Three hours on a Tuesday assembling a financial summary for a client who needs it by noon. Two hours on Thursday reformatting a market analysis into the firm's presentation template. An hour on Friday chasing a client who hasn't responded to last week's deliverable. None of these require the expertise the firm bills for. All of them consume the hours that do. Hermes handles the research, formatting, and communication layer — pulling data, drafting deliverables, queuing follow-ups — across Slack and Gmail from a single deployment. The consultants review and approve. The analysis stays with the people qualified to do it.
Where consultant hours actually go
McKinsey Global Institute found knowledge workers spend 28% of their week managing email and 19% gathering information — nearly half the workweek on tasks that don't require expert judgment.[¹] For a boutique consultancy with no dedicated research or ops staff, both categories fall directly on the consultants.
A fractional CFO spending three hours per week compiling a financial dashboard is spending three billable hours on assembly. An HR consultant spending two hours reformatting a benchmarking report is spending two hours on formatting. The analysis — the expert judgment that justifies the billing rate — sits behind the assembly work that precedes it. Hermes compresses that assembly phase so consultants spend their hours on the work clients are paying for.
How Hermes handles the research and synthesis layer
Hermes handles three categories of research work: gathering information from connected sources, summarising findings into a structured format, and assembling first-draft deliverables.
For a financial review, Hermes connects to the relevant data sources, pulls the required metrics, and produces a structured summary ready for the consultant to analyse and annotate. For a market analysis, Hermes searches for the required information, summarises the findings by category, and drafts the output in the firm's format. For a competitive landscape, Hermes pulls and structures the relevant data, producing a draft the consultant edits rather than a blank document to fill.
The consultant adds analysis and judgment. Hermes handles what precedes it.
How Hermes handles client communication and follow-up
Client communication at a consultancy follows a predictable pattern: weekly status updates, post-meeting action item summaries, follow-ups on outstanding deliverables, and responses to ad hoc questions.
Hermes handles each category. For a weekly update, Hermes pulls the week's activity from the connected project tool, drafts the update in the firm's format, and surfaces it for the consultant's review. For post-meeting notes, Hermes drafts the action item summary from connected meeting notes and routes it for approval. For items past their expected delivery date, Hermes drafts the follow-up and queues it for sign-off.
Hermes does not send anything without human review. Every draft — status update, follow-up, research summary — routes to the relevant consultant for approval, edit, or dismissal before it goes anywhere.
The consultant reviews the output. Hermes handles the production of it.
How Hermes encodes a consultancy's delivery patterns
The analysis is what clients pay for. Everything else is overhead.
Each completed deliverable adds a Skill object to Hermes's library — encoding the task category, the approach used, and input-output examples from the real work. Skills accumulate the longer Hermes operates on the firm's specific workflows.
For a consultancy, Hermes in month three produces first drafts that match the firm's house style, client terminology, and output format without prompting. A Skill library built from 20 client status updates for a compliance firm understands that firm's preferred level of regulatory detail, citation format, and summary structure — in a way a freshly deployed Hermes does not.
The practical effect: a deliverable that needed an hour of reformatting and tone editing in month one needs 10 minutes of review in month three. The consultant's judgment remains in the loop — applied at review, not at assembly.
What a consultancy Hermes deployment covers
A Hermes deployment for a consultancy starts with context definition — telling Hermes what the firm's clients look like, what the output formats are, and what the escalation patterns are. This step determines Skill quality from the first week.
On day one, Hermes handles configured workflows at a baseline level. A research summary is structurally correct but needs editing for depth and analytical framing. A client update is in the right format but needs accuracy review. The output saves time from day one. It is not polished.
By month three, the Skill library built from real deliverables has encoded the firm's specific patterns. The gap between Hermes's first draft and a send-ready deliverable narrows as Skills accumulate from completed work. Hermes does not replace the consultant's expert judgment. Hermes handles the hours around it, so consultants can apply that judgment to more clients in the same week.
For a full overview of Hermes and its learning mechanism, see what is Hermes. For how Skills build from completed tasks, see how Hermes learns. For when a consultancy's workflows need a purpose-built solution, see what is a custom agent.
Frequently asked questions
What types of research tasks can Hermes handle for a consultancy? Hermes handles research gathering, information synthesis, and first-draft formatting — pulling from connected data sources, summarising findings by category, and producing structured drafts in the firm's format. The consultant adds analysis and judgment. Hermes handles the assembly that precedes it.
Does Hermes replace the consultant's analysis? No. Hermes handles the research, formatting, and client communication layer — the work around the analysis. The expert judgment that justifies the billing rate remains with the consultant. Hermes handles the hours consumed by assembly, not the analysis itself.
How does Hermes improve on a consultancy's specific deliverables over time? Hermes builds a Skill object from each completed deliverable — encoding the task category, approach, and input-output examples. Skills accumulate from real work, so Hermes's output on the firm's specific client types, output formats, and delivery patterns improves the longer Hermes operates.
What tools does Hermes connect to for a consultancy deployment? Hermes connects to the tools the consultancy already uses: Gmail and Slack for communication, Notion or Confluence for knowledge management, and data sources relevant to each client engagement. Connections are scoped to what the configured workflows actually require.
Notes
- McKinsey Global Institute, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, 2012. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy