field of interest and how Emerj Plus’s resources helped him get up to speed as he jumped into the world of consulting. If you have not already joined Emerj Plus, you can learn more about our tools and resources for AI leaders at emerj.com/p1.

This week’s guest is Roey Mechrez, the CTO of BeyondMinds, an AI firm based in London. Today he speaks about the origins of BeyondMinds and how the company got off the ground by doing unique and bespoke projects. Roey also discusses how he’s aiming to transition towards offering products in addition to their existing services. While Roey is not looking to transition BeyondMinds to a pure Saas firm, he seeks to create a core platform that will enable his team to make interactions with customers a bit more productized. Roey is also a valued member of our Emerj Plus and Slack communities. If you’re interested in our best practices and frameworks for AI ROI, AI strategy, and more, visit emerj.com/p1 to learn more.

Our guest this week is Christopher Pavlak, currently serving as a Specialist Master for AI Ethics and Governance at Deloitte. Today, Chris speaks with us as a consultant himself about what AI governance is at a practical level and how consultants and business leaders can think through AI governance as a framework to help them mold more successful AI adoption strategies. We’re also grateful to have Chris as an Emerj Plus member. If you are not already a member, Emerj Plus is our online platform home to our entire library of AI use-cases, whitepapers, best practices, and frameworks. If you’d like to learn more, be sure to visit emerj.com/p1.

This week’s guest is Joseph Suquet, a Partner, Board Member, and Executive Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Fligoo. Fligoo is an AI firm based in the Bay area with employees worldwide. Today, Joseph shares how Fligoo turned from primarily AI services to offering its own suite of products. He specifically discusses how to discover an AI product idea and turn it into an AI business model. This topic is frequently requested in our Emerj Plus community. Emerj Plus is our premium platform where members access all of our resources and tools as well as access to our private Slack community of service leaders around the world. To learn more, visit emerj.com/p1.