The Billable Hour Is Dying. So Is the Barrier to Enterprise Weather Strategy.
What five years inside IBM consulting taught me about why weather intelligence never scaled — and why AI agents are about to change that.
I spent five years at IBM Consulting after the company acquired The Weather Company and saw firsthand what happened when a retailer or CPG company sought to build an integrated weather strategy.
The business case was clear. The data was available — and relatively inexpensive. The financial opportunity was real and measurable. But the consulting financial model made the math not work.
Billable hours. Utilization targets. Multi-million dollar engagement economics. A large team of consultants required to connect weather intelligence across seasonal planning, demand forecasting, pricing, marketing, staffing, and financial risk management. A multi-year transformation timeline before the ROI showed up in the P&L.
Most retailers looked at that equation and made a rational decision: pass. Or pilot. A demand forecasting experiment here. A weather-triggered marketing campaign there. Point solutions that never connect to the integrated system that delivers real value.
Weather intell…
