The traditional management consulting model is built on an uncomfortable, open secret: it is highly profitable to keep clients coming back for more.

For decades, the industry’s giants have operated on a predictable rhythm. Senior partners pitch the vision, armies of junior analysts build massive spreadsheets and the resulting slide decks recommend further engagements. The billable hour reigns supreme, tying an advisory firm’s revenue directly to how long a problem drags on.

When Sarthak Brahma looked at the data benchmarking and sourcing practice he had built within Wavestone U.S., he saw a structural flaw that could not be engineered away from the inside. The practices he managed relied on hard data from executed contracts and the hard-won perspective of veteran negotiators.

But the corporate machinery around those assets was built to maximize utilization rates, creating an inherent friction between an advisor’s financial targets and a client’s desire for a swift, decisive outcome. In 2022, Brahma decided to break the machine, he told Sourcing Journal.

He used his own capital to orchestrate a clean carve-out of those specialized divisions, establishing Hex Advisory Group as a fully independent, bootstrapped entity. The goal was not just to launch another boutique advisory shop, but to entirely invert the incentives that govern corporate procurement and IT sourcing.

To understand why Hex needed to be free of a traditional parent company, Brahma said you have to look at how consulting firms make money. The business model naturally rewards prolonged timelines. If a consulting team solves an enterprise procurement issue in three weeks instead of three months, they are effectively penalizing their own profit-and-loss statement.

“In any firm organized around utilization and billable hours, there is a built-in tension between the advisor’s economics and the client’s interest in a fast, clean resolution,” Brahma said, reflecting on the realization that prompted his departure. “The most efficient answer for the client, finishing quickly or concluding that less work is needed, is rarely the most profitable one for the model. That tension is inherent to how the industry is built, and it sits there regardless of how well-intentioned the people involved are.”

Realizing that this structural constraint could not be bypassed from within a traditional matrixed corporation, Brahma said he knew independence was the only viable path forward. Providing unbiased, rapid advisory requires a company architecture designed for speed, not extended utilization. By self-funding the carve-out, he ensured that Hex would answer to its clients rather than outside investors looking for predictable, recurring hourly billings.

With Hex, Brahma set out to design engagements that are explicitly built to end. In an industry that thrives on creating long-term corporate dependency, Hex measures its success by how quickly a client can operate without it. It’s an unconventional approach, but he said the strategy is built on immediate knowledge transfer, transforming the advisory role from a permanent crutch into an accelerator for internal teams.

“The traditional model keeps the intelligence on the advisor’s side of the table, so the client has to keep coming back,” Brahma said. “We work the other way, by putting that intelligence directly in the client’s hands.”

To achieve this, Hex operates on tight, definitive timelines designed around concrete decision-making points rather than open-ended retainers. Instead of leaving behind a static PDF report that loses relevance the moment it is saved to a shared drive, the firm equips clients with active tools. Clients gain access to the Hex Index and Ask Hex, a live benchmarking platform and agentic advisor, which allows corporate procurement and sourcing teams to independently run real-time price checks, evaluate sudden vendor proposals and adjust internal budgets without needing to re-engage external consultants.

This methodology forces a shift in how companies view external help. “If a client is more capable and less dependent on us at the end of the work than they were at the start, we have done the job correctly,” Brahma said.

Standing guard against the ecosystem secret

Another pillar of the Hex model is its refusal to participate in the lucrative system of back-end commissions, referral fees and alliance payouts. It is common practice across IT and technology advisory for consulting firms to maintain tight partnerships with major software vendors and implementation providers. These alliances frequently involve financial incentives, where advisors receive kickbacks or success fees when a client selects a recommended vendor.

Hex has drawn a hard line in the sand, entirely banning any revenue streams from technology vendors or implementation partners. The company takes no sponsored research funding, no paid rankings and no commissions.

“The day you take money from both sides, your advice is quietly for sale and the client can feel it,” Brahma said bluntly. He acknowledges that while these back-end alliances keep many industry wheels turning, they fundamentally compromise the integrity of any procurement recommendation. While Hex maintains deep technical integrations and platform partnerships to keep its systems operational, these relationships never involve financial compensation tied to vendor selection.

This absolute neutrality acts as a powerful lever during complex vendor negotiations. When a technology provider realizes that the advisor representing the enterprise buyer cannot be swayed by incentives and is armed with objective market data, the entire dynamic changes. The typical posturing that bogs down large enterprise deals evaporates, leading to cleaner, more transparent, and faster agreements.

Replacing the static feed with a live terminal

Enterprise procurement has long relied on static market reports issued by major analyst firms. While these research feeds provide a broad industry context, they struggle to keep pace with the volatile realities of modern commercial transactions. A report published six months ago often relies on data gathered a year prior, rendering it ineffective in a fast-moving market.

Brahma views these legacy research products as historical artifacts rather than transactional tools. To solve this, he developed the Hex Index, which functions less like an academic journal and more like a live trading desk for corporate indirect spend. The platform aggregates data from real executed contracts, active market bids, and direct global capability center setups.

“By the time an executive reads the number, it reflects conditions a year or more old, and they end up negotiating tomorrow’s contract with yesterday’s data,” Brahma said.

With the Hex Index and its AI-driven interface, Ask Hex, corporate leaders can query real-time pricing points mid-negotiation. An executive sitting in a live deal can upload a vendor’s incoming proposal and immediately benchmark it against actual market transactions happening that same week. The platform relies on a network of seasoned practitioners who actively validate the data through real-world negotiations, ensuring that the insights remain tied to market realities rather than theoretical models.

Automating the analyst layer

The classic consulting structure is an upside-down triangle: a small group of senior partners secures the contracts, while a vast army of junior analysts handles the data collection and basic modeling. This pyramid allows firms to scale rapidly by leveraging cheap, junior labor, but it frequently results in clients paying premium rates for teams that are still learning on the job.

Hex bypassed this structure entirely by eliminating the junior analyst layer. The firm relies exclusively on veterans with over two decades of hands-on experience, utilizing proprietary software to handle the heavy analytical lifting.

“The work that armies of analysts used to do, the data gathering, the baselining, the first-cut analysis, is exactly what the Hex Index and Ask Hex now do in minutes,” Brahma said.

By automating the routine data-crunching tasks that typically consume hundreds of billable analyst hours, Hex allows its senior practitioners to focus entirely on strategy, human judgment and high-stakes negotiation tactics. The technology absorbs roughly the first eighty percent of the foundational work, freeing the veterans to handle the critical twenty percent that requires deep human experience. This approach aligns with broader macroeconomic shifts, where automated systems handle commoditized data processing, and human capital is reserved for specialized execution.

Redefining value in the age of automation

As generative artificial intelligence matures and global capability centers scale up, the baseline economics of IT outsourcing and procurement are experiencing an unprecedented overhaul. Historically, enterprise buyers focused their negotiation efforts almost exclusively on lowering the rate cards—getting a cheaper hourly price for a developer or a support agent.

Brahma said this focus on headcounts and hourly rates is obsolete. With automation absorbing significant portions of routine operational work, the overall quantity of human labor required for enterprise tasks is shrinking. “Paying a low rate for work that should no longer exist is not a good deal,” Brahma said.

For sourcing executives across cost-sensitive sectors like retail and apparel, these shifting dynamics are critical. Faced with intense pressure from supply chain disruptions, changing consumer behaviors and embedded tariff costs, corporate leaders are looking at technology and back-office operations as vital areas for efficiency.

A modern IT or business process outsourcing contract must reflect what automated systems can achieve, rather than relying on legacy labor-arbitrage frameworks from years past, Brahma said.