Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz on rewriting the consulting playbook

Publicis Sapient is responding to an era of upheaval in the consulting sector, primarily driven by the adoption of AI. Consultancy.uk speaks to CEO Nigel Vaz about the way it is ‘redesigning’ its offering, and helping clients to future-proof too.

You’ve spoken about the need to rethink consulting from the ground up. What’s driving that urgency?

The consulting industry is at an inflection point. The traditional model was designed for a very different world; shaped during a time when value was measured in time spent, not the outcomes delivered. Consulting today is beginning to look fundamentally different because the problems we’re helping clients solve are, and will continue to be, fundamentally different from what went before.

Modern consulting will be defined not through scale of people, but through scale of intelligence and our ability to deliver meaningful outcomes and tangible business value at pace.

We are also witnessing a shift from a project-based engagement model to long-term, platform-based consulting partnerships, where value is delivered iteratively, in cycles of experimentation, learning and scale. Consulting today is less about advising from the outside; it’s about transforming from within.

All this, of course, is driven by advances in technology: AI in particular, but also data, product and experience design. It is a shift that requires embracing a model where transformation is treated not as a project, but as a persistent capability. It requires integrating AI, data, engineering, and design into a unified system that delivers value. You can’t layer AI on top of legacy processes and expect a different outcome. You must redesign from within, with AI as a foundational layer.

With AI, data, and engineering at the core of modern consulting, firms evolve from merely advising to becoming more multidisciplinary, more hands-on, and much closer to the operational heart of the client’s business. That’s why the urgency is real.  Because consultancies that fail to re-architect themselves around AI risk being outpaced by those that do.

What does “redesigning from within” look like in practice at Publicis Sapient?

Our approach to clients’ digital business transformation is centred on our SPEED capabilities – Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data with AI. We think about the five SPEED capabilities as fingers on a hand. If you have all these capabilities within an organization, but they’re not connected or are pointing in different directions, it’s very hard to lift or shift or move something. When you bring these fingers together you can really accelerate a client’s transformation.

This connected approach informs how we partner with clients on digital business transformation. Beyond digitizing parts of a business or adding limited revenue as a stopgap, true digital business transformation helps companies become digital at the core – upgrading legacy systems, reimagining user experience and unlocking value at every touchpoint. 

The SPEED framework is designed to operate as an interconnected system, enabling real-time feedback and continuous improvement. We’ve made transformation inside our organisation a mirror of what we deliver to our clients: fast, iterative and continuously evolving.

This reinvention is cultural as much as technical.  We’ve invested heavily in training our people to think differently, lead differently, and collaborate with AI differently. Because delivering impact at the speed and scale clients expect now demands reinventing our ways of working.

This is what we mean when we say transformation must be ‘continuous’. It’s not a one-and-done effort. It’s a living, breathing system that evolves with the business.

You often use the ‘Iron Man’ analogy. Can you explain how that applies to consultants in this AI era?

The Iron Man analogy works on a few levels. At its simplest, it expresses the way in which AI can give us all superpowers in our everyday lives. I also truly believe that, in business, when we invest in our people and invest in AI at the same time, we’re able to create superheroes.

The analogy also works for modern consulting. In the Marvel universe, Tony Stark and his suit are each impressive in their own right – yet when you connect them, they are capable of superhuman performance. In the same way, consultants can only reach their full potential through augmentation. They need the suit. In our case, that suit is the set of AI-powered tools, intelligent systems, and automation capabilities that help consultants move faster, make better decisions, and deliver more value.

This isn’t about removing people from the equation. Far from it. It’s about elevating the role of human consultants to orchestrators – leaders who manage the interaction between human creativity and machine intelligence. It’s the human insight, judgement, and contextual awareness that give AI its edge – not the other way around. It’s not about choosing one or the other. It’s about human plus machine, each doing what it does best.

Amplifying human talent with AI is at the heart of how we work – and where we see the greatest value delivered.

How is Publicis Sapient building AI into the consulting delivery model?

We believe that there is a huge opportunity to disrupt the traditional consulting delivery model by combining traditional consulting expertise and deep industry knowledge with new technology solutions that enable us to resolve clients’ trickiest challenges with speed and efficiency. The aim is to help organizations not just adapt but lead in this dynamic business environment.

Publicis Sapient sees Agentic AI – AI systems that don’t just assist but act, learn, and adapt within business workflows – as a fundamental shift, and companies that embrace it will redefine their industries. To that end, Publicis Sapient has developed proprietary AI tools: our Bodhi platform allows for rapid deployment of Agentic AI solutions, and Sapient Slingshot and CoreAI build on the Bodhi foundation to dramatically improve the enterprise software development lifecycle and enterprise marketing respectively.

Sapient Slingshot is a business transformation accelerator. It drives efficiency and tackles big complex problems along the entire software development lifecycle – architecture design, planning, engineering, quality assurance – while enabling parallel workstreams to operate in sync. That’s a huge leap from traditional delivery models that depend on rigid, stage-gated processes.

The platform is designed to compress modernisation timelines from years to months.  It’s the manifestation of everything I’ve described – automation, integration, and hybrid delivery in action. For example, we’re working with a leading global benefits provider to modernize its applications, bringing more efficiency to its claims adjudication process. Modernisation through the traditional way of development would have taken seven to ten years. With Sapient Slingshot, we’re reducing the time needed for modernisation down to three years – one-third of the time. That’s not just time saved; that’s years of competitive advantage created.

This is the future of consulting delivery: hybrid, AI-assisted, and relentlessly focused on outcomes. Sapient Slingshot is more than a tool; it’s a transformation accelerator that redefines how value is delivered.

How does this shift to intelligent systems change the role of the consultant?

The role of consultants is undergoing a massive evolution. Future consultants are no longer just subject matter experts; they are connectors, translators and catalysts. They need to understand how to work across systems, disciplines, and intelligences – both human and artificial.

What’s exciting is that this shift allows consultants to do more of what makes them human: strategic foresight, creative problem-solving and storytelling. AI handles repetitive and scalable tasks, leaving room for deeper thinking and richer insights.

We coach our teams: ‘You’re not just delivering work. You’re designing value.’ That means not only developing new skills but also cultivating new mindsets. Openness, curiosity, and the ability to learn fast and continuously are now core to consulting success.

What does it mean to be truly AI-first – not just in services, but in how a firm operates?

Being truly AI-first is about more than layering AI onto an existing operating model. It means building a new foundation, one where AI is embedded into the very fabric of the business. At Publicis Sapient, we’ve restructured around this idea, ensuring that AI is infused into every part of how we work, from delivery and decision-making to planning and performance.

We see AI not as a co-pilot that supports human work, but as an agent capable of independently contributing to outcomes. That mindset shift changes the types of questions we ask. Instead of ‘How can humans work with AI?’, we ask ‘What can AI agents do on their own and where do humans add the most unique value?’ This reframing lets us redeploy human talent toward higher-value tasks: strategy, judgement, creativity, storytelling and orchestration.

We’ve designed internal workshops and tools that enable our teams to work side-by-side with intelligent agents, rethinking workflows and unlocking new efficiencies. And we apply this not just for our clients, but internally. We use AI to improve how our own organisation operates: how decisions are made, how projects move through teams and how we measure effectiveness.

Ultimately, to be AI-first is to operate with AI-native workflows, agentic thinking and the cultural agility to continually evolve. It’s not a technical upgrade. It’s a mindset and a model. And we’re already seeing the dividends of this approach in the speed, scale, and strategic value we’re able to deliver for our clients.

As CEO, how do you lead this kind of deep transformation?

Leadership starts with self-transformation. Throughout my career, a constant has been my appetite to learn, unlearn and relearn; never to let my knowledge and ideas grow stale and always to seek out new perspectives on how things might be done better. In the age of AI, one of the principles I live by is ‘AI will redesign you if you don’t redesign yourself first’. That applies to me, to our teams, and to our clients.

My role is to set the direction and then create the space for reinvention. That means making learning part of the culture – not something you do once a year, but something you do every day. We’ve invested heavily in internal learning academies around AI, cloud and data, on-the-job learning, and cross-functional training. We’re guided by a continuous learning mindset. It’s not about mastering a single skillset. It’s about being adaptable, open, and ready to reshape how we work and lead.

If we’re not learning and evolving faster than the market, we’re not leading. Transformation is something we live internally. We can’t lead it for our clients, unless we’re doing it ourselves.

How do clients respond to this model – and what results have you seen?

With AI advances now firmly part of clients’ broader digital transformation requirements, Publicis Sapient’s approach, underpinned by proprietary AI tools that empower clients to accelerate transformation through either growth-oriented value creation or cost-out innovation, reflect the client demand-led shifts that are reshaping our industry. 

Clients are responding with excitement and urgency. They’re facing the same pressures we are: do more, move faster, deliver value continuously. What we’re offering isn’t just a faster consulting model.  It’s a smarter one.

Take our work with a government organization to automate large portions of the software development lifecycle using Sapient Slingshot. Our goal is to shorten time to delivery, improve accuracy, and unlock cost efficiencies at scale. By building a next-generation digital factory powered by Gen AI agents and deep domain context, we’ve helped reimagine their digital delivery and drive more than 40% efficiency gains across the software development lifecycle.

When clients see that transformation can be fast, efficient, and deeply aligned to business outcomes, they commit to investing. And they’re not asking ‘can you do it?’, rather ‘how fast can we start?’

Some consultancies are layering AI onto legacy models. What’s your view?

Layering AI onto a legacy consulting model is like installing smart home tech in a crumbling foundation – flashy upgrades won’t fix a structure that isn’t built for it.

To unlock AI’s full potential, you need to redesign the entire system. That means building a new consulting chassis – with AI, data, engineering and experience integrated from day one. It’s not a surface-level shift. It’s foundational.

That’s what we’ve done at Publicis Sapient. We didn’t just ‘adopt’ AI. We rebuilt our delivery model, our teams, and our client engagements around it. The result?  More speed, more precision, and, most importantly, more measurable value.

What excites you most about this moment in the industry?

We’re at a moment in time where we’re not just evolving. We’re rewriting the traditional consulting playbook. It’s a powerful shift.

We’re proving that consulting doesn’t have to be slow, expensive, or disconnected. It can be fast, adaptive, AI-assisted and deeply human. We’re building teams that include both people and intelligent agents. We’re delivering outcomes in weeks, not years. And we’re showing clients that transformation doesn’t have to be protracted, complex and overwhelming.  It can be empowering.

Publicis Sapient will continue to evolve over the coming years– not in identity, but in capability. The pace of change in technology, particularly with AI, means we must constantly adapt to remain the kind of partner our clients need: one that not only helps them navigate disruption, but actively leads them through it.

We’re not reacting to the future. We’re helping shape it. And that’s what excites me every day.