A 50-page industry report that used to take a full day to digest? AI summarizes it in minutes. A proposal that sat half-written for a week? Done before lunch. The research, writing, and production work that eats your calendar—AI handles most of it now, which means you can spend your time on the strategy and client relationships that actually win business.
This guide covers practical ways to automate research, proposals, deliverables, dashboards, and productized services with AI. Whether you're independent or part of a firm, these workflows help you deliver more without working longer hours.
Automate research and analysis with AI
Research eats more time than most consultants realize. A market scan that should take an hour stretches into a full afternoon. A competitor analysis balloons into 2 days of tab-switching and note-taking. AI changes this by turning long documents, scattered notes, and raw data into something usable in minutes instead of hours.
Instead of spending hours reading a report, you can feed it into AI and ask for:
- A 1-page summary
- The key risks or opportunities
- Arguments worth defending
- Contradictions to explore
- A point of view that could anchor your recommendation
You get the core understanding quickly, which frees you to spend your time on the analysis that requires your actual expertise.
The same approach works for competitor and market scans. AI can map:
- How competitors position themselves
- Common pricing models
- Tone and messaging patterns
- Places your client could differentiate
- Shifts in the market worth watching
You still verify the findings, but you start with structure instead of a blank page.
For ongoing trend monitoring, tools like Google Alerts gather relevant updates automatically to save you from manually checking sources or bookmarking articles you never revisit.
And when the research needs to look client-ready, AI can reformat it into a concise briefing, a slide outline, a narrative memo, or a structured table of insights.
Some consultants go further by building automated research dashboards with tools like Anything. You describe the topics, data sources, or KPIs you want tracked, and the system updates itself. Work that once required a full prep day happens in the background.
What makes this approach particularly powerful is the compound effect over time. As you build your research system, it becomes increasingly tailored to your specific expertise. You can:
- Train it to recognize industry-specific jargon
- Flag emerging trends that others might miss
- Connect seemingly unrelated developments across multiple sources
The real advantage is the consistent quality and depth you deliver across all client work. With the right AI workflows, you'll build a reputation as someone who always arrives prepared with unique, actionable insights that others simply don't have the bandwidth to develop.
Use AI to improve proposals and close deals faster
Proposals are where deals die. Not because the prospect loses interest, but because consultants lose time. Momentum disappears while you're still rewriting the executive summary.
AI changes that by making proposals something you can produce fast, polish confidently, and personalize deeply.
You can take a few notes from a discovery call and ask AI to shape them into:
- A clear problem statement
- A sharp scope of work
- Pricing tiers with rationale
- A realistic timeline
- Risks and assumptions
- An executive summary that actually sounds human
That's a complete first draft in just minutes, which is especially valuable when you're pitching across multiple industries.
AI also adapts your language to match each prospect. A proposal for a financial client sounds analytical; a proposal for a marketing client sounds conversational. This level of personalization normally takes hours. But AI handles it instantly.
AI also strengthens proposals by generating simple ROI scenarios. Describe the value you expect to create, and it will produce:
- Cost-savings illustrations
- Revenue impact ranges
- Timeline-based benefit models
Once the proposal is out, you'll want to maintain momentum. AI helps you manage follow-ups by drafting warm check-ins, helpful reminders, value-add nudges, and short recaps of what you discussed. You stay top of mind without the follow-up work eating your calendar.
If you want to go further, you can build a proposal generator with Anything. Just upload past proposals, set your structure, and get a customized, client-specific draft every time. You'll describe what you want in plain English, and the platform handles the interface, database, and logic.
When clients receive a thoughtful, detailed proposal within 24 hours of a conversation, it creates a powerful impression. You look decisive and efficient, especially compared to competitors who take a week or more to respond.
Speed also lets you iterate. If the first proposal doesn't quite land, you can quickly revise and send alternatives while the conversation is still fresh. This can turn potential rejections into signed contracts. And because you're spending less time on production work, you can invest more in the relationship building that drives referrals and repeat business.
Automate time-consuming client deliverables
The hours it takes to turn smart ideas into polished documents slow most consultants down. AI removes most of that friction.
Take the raw material from any project, such as workshop notes, transcripts, interview recordings, messy brainstorm pages or bullet-point outlines. AI can turn these into structured, readable documents with sections, insights, and recommendations.
If your work includes stakeholder interviews, AI helps you extract:
- Recurring themes
- Notable quotes
- Conflicting viewpoints
- Hidden opportunities
- Emerging risks
For audits (marketing, operations, website, CRM, process), AI helps you build:
- Diagnostic checklists
- Point-by-point evaluations
- Prioritized action plans
- Maturity scores
- Improvement roadmaps
Project planning also becomes dramatically faster. You can describe the work ahead and ask AI to produce:
- Phased timelines
- Milestone sequences
- Dependency maps
- Owner assignments
- Risk notes
By automating research, documentation, and presentation prep, you redirect that time toward higher-value activities like strategy development and client relationship building. This changes your economic model: instead of charging for hours spent formatting documents, you're charging for insights and outcomes.
Clients notice the difference too. They see you focusing on strategic discussions rather than administrative tasks, which positions you as a true advisor rather than an implementation resource. That perception shift lets you command higher rates and attract more strategic work.
Build client dashboards and portals using AI tools
Great consultants deliver insights. Exceptional consultants deliver systems—places where clients can see their progress, track KPIs, review deliverables, and stay organized.
Dashboards and portals used to require developers, but AI tools make them accessible to anyone. You can now build dashboards that display:
- Marketing performance
- Operational KPIs
- Financial indicators
- Project statuses
- Customer or user insights
You can also build external portals that give clients:
- Secure file storage
- Shared notes and updates
- Access to deliverables
- Centralized communications
- Private AI tools
- Subscription-based content
In Anything, you build these from plain English prompts. Describe what you want: "a dashboard that shows weekly lead volume, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition." Then Anything generates the interface, database, authentication, and logic. It even handles mobile and web deployment from the same project.
Add Stripe billing, and these dashboards or portals become subscription products. You can charge for access, updates, templates, or ongoing insights.
Package your expertise into productized services using AI
Every consultant eventually hits a ceiling: there are only so many hours you can work and only so many proposals you can write. Productized services break that ceiling by turning your expertise into systems clients can use on their own.
Think about the parts of your work that repeat across clients: initial diagnostics, discovery questions, maturity assessments, readiness scoring, strategic frameworks, benchmarking models, and templated recommendations.
With AI, each of these can become an interactive tool, a guided workflow, or a self-serve assessment. Instead of performing the same analysis manually each time, you create a structured process clients move through on their own.
You can package this into:
- Onboarding assessments
- Scoring tools
- Strategy generators
- Planning workbooks
- Insight dashboards
- Self-guided audits
Using Anything, you can build these without code. You describe the logic, and it generates the application, with web, mobile, auth, payments, and storage included. Your expertise becomes a product clients can access whenever they want, not just when you're available.
The financial upside is real, though it takes work to get there. Most consultants bill by the hour or project, which creates an inherent cap on income. Productized services introduce scalability by disconnecting revenue from time spent.
Consider a diagnostic tool priced at $50–$200 per use. Getting 20 clients a month to use it takes real marketing effort, but it's doable if you've built demand around your expertise. The tool still requires maintenance and updates, but you're no longer trading hours for dollars on every engagement. Add subscription access on top, and the economics improve further. You'll recurring revenue from work you did once.
Which AI tools should consultants use?
For research and writing, ChatGPT, Claude, and similar tools help you summarize documents, draft deliverables, and think through problems quickly. For transcription and organization, Otter, Read AI, or Fireflies turn meetings into structured notes you can act on.
When you need to build something clients can actually use (dashboards, portals, or internal tools), Anything handles the full stack: logic, design, authentication, data, and even App Store deployment if you want to go mobile.
Start building what works
When research, proposals, deliverables, and dashboards happen in minutes instead of days, you free up the one thing that actually moves client relationships forward: your expertise. And when the systems behind your work run consistently, you deliver at a level most consultants can't match.
Anything makes this shift even easier by letting you turn your processes into real apps, dashboards, and portals without writing code. If you're ready to automate your workflow and build tools clients will pay for, start building with Anything today.
