Hackett × IBM on AI ROI
Hackett Group and IBM announced a collaboration to quantify enterprise AI ROI and accelerate operational use cases — the work focuses on using AI to map current‑state processes and surface quick wins for efficiency. The partnership underscores how consultancies and vendors are wrapping AI into traditional ops audits. (stocktitan.net)
IBM published a detailed announcement on March 16, 2026 describing how it will integrate Hackett AI XPLR into IBM Business Operations transformation programs to accelerate AI opportunity discovery. ( ibm.com ) A Business Wire–distributed release dated March 18, 2026 reiterated the collaboration and explicitly named The Hackett Group, Inc. with ticker NASDAQ: HCKT as the platform provider. ( morningstar.com ) The Hackett Group launched Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 on January 6, 2026, adding Ideation XPLR™, Data XPLR™ and a unified AI COE dashboard and positioning the platform for enterprise licensing and AI Centers of Excellence. ( businesswire.com ) IBM’s announcement lists the specific assets the joint approach ingests—digital SOPs, process maps, system metadata, process mining outputs and technology inventories—and states the combined method can cut AI discovery cycles from weeks to days. ( ibm.com ) IBM signaled a broader hiring push tied to AI earlier in 2026, telling media it plans to triple entry‑level hiring, and IBM Consulting job listings explicitly reference process mining and AI‑powered workflows in Business Transformation roles. ( axios.com ) ( careers.ibm.com ) The Hackett Group’s careers page lists desired consultant traits—collaborative, insightful, committed—and the firm was named a U.S. News & World Report 2025–2026 Best Companies to Work For, underscoring its platform‑and‑IP consulting growth narrative. ( thehackettgroup.com ) ( businesswire.com ) Public product and capability pages show the partnership will prioritize hires with process‑benchmarking experience, ability to convert process data into semantic knowledge, enterprise‑application mapping skills and ROI assessment experience—capabilities described on Hackett’s process benchmarking and AI implementation pages and in the XPLR 5.0 release. ( thehackettgroup.com ) ( thehackettgroup.com ) ( businesswire.com )
