Combined expertise to align AI opportunities to real workflows, real systems, and real business outcomes.

IBM Consulting and The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) are collaborating to help enterprises accelerate and prioritize AI opportunities using Hackett AI XPLR™. By aligning AI potential to real workflows and existing systems, organizations can identify high-value use cases with measurable ROI. The collaboration supports responsible and efficient enterprisewide AI adoption.

Artificial intelligence and automation continue to reshape the way enterprises operate. Organizations are seeking greater efficiency, improved performance, and new paths to business value, but lasting impact requires more than technology. It begins with a clear understanding of processes and how work is executed across the enterprise.

IBM and The Hackett Group^® are working together to help organizations bring structure, speed, and scale to their AI initiatives. A core element of this effort is Hackett AI XPLR™, a platform designed to help organizations move from directional ideas to actionable AI opportunities. Hackett AI XPLR™ identifies where AI-driven enhancements are possible inside existing workflows and evaluates and designs business and agentic workflows where they deliver the greatest measurable value. IBM brings its proven expertise in enterprise transformation, enabled by its AI-powered delivery platform, IBM Consulting Advantage, to help clients scale responsibly and accelerate value creation.

Hackett AI XPLR™ evaluates every opportunity within the context of an organization’s enterprise technology landscape, including core systems, point solutions, and custom applications. The platform determines whether required capabilities already exist or if enhancements would be needed, ensuring recommendations build on current investments rather than duplicating them.

IBM is engaging Hackett AI XPLR™ to support its work with clients, accelerating the discovery and sizing of AI opportunities as part of broader transformation roadmaps. The platform ingests available digital standard operating procedures, process flows, system data, process mining outputs, and automation footprints to recommend improvements and quantify expected outcomes.

This approach delivers several key results for clients:

• A clear, actionable process improvement plan grounded in implementable AI-driven solutions with measurable enterprise value and ROI
• Visibility into meaningful improvement opportunities, surfacing levers for speed, efficiency, and experience
• A quantified value case that translates insights into expected performance gains and potential ROI

One recent example involved a client seeking a rapid, evidence-based view of the most relevant AI opportunities within its invoice-to-pay process. Traditional assessments required significant time from subject matter experts and deep manual analysis. The client needed a faster, data and IP-informed platform that properly considered its technology environment and operational goals. Using Hackett AI XPLR™, the teams identified seven prioritized improvement themes across the invoice processing lifecycle and eighteen detailed AI use cases tied directly to those themes.

“AI succeeds when it’s deployed using a client’s specific business context,” stated Ted A. Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of The Hackett Group^®. “We don't provide generic tools or solutions; we provide our IP-informed Hackett AI XPLR™ platform, powered by our Hackett Domain-Specific Language Model (DSLM), expertly trained and tuned to identify, evaluate, and design implementation-ready AI solutions built specifically to the client’s strategic requirements.”

This collaboration brings together complementary consulting and operations expertise. It provides a scalable foundation for thoughtful, evidence-based AI opportunity identification, evaluation and design that supports responsible adoption across the enterprise. IBM and The Hackett Group^® remain focused on helping organizations advance AI intentionally, with clarity and measurable impact. Learn more on the IBM blog.

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is a Gen AI strategic consulting and digital transformation firm that enables Digital World Class^® performance. Using Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™, AskHackett™, and Quantum Leap^® platforms, the company’s experienced professionals and engineers help organizations realize the power of Gen AI from ideation through implementation to achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results with unprecedented speed, allowing it to be key architects of their Gen AI journey. The company’s expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from enterprise performance benchmarks from the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 68% of the DAX 40 and 53% 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 into our operations, 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.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260318483941/en/

This collaboration brings together consulting and operations expertise. It provides a scalable foundation for thoughtful, evidence-based AI opportunity identification, evaluation and design that supports responsible adoption across the enterprise.