Shape and Evaluate Your Agentic Consulting Opportunity 2/5

In our previous article, we examined market data from the research and advisory industry to highlight the transformative impact of agentic AI on traditional consulting firms. This time, we guide you through assessing the agentic potential of your own consulting business.

This article lays the foundation for understanding the types of agentic solutions available today. We begin by exploring what “agentic” truly means in the context of GenAI. We then introduce a step‑by‑step approach to identify and evaluate agentic opportunities within your service portfolio. Finally, we present a structured framework to prioritise and quantify the potential for your research and advisory organisation.

01 | Introduction to Agentic Solutions

In 2025, the term “agentic” evolved rapidly across the GenAI landscape. Every AI application seemed to rebrand itself as an “agent”, but what does that actually mean in practice?

TYPES OF AGENTIC SOFTWARE

To understand how advisory and research firms can evolve their services with GenAI, it is essential to distinguish between the four fundamental categories of agentic systems emerging across the market. These categories represent different levels of autonomy, collaboration, and operational sophistication.

Instruction‑Following / Conversational Agents: These agents respond to natural language inputs and execute well‑defined tasks such as Q&A, summaries, explanations, or simple research steps. They form the entry point for agentic capabilities and the foundation for more advanced workflows.
Workflow Agents: Workflow agents can plan and execute multi‑step tasks across tools, datasets, and applications. They automate structured processes, such as research assembly, data collection, or report generation, and act as the backbone for operationalising advisory IP.
Multi‑Agent Frameworks: These systems coordinate multiple specialised agents working together as a “virtual team,” with distinct roles like planner, researcher, analyst, reviewer, or strategist. They enable complex, cross‑functional tasks and mirror how consulting and research teams collaborate in practice.
Autonomous Systems: Autonomous systems represent the highest level of agentic maturity: goal‑driven agents capable of sustained operation, self‑correction, and adaptation in dynamic environments. They function as persistent digital workers that can own outcomes rather than just tasks.

UNDERLYING TECHNOLOGIES

Beyond the large language model itself, agentic systems rely on a stack of supporting technologies that define their capability and reliability:

Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG): Allows agents to draw from your firm’s knowledge base in real time, grounding outputs in proprietary insights.
Finetuning & Domain Adaptation: Aligns models with your firm’s language, frameworks, and reasoning style, producing outputs that feel authentically “yours.”
Tool Calling & System Integration: Enables agents to perform actions such as querying databases, generating slides, or executing workflows, transforming them from responders into digital workers.
Guardrails, Policies & Safety Layers: Controls what agents can say or do, ensuring compliance, confidentiality, and professional integrity.
Memory & Context Management: Allows agents to track previous steps, decisions, and context across interactions, similar to a human teammate.
Planning & Orchestration Modules: Break tasks into steps, select tools, adapt to unexpected changes, and recover from errors, essential for multi‑step or autonomous behaviour.
Evaluation, Feedback & Self‑Correction: Allows agents to critique and refine their own outputs, increasing reliability and reducing the need for constant human oversight.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU

Choosing the right architecture and technology stack depends entirely on the characteristics of the service you intend to digitise. Not every use case requires the full suite of technologies, and simpler solutions often deliver strong results more quickly.

As complexity increases, whether in agent maturity or supporting technologies, so does the time, investment, and organisational readiness required. Understanding where your service fits, helps you decide how ambitious your first agentic build should be.

02 | Evaluating Agentic Opportunities

Not every service or firm is suited for agentic transformation. Some services rely heavily on human judgement, while others may be too complex for current technology. So how do you determine your true opportunity?

Adding the Strategic Dimension: Proprietary IP as a Differentiator

Many firms begin by identifying services that can be automated. However, the greatest opportunity, and the one that creates defensible, blue‑ocean differentiation, lies in embedding proprietary IP into agentic systems to create distinctive, high‑value offerings.

AGENTIC EVALUATION FRAMEWORK

This framework helps firms evaluate opportunities across two dimensions: operational fit and strategic IP leverage.

1. Identify Structurally Repeatable Services - Market studies, benchmarks, and capability assessments often follow predictable outlines, making them highly automatable.

2. Look for Parameter‑Driven Services - Services that begin with clear variables (industry, region, technology scope) map easily to agent workflows.

3. Target Information‑Synthesis Work - Agents excel at aggregating data, extracting patterns, and generating structured insights.

4. Highlight Services Built on Proprietary Frameworks - Embedding your firm’s unique maturity models, capability maps, or risk matrices turns your IP into a digital product and creates differentiation competitors cannot easily imitate.

5. Evaluate Multi‑Step, Process‑Heavy Services - Structured, step‑driven tasks, such as list building or source validation, align well with workflow or multi‑agent systems.

6. Prioritise High‑Volume or Recurring Deliverables - Weekly intelligence updates or monthly dashboards benefit greatly from automation.

7. Identify Low‑Judgement, Time‑Consuming Work - Initial research sweeps, data extraction, and first‑draft structuring are ideal candidates for agentic automation.

CREATING YOUR BLUE OCEAN

When combined with agentic technologies, proprietary frameworks and data assets enable:

Always‑on advisory offerings
Real‑time assessments tailored to client needs
Digitised versions of signature methodologies
Scalable micro‑products built around niche IP
Premium tools competitors cannot replicate

This is where firms move from automation to true intellectual capital acceleration.

What This Adds Up To: Two Dimensions of Agentic Fit

A service is a strong candidate when it is both:

1. Operationally Automatable

Repeatable, parameter‑driven, multi‑step, synthesis‑heavy, high‑volume, and low‑judgement.

2. Strategically Differentiating

Powered by proprietary frameworks, rooted in unique methodologies, dependent on firm‑specific taxonomies, and built on exclusive data or insights. The intersection of these dimensions identifies the true blue‑ocean opportunities.

Combined Examples (Operational Fit × Strategic Differentiation)

Example A: Automated Market Study powered by your “Market Attractiveness Model.”
Example B: Digital Maturity Assessment Agent that scores clients using your proprietary methodology.
Example C: Continuous Market Intelligence Agent that interprets signals through your trend taxonomy.

03 | Applying the Use Case Prioritisation Matrix

Once your agentic use cases are defined, evaluate and prioritise them using a simple 2×2 matrix:

1. Business Value (1–5)

Revenue, margin, client differentiation, scalability, and the strategic role of proprietary IP.

2. Feasibility (1–5)

Process clarity, data availability, technical complexity, organisational readiness, and required agent maturity.

3. Bubble Size: Upfront Investment (Small / Mid / Large)

Architecture, integrations, finetuning, RAG infrastructure, evaluation systems, and governance.

4. Plot the Matrix

High Value / High Feasibility → top priorities
High Value / Low Feasibility → roadmap items
Low Value / High Feasibility → quick wins
Low Value / Low Feasibility → deprioritise

5. Select 1–2 High‑Impact Pilots

Choose use cases with strong value, manageable complexity, and the potential for early wins.

04 | Putting Things into Practice

To illustrate how a real advisory service can evolve into an agentic offering, consider a firm that provides regulatory compliance monitoring and readiness assessments for clients operating in multiple jurisdictions. Traditionally, this service requires analysts to track regulatory updates, interpret changes, map them to client obligations, and prepare periodic reports — a time‑consuming process with many repeatable steps.

An agentic solution could automate much of this workflow. A workflow agent might continuously monitor regulatory sources, extract key changes, classify them using your firm’s proprietary compliance taxonomy, and map them to specific obligations within your clients' operating environment. A separate evaluator agent could assess the potential impact based on your proprietary risk scoring framework. Human experts would still review high‑impact changes, but the bulk of the recurring effort — scanning, synthesising, classifying, and drafting — is handled automatically.

By embedding your IP into the agent (such as your compliance maturity model or risk heat‑mapping framework), the solution becomes more than an automation tool — it becomes a differentiated advisory product. Instead of sending quarterly updates, you could deliver real‑time, agent‑generated alerts, tailored assessments, and continuously evolving compliance dashboards. This shifts your service from a periodic, analyst‑driven activity to an always‑on advisory capability that clients cannot easily replicate elsewhere.

07 | Conclusion: Bringing It All Together

By now, you have a clear understanding of what agentic solutions are, the technologies that power them, and how to evaluate your advisory services for their agentic potential. Using the fit framework and prioritisation matrix, you can identify opportunities that combine business value, feasibility, and appropriate investment. Most importantly, you now have a well‑defined use case, one that is both meaningful for your business and achievable with today’s agentic capabilities.

This is the point where analysis turns into action.

Once your use case is selected and prioritised, you have enough clarity on what you want to build to move directly into the next phase: designing and developing your first agentic solution.

In our next article, we’ll guide you through that build process step‑by‑step, from mapping the service workflow and defining the solution design, to creating your first prototype and preparing it for production. This is where your agentic opportunity becomes real, and your firm begins turning its intellectual capital into a new generation of scalable, digital consulting solutions.

TURN YOUR AGENTIC OPPORTUNITIES INTO A CLEAR, EXECUTABLE STRATEGY

This article shows that identifying the right agentic opportunities is only the first step. The real challenge is translating those insights into a focused, high‑value roadmap that your firm can confidently act on.

Gysho helps consulting teams define, prioritise, and structure their agentic AI opportunities with clarity — ensuring your IP, workflows, and business goals are aligned before you build. If you’re ready to move from exploration to a strategic, investible plan, we’re here to support you.

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