[boxspam]

This is more of a puffy PR piece for the IT supplier.

The methods they use are very advanced mathematics / graph theory. If we take the modern usage of the word "AI", then this qualifies. These methods are beyond what anyone can do in Excel. Usually data is so big and complex that a manual analysis takes months. It does not scale to sit down and find ways to reduce costs. Using unsupervised pattern detection does scale.

About the consultants vs. engineers and the power to actually implement systems: Many IT systems that call themselves "AI", are not. They require tons of labeled data, a human making assumptions, lack justification and transparency, are not embedded properly in the business (lack UI, documentation, buy-in, data processing), and don't continuously learn.

You need an entire ecosystem of processes and software tools to have the power to change (identifying problems is easy, of course engineers already know what's wrong with their daily work, if they could implement a solution, then a proper engineer would, but they really need a consultant and CEO backing to actually get something actionable).