Empowering Consultants, Delighting Clients: Embark's Generative AI Success Story
Jan 29, 2025
Did a consultancy that now sells Generative AI transformation also do a good job of transforming itself with the technology?
In short: Yes. Emphatically so.
Embark Consulting has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the consulting industry, driven by their unique approach—that "Happy is good for business." In other words, if their consulting team is happy, Embark’s clients will receive superior results. This hyper-focus on empowering their employees is a core part of what makes them successful—and one of the main reasons they found elvex.
Embark provides a wide range of business support services, primarily solving complex problems for finance functions across various industries. They are one of the fastest-growing consultancies world-wide—and major success can create its own challenges.
This case study explores Embark's journey in adopting and leveraging artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, to enhance their operations, maintain quality during rapid growth, and solidify their position as industry leaders in AI-driven consulting services.
Results at a glance
35% of total headcount (250+ consultants) using AI to work faster every single day
30+ AI apps built by consultants to automate processes and tasks
AI-powered meeting preparation tool has reduced pre-meeting research time by 60%
Efficiency in mundane tasks increased by 30%
“Personally, with elvex, I feel like I’ve gotten a few extra hours back in my day. Multiply that across hundreds of our employees and you can see the value.”
Miles Collins, Senior Director of Business Transformation, Embark
Why they needed to adopt AI, today
Two things were abundantly clear:
Embark’s industry (accounting advisory and management consulting) was changing rapidly.
Embark’s business was changing rapidly.
AI is swiftly changing the business world, and a reaction to that is to hire consultants to help navigate the change. What’s more is that the work of consulting itself is changing, as AI enables consultants to process far more information, create and iterate much more rapidly, and extend their skill sets into new areas.
Embark recognized the need to integrate AI into their own processes to stay ahead of the curve.
They embedded generative AI into their own team, and, having found considerable success, they began selling Generative AI consulting services to clients.
Complicating this process was the simple fact of their success. Culture is a delicate thing, and can be especially difficult to maintain as you double in size (or more!). Embark needed to maintain its high standards of quality by preserving its unique culture, while also scaling to meet the size of the opportunity in front of them.
Working with elvex to leverage AI presented a potential solution to these challenges, offering ways to enhance efficiency, ensure consistency, and support the company's expansion—without compromising its core values.
Challenges faced in adopting AI
Finding the perfect platform
To address these challenges and capitalize on the opportunities presented by AI, Embark chose to implement the elvex platform. This decision was driven by several key factors:
Data security: elvex could ensure that client data was protected, a key requirement in the consulting industry.
User-friendly interface: elvex is easy for non-technical employees to use. Embark’s scrappy and entrepreneurial employees could rapidly bring their own AI-workflows to life.
Team-friendly features: Instead of consumer apps built for individuals, Embark used elvex’s team features to scale new workflows to hundreds of employees.
Enterprise support: Change management is a massive part of AI transformation—and Embark knew elvex would be there to help ensure success every step of the way.
Being proactive with change management
Before getting started, Embark knew that many AI adoption projects face significant challenges: unclear ROI, technical complexities, potential employee resistance, and regulatory concerns.
To address these, they established a cross-functional committee led by the Chief Operating Officer and the Chief of Staff, including key leaders from various departments.
The committee implemented strategic initiatives:
Defined clear KPIs to measure AI success.
Identified "low-hanging fruit" AI projects for quick wins.
Developed a communication plan emphasizing employee empowerment.
Created app building competitions to fuel a fun way to promote employee engagement.
Provided AI literacy training to all employees.
Implemented a framework for assessing AI risks and data usage guidelines.
This approach helped Embark address challenges systematically, supporting a culture of innovation and continuous learning. They knew that their greatest asset is their employees—and that the best way to ensure tangible ROI from AI investments was via empowering their team, creating a system that rewarded adoption.
Doing this on the elvex platform gave their business the secure environment, customer support, and approachable platform they needed to ensure success.
“The creativity of building AI apps in elvex has spread across Embark like wildfire, with some really creative ideas coming to light!”
Madeleine Garcia, Chief of Staff, Embark
Examples of how Embark uses AI to drive results
Here are some examples of the assistants Embark employees created for themselves:
Vanilla LLM:
A basic interaction with an LLM, with no baked-in prompt engineering—all behind a secure firewall.
Meeting Preparation:
"Preppy" compiles comprehensive research for meeting preparation with new prospects, significantly enhancing the quality of client interactions and improving the efficiency of Embark's sales team.
It gathers a wide range of information about prospective clients, including details about the individual they're meeting (such as their name, title, and background), as well as in-depth information about the company itself. This includes the company's industry, business model, financial status, size, and recent significant events or changes. The bot scours various reputable business news sources and financial databases to compile up-to-date information, with a particular focus on recent developments that might indicate a need for Embark's services.
Sales Writing:
This AI assistant helps create tailored content for Embark's sales efforts. It references Embark's core service offerings, company positioning, competitor information, industry-specific data, and trigger-based sales strategies to do a better job.
By integrating multiple data sources, including Embark's website and competitor sites, the bot crafts concise, targeted, and value-driven communications that aligns with Embark's brand and effectively highlights their unique selling points.
Accounting Technical Research:
This assistant streamlines complex technical accounting research tasks, enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of Embark's Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) team. It references a comprehensive database of accounting resources, including FASB standards, Big 4 accounting guides, and Embark's proprietary "EQM Resources by Accounting Topic" to provide tailored responses.
The tool analyzes specific technical accounting queries, considering industry contexts and particular accounting frameworks. It delivers concise, up-to-date responses that include applicable FASB codifications, specific guidance, key technical points, and practical examples, ensuring Embark's deliverables are compliant and of high quality.
Product Knowledge:
"BT Pro" supports Embark's Business Transformation (BT) practice, streamlining project management and proposal creation. It references a database of BT materials, executed Statements of Work (SOWs), and case studies across various industries and project types to provide comprehensive support.
The tool assists in answering questions about BT capabilities, drafting SOWs, referencing relevant case studies, and tracking projects. By leveraging past experiences and standardizing processes, BT Pro enhances the consistency and quality of Embark's BT services while improving efficiency in project scoping and client communication.
Feedback Creation:
This tool helps Embark employees generate structured and meaningful feedback for colleagues and team members, supporting the company's commitment to continuous improvement and strong company culture. It references Embark's professional development, "culture amp," and coaching playbooks to ensure alignment with company values and best practices.
The Feedback Articulator guides users through different types of feedback (formal, informal, developmental, or "bonusly"), prompting for specific examples and categorizing feedback according to Embark's core competencies. It has played a crucial role in maintaining Embark's culture of continuous improvement during rapid growth.
NetSuite Development:
This AI assistant accelerates Embark's NetSuite development process. It serves as an expert in creating and debugging SuiteScript, HTML, and CSS for NetSuite environments, reducing development time and improving code quality. The tool leverages internal and external NetSuite resources to guide developers through complex scripting and layout customization tasks, ensuring adherence to specific standards.
Employees use it to help them create custom workflow automations, creating XML and HTML code snippets optimized for NetSuite's Advanced PDF Templates, debugging large, complex SuiteScript that's causing performance issues in a client's NetSuite instance, and more.
“Having elvex has made GenAI so much easier to work with—I spend less time building good prompts and more time interacting with the apps I’ve built to get what I need.”
Jarrett Ferguson, Manager, Business Transformation, Embark
Results and Impact
The implementation of AI tools through the elvex platform has had a transformative impact on Embark's operations:
Improved Efficiency:
The "Sales Writing Bot" and "Preppy" have significantly reduced the time spent on meeting preparation and follow-ups, allowing the sales team to focus on high-value client interactions. Pre-meeting research time reduced by 60%, and efficiency in mundane tasks increased by 30%.
Enhanced Quality:
The "Technical Account Research Tool" has improved the accuracy and comprehensiveness of financial advisory services, reinforcing Embark's reputation for expertise. 30+ AI apps built by consultants to automate processes and tasks.
Strong Culture:
Perhaps most importantly, Embark has seen a significant cultural shift towards AI adoption. The company reports that more than 250 employees (35% of total headcount) are now regular users of their AI tools, with top users accessing the elvex platform more than 250 times in a 30-day period. The "Feedback Articulator" tool supports maintaining Embark's unique culture during rapid growth, ensuring consistent and meaningful employee feedback.
Client Satisfaction:
When Embark consultants are firing on all cylinders, their clients are happy.
“Once we started loading our data into elvex, it instantly provided value in helping us sort through huge data sets quickly.”
Mike Forster, Revenue Operations, Embark
Looking ahead
Embark's successful AI implementation has positioned them at the forefront of AI-driven consulting. Looking forward, Embark envisions AI as an integral part of their service offering and internal operations.
They plan to continue developing new AI assistants, with a focus on enhancing their core services in finance, accounting, and business transformation. By doing so, Embark will reinforce its position as a leader in innovative consulting practices, true to its philosophy that "Happy is good for business"—now powered by cutting-edge AI technology.