Best AI Tools for Consultants: Save Hours Creating Strategy Presentations

About the Author

Eric Levine is a strategy and operations leader turned founder. After years at Meta leading global business strategy, he built StratEngine AI — a platform that helps consultants and teams move from problem to polished strategy in minutes. His experience scaling operations across global markets revealed the gap between strategic thinking and execution speed. StratEngine AI addresses this challenge by automating strategic analysis, framework application, and presentation creation, allowing professionals to focus on insights rather than formatting and manual research.

Summary

For consultants, time is the most valuable resource, yet hours are spent on manual research, framework creation, and slide formatting. Research shows that management consultants who incorporated AI tools completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, 12.2% more tasks in total, and achieved over 40% higher quality (Harvard/BCG study). AI cuts research time by over 50% for leading consultants, with McKinsey's Lilli platform reclaiming roughly 30% of research time. Currently, 72% of organizations use generative AI in at least one business function.

Platforms like StratEngine AI offer end-to-end strategy creation (6-8 hours manual → 25-35 minutes automated), while others like Beautiful.ai focus on design automation. This guide evaluates the top AI tools based on use-case fit, output quality, and speed, helping consultants choose the right platform to scale their efficiency and focus on delivering high-value insights to clients. StratEngine Internal Analysis shows 82% overall preparation time reduction and 3.2x presentation output increase without adding headcount.

Why Consultants Need AI in 2025

The consulting landscape is evolving rapidly, and client expectations for faster turnarounds are compressing review cycles. McKinsey research shows that AI could automate up to 30% of consulting work hours by 2030, with more than 80% of management-consulting projects now incorporating some form of AI—from predictive analytics to automated research assistants. AI tools help close the gap between a rough draft and a polished final delivery, with McKinsey's Lilli platform reclaiming roughly 30% of research time and recovering an estimated 50,000 labor hours monthly.

They also enable independent consultants and boutique firms to compete with larger organizations by multiplying their capacity. Research shows consultants using AI complete 12.2% more tasks in total while achieving 40% higher quality, representing significant competitive advantages for early adopters. Most importantly, automation removes the administrative burden of formatting and boilerplate content (Deloitte reports AI saves an average of 70 hours of employee time per week), allowing human consultants to focus on strategic judgment, which is where their true value lies.

1. StratEngine AI – Complete Strategy Workflow in One Platform

If you're looking for a single tool that covers the entire strategy process, StratEngine AI stands out. It's not just another deck generator; it is an end-to-end pipeline that connects data to frameworks, synthesizes a brief, and produces a full presentation. StratEngine Internal Analysis shows it reduces full strategic presentation creation from 6-8 hours manual work to 25-35 minutes, delivering 82% overall preparation time reduction.

Its strengths include generating frameworks like SWOT (4-6 hours manual → 10-12 minutes AI) and Porter's Five Forces (6-8 hours manual → 15 minutes AI) grounded in current research, creating a cohesive strategy brief with recommendations, and exporting boardroom-ready decks with a consistent narrative flow. Users achieve 3.2x presentation output increase without adding headcount, enabling independent consultants to handle more clients simultaneously while maintaining quality standards. It is best for independent consultants and startup executives who need complete strategy decks fast.

2. Beautiful.ai – Presentation Design Automation

Beautiful.ai focuses purely on slide design automation, positioning itself as "generative AI presentation software for the workplace." It allows consultants to build visually impressive decks quickly, with smart templates that automatically adjust layouts and formatting as content is added. Its primary strength is producing a professional look in minutes, eliminating the tedious work of adjusting spacing and layouts.

Team features like shared slide and template libraries, collaborative presentation editing, and team billing make it popular for enterprise environments. However, it does not generate strategic frameworks or a narrative brief; the user must supply all the content. Pricing starts at $12 per month (billed annually). It's best for consultants who have their story and data ready and just need to create polished slides quickly.

3. Tome – AI Storytelling for Presentations (Product Sunset)

**Note:** As of April 30, 2025, Tome sunset their slides product and it is no longer available. The platform pivoted in October 2024 to providing AI tools for sales teams instead. Previously, Tome was an AI-powered presentation tool that generated narrative slides from simple text prompts, growing to over 1 million users since its late 2022 release. It was excellent for creating rapid first drafts of concepts and features clean, modern designs.

This made it a strong choice for brainstorming sessions, internal pitches, and initial idea-sharing where speed was more critical than strategic depth. Its main limitation was that the outputs could be generic and require significant editing to meet the rigorous standards of client-facing consulting work, as it did not natively incorporate structured business frameworks. Historical pricing started at $20 per month.

4. ChatGPT (with browsing & tools)

While not designed specifically for consultants, ChatGPT is one of the most versatile AI consulting software tools available. It excels at fast research synthesis, drafting outlines, and creating bullet points for frameworks like SWOT or PESTLE analysis. It is also useful for refining hypotheses and preparing interview guides. However, it does not natively produce polished slide decks or an integrated strategy brief. It requires diligent fact-checking and human refinement, and users must prompt each stage of the strategy creation process separately to avoid inaccurate or generalized results.

5. Miro AI – Brainstorming and Workshop Support

Consultants often facilitate workshops and brainstorming sessions, which can generate a chaotic volume of ideas. Miro’s AI features help structure this chaos by organizing digital sticky notes into themed clusters and formal frameworks. It is an excellent tool for live, collaborative workshops, as its auto-clustering and summarization features drastically reduce cleanup time. Its primary limitation is that it is not a brief or deck generator; the organized output still requires additional polishing in a separate presentation tool to become client-ready.

Comparison Table: AI Tools for Consultants

How These Tools Save Time

The traditional path for creating a 10–15 slide strategy brief involves hours of research, manual drafting of frameworks, writing a strategic brief, and then days in PowerPoint for polishing. Research shows AI cuts research time by over 50% for leading consultants, with McKinsey reporting that their Lilli platform reclaims roughly 30% of research time. With AI in the loop, frameworks are generated in minutes (SWOT: 4-6 hours → 10-12 minutes), a brief is auto-drafted from those frameworks, and slides are formatted automatically.

This allows human quality assurance to focus on the narrative, strategic trade-offs, and stakeholder nuance. Harvard/BCG research demonstrates that consultants using AI complete tasks 25.1% more quickly while achieving 40% higher quality output. StratEngine users report compressing full strategic presentations from 6-8 hours to 25-35 minutes, achieving 82% overall preparation time reduction. Many consultants report compressing a 3–4 day workflow into under two hours for a first client-ready draft.

Where Humans Stay in the Loop

Despite the power of automation, human expertise remains critical. While AI could automate up to 30% of consulting work hours by 2030 (McKinsey), the remaining 70% requires uniquely human capabilities. A consultant's judgment is necessary for validating assumptions and ensuring data quality, particularly given that AI-generated content requires diligent fact-checking and human refinement to avoid inaccurate or generalized results.

Humans must also tailor recommendations to account for internal politics, project constraints, and the client's specific risk appetite. Finally, sequencing the story for the specific decision-makers in the room is a nuanced task that AI cannot fully replicate. Research shows that consultants using AI achieve 40% higher quality by combining AI's structural capabilities with human strategic wisdom. AI provides the structure and data, but the human consultant provides the critical context, stakeholder management, and strategic judgment that clients ultimately pay for.

Conclusion

The consulting workflow is changing. Currently, 72% of organizations use generative AI in at least one business function, with more than 80% of management-consulting projects now incorporating AI. Instead of perfecting slides late into the night, consultants can now use AI to generate frameworks, synthesize a defensible brief, and produce boardroom-ready decks—fast.

If you're seeking an end-to-end strategy presentation tool, StratEngine AI connects the entire pipeline from data to final presentation (6-8 hours → 25-35 minutes), delivering 82% preparation time reduction and 3.2x presentation output increase. This allows you to spend more time on client conversations and high-value insight rather than formatting. With Deloitte reporting AI saves an average of 70 hours of employee time per week and consultants achieving 25.1% faster task completion with 40% higher quality, the productivity gains are substantial. Explore it alongside the other tools mentioned here and pick the mix that best fits your practice and clients.

Sources

• Harvard/BCG - AI and Consultant Productivity Study: Research demonstrating that management consultants who incorporated AI tools into their work were more productive, completing tasks 25.1% more quickly, an average of 12.2% more tasks in total, and with over 40% higher quality compared to a control group. Study included 758 consultants performing data-science tasks. Source: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/feb/impact-generative-ai-work-productivity
• McKinsey - AI in Consulting Research: Analysis showing that AI could automate up to 30% of consulting work hours by 2030, with more than 80% of management-consulting projects now incorporating some form of AI. McKinsey's Lilli platform reclaims roughly 30% of research time and recovers an estimated 50,000 labor hours monthly, with AI cutting research time by over 50% for leading consultants. Source: https://medium.com/@takafumi.endo/how-ai-is-redefining-strategy-consulting-insights-from-mckinsey-bcg-and-bain-69d6d82f1bab
• Deloitte - AI Workflow Automation Impact: Research showing that AI implementation helps organizations save an average of 70 hours of employee time per week by automating routine tasks, with measurable productivity improvements across consulting workflows. Source: https://psico-smart.com/en/blogs/blog-leveraging-ai-tools-to-enhance-productivity-in-the-workplace-163480
• Industry AI Adoption Research: Survey data showing that 72% of organizations now use generative AI in at least one business function, up from 56% in 2021. Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai and https://www.bcg.com/press/24october2024-ai-adoption-in-2024-74-of-companies-struggle-to-achieve-and-scale-value
• Plus AI - Tome vs Beautiful.ai Comparison: Market analysis showing that Tome grew to over 1 million users since its late 2022 release before pivoting in October 2024 to sales tools and sunsetting its slides product on April 30, 2025. Beautiful.ai pricing information verified separately from company website. Source: https://plusai.com/blog/tome-vs-beautiful-ai
• StratEngine Internal Analysis: User workflow analysis showing full strategic presentations reduced from 6-8 hours manual work to 25-35 minutes with StratEngine AI, delivering 82% overall preparation time reduction. Framework generation times: SWOT (4-6 hours → 10-12 minutes), Porter's Five Forces (6-8 hours → 15 minutes). Users achieve 3.2x presentation output increase without adding headcount.