Next-generation, breakthrough solution addresses key enterprise Gen AI value realization concerns

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading Gen AI consultancy and enterprise digital transformation firm, today announced the launch of AI XPLR™ 4.0, an unmatched enterprise Gen AI solutioning platform that fundamentally transforms how organizations conceive, design, and deploy Gen AI solutions based on client industry-specific business processes, application landscape, and existing and potential data sources. This groundbreaking release introduces industry-first capabilities that compress traditional AI design and development cycles from months to days, while delivering client-specific solutions with unprecedented accuracy and solution-specific return on investment (ROI).

“Too often, vendors lead with a hammer looking for a nail, promoting AI use cases that don’t align with client realities, which leads to failure,” said Ted Fernandez, chairman and CEO at The Hackett Group^®. “What sets us apart is our ability to design and build Gen AI solutions based on client industry-specific processes and enterprise application landscapes, ensuring solutions deliver enterprise value based on the client-specific circumstances instead of trying to retrofit a generic use case. Gen AI solutions must be developed to client-specific circumstances not the other way around. By using our uniquely informed proprietary Solutioning Language Model (SLM), which leverages our business process and enterprise application expertise and deep business transformation knowledge, we can deliver client-specific designs and agentic workflows with unprecedented speed and accuracy. This enhanced AI XPLR™ version 4.0 capabilities allow us to succeed where others are failing.”

The potential to deploy cognitive automation – beyond the existing rule-based system of record capabilities – offers all organizations incredible ROI, but the challenge is knowing where to start and how to tailor solutions for a company’s unique business requirements. AI XPLR™ 4.0 addresses this by introducing three revolutionary core capabilities that deliver a completely reimagined approach to enterprise AI:

1. Comprehensive Technology Landscape Intelligence

The platform’s enhanced technology landscape capability provides a highly sophisticated mapping of enterprise application functionality, which allows a client to assess the possible use of its existing embedded automation capabilities and corresponding data sources before launching Gen AI solutions. Unlike traditional discovery tools, AI XPLR™ 4.0 identifies, catalogs, and analyzes systems of record functionality and data sources across all business functions – while applying industry-specific solutioning intelligence – allowing clients to optimize the existing enterprise applications and existing and potential data sources in their Gen AI solution considerations. This comprehensive automation visibility ensures that new AI solutions are designed and developed powerfully and efficiently.

2. Advanced AI Ideation Capabilities

Building upon The Hackett Group’s proprietary SLM, the ideation engine can simulate and evaluate thousands of client-specific AI solution scenarios using a client’s industry-specific process flows and existing enterprise application environment. This capability analyzes:

• Client-specific enterprise application automation functionality and knowledge base modeling of existing and potential data sources, which provides the opportunity to discover powerful data sources by exploring unstructured and public data sources that extend beyond the system of record and internal data sources.

• Industry-vertical simulation, ensuring clients can consider solution opportunities.

• Security and feasibility assessments to prioritize high-impact, high-feasibility agentic workflows.

The result is a shift from traditional brainstorming to industry-specific solution discovery and ideation that uncovers high-value Gen AI enablement and enhanced data sources with great specificity.

3. Complete Solution Architecture Powered by The Hackett Group’s Proprietary SLM

At the heart of AI XPLR™ 4.0 lies Solution XPLR, featuring The Hackett Group’s breakthrough SLM – a specialized Gen AI model trained on unprecedented business process and enterprise transformation knowledge, benchmarks, best practices, and implementation intellectual property. Research indicates that large language models provide approximately 35% of the capability to design high ROI agentic workflows. Our uniquely informed SLM and transformation and agentic AI expertise provide the critical capabilities to fully execute solutions. This industry-first capability enables clients to design client-specific solutions in hours or days, not weeks and months, including:

• Optimized process flows: End-to-end workflow designs with embedded ROI optimization and risk mitigation.

• Intelligent agentic workflows: Sophisticated AI agent architectures for automation, augmentation and decision support.

• Technical specifications: Detailed functional designs ready for immediate development and deployment.

• Comprehensive data and system assessments: Complete evaluation of data source options, integration requirements and system compatibility.

• Native technology integration: Recommendations for leveraging existing applications, platforms and infrastructure investments.

“The AI XPLR™ solution blueprints can be accurately built in ZBrain™. By leveraging out-of-the-box agentic workflow designs or quickly building client-specific workflows from scratch, enterprises can move from design to working agentic orchestration at unprecedented speed. This seamless handoff ensures that every feasibility-validated solution from AI XPLR™ is not theoretical, but directly executable,” said The Hackett Group^® Executive Vice President and ZBrain™ CEO Akash Takyar.

For more information about AI XPLR™ 4.0 and The Hackett Group's comprehensive AI transformation services, visit www.thehackettgroup.com.

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is a Gen AI strategic consulting and executive advisory firm that enables Digital World Class^® performance. Using AI XPLR™ and ZBrain™ – our ideation through implementation platforms – our experienced professionals help organizations realize the power of Gen AI and achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of their Gen AI journey.

Our expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from benchmarking the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100. Visit us at www.thehackettgroup.com.

Trademarks

The Hackett Group^®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class^® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group^®.

Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward-Looking” Statements

This release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability of The Hackett Group^® to effectively market its digital transformation, our ability to transition our capabilities to support generative artificial intelligence (AI)-related consulting services and solutions and other consulting services, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions, including AI XPLR™ 4.0, our ability to manage joint ventures and successfully cooperate with our joint venture partners, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group^® and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.

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What sets us apart is our ability to design and build Gen AI solutions based on client industry-specific processes and enterprise application landscapes, ensuring solutions deliver enterprise value based on the client-specific circumstances