Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 Further Accelerates and Enhances Market-Leading Gen AI Ideation Through Agentic Solution Design Life Cycle

Key Terms

gen ai technical

Software that uses learned patterns from large amounts of data to produce new content — such as text, images, code or audio — on demand, much like a virtual assistant that composes original work when given a prompt. Investors care because it can rapidly lower costs, create new products and revenue streams, and change competitive dynamics across industries, while also introducing risks around accuracy, regulation and intellectual property.

ai centers of excellence (ai coes) technical

AI centers of excellence (AI COEs) are dedicated teams and facilities within an organization that centralize expertise, tools and best practices for developing and deploying artificial intelligence. Think of them as a company’s specialized workshop or test kitchen for AI, where projects are standardized, risks are managed and reusable components are built. For investors, AI COEs matter because they can lower costs, speed product rollout, reduce technical failures and provide a clearer path to measurable returns from AI initiatives.

semantic knowledge technical

Semantic knowledge is organized understanding of the meanings and relationships among concepts, facts and terms — like a mental map that connects ideas (for example, a drug name to its side effects or a company to its products). For investors it matters because tools that use semantic knowledge can sift scattered documents, spot patterns, speed research and flag risks or opportunities, acting like a smarter search engine that turns raw information into clearer decision signals.

agentic orchestration platform technical

An agentic orchestration platform is software that coordinates multiple autonomous software agents—small programs that can make decisions and act on their own—to carry out complex workflows without constant human direction. For investors, it matters because these platforms can boost productivity and cut labor costs by automating repeated decision steps, and they may enable new revenue streams or competitive advantages when integrated into customer-facing or back-office operations.

solution language model (slm) technical

A solution language model (SLM) is an artificial intelligence system trained to understand questions or problems and produce practical, human-readable answers or plans; think of it as a digital problem‑solving assistant that reads inputs and generates step‑by‑step outcomes. For investors, SLMs matter because they can speed product development, cut costs, automate customer support and decision-making, or create new revenue streams—changes that can affect a company’s growth prospects, margins and competitive position.

forward-looking statements regulatory

Forward-looking statements are predictions or plans that companies share about what they expect to happen in the future, like estimating sales or profits. They matter because they help investors understand a company's outlook, but since they are based on guesses and assumptions, they can sometimes be wrong.

The platform offers client-specific solution ideation, semantic knowledge creation, ROI assessment and ready-to-build agentic solution design required to operationalize Gen AI at scale

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading Gen AI consultancy and enterprise digital transformation firm, today announced the launch of Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0, which supports enterprise AI Centers of Excellence (AI COEs), is available for enterprise licensing. Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 is designed to accelerate and enhance how enterprises identify, evaluate, and design AI solutions using their client-specific business processes, enterprise applications and data landscape, which are required to achieve measurable ROI. Together with ZBrain™, our agentic orchestration platform, Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 enables a seamless transition from AI opportunity discovery to agentic workflow solution deployment.

“While enterprises continue to invest heavily in Gen AI, most struggle to translate experimentation into measurable business impact,” said Ted A. Fernandez, Chairman and CEO at The Hackett Group^®. “Too many organizations are experimenting without a clear understanding of where and how AI creates measurable performance improvement. Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 ensures enterprises design AI solutions grounded in their own business processes, data and automation footprint – all critical components to the design, development and deployment of high-impact Gen AI solutions.”

Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 introduces three major enhancements: Ideation XPLR™, Data XPLR™ and a unified AI COE dashboard deliver a reimagined approach to enterprise AI enablement. Together, these capabilities enhance the platform’s ability to systematically capture and refine ideas, convert process workflow data into structured semantic knowledge, and deliver comprehensive, end-to-end visibility across the AI opportunity life cycle.

Enterprises can now license Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 to operationalize AI at scale. The platform enables enterprises to onboard their ambassadors and provide them with a disciplined, guided approach to capture ideas and convert them into AI opportunities informed by Hackett performance and process IP and powered by The Hackett Group's proprietary Solution Language Model (SLM).

1. Convert enterprise process data into actionable semantic knowledge.

The Data XPLR™ module enables organizations to transform enterprise process data in any format into structured semantic knowledge. Users can use this knowledge within Ideation XPLR™ and Solution XPLR™ to identify AI opportunities and design solution blueprints based on their enterprise-specific automation and data landscape.

2. Strengthen and accelerate enterprise AI ideation with guided, high-impact opportunity discovery.

Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 introduces Ideation XPLR™, a guided framework that strengthens how organizations capture and refine AI ideas into fully structured, high-impact opportunities. This capability fundamentally elevates early-stage AI exploration by eliminating inconsistent, informal ideation practices and replacing them with a disciplined intake process.

3. Unify and prioritize efforts with a comprehensive AI COE dashboard.

The new release also features a unified AI COE dashboard that provides end-to-end visibility across every AI opportunity as it progresses from ideation through the build phase. Organizations gain a consolidated view of AI opportunities, functional distribution, and their business case, establishing a consistent framework for evaluating and advancing initiatives.

“The organizations advancing meaningfully with AI are those re-examining how work should be structured and executed, rather than relying on new tools as surface-level add-ons to existing processes,” said Akash Takyar, CEO of LeewayHertz, a Hackett Group Company. “Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 provides the structure and specificity leaders need to determine where AI can truly reshape actions, decisions, and outcomes. This level of clarity is what enables enterprises to move beyond incremental gains and achieve durable, performance-led transformation.”

Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 advances the platform’s capabilities, offering organizations a reimagined approach to enterprise AI enablement. By aligning structured ideation, enterprise knowledge and observability across the AI life cycle, Hackett AI XPLR™ 5.0 gives organizations the foundation to move from experimentation to measurable, performance-led AI execution.

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™ and AskHackett.ai™ 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, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100. Visit us at www.thehackettgroup.com.

Trademarks

The Hackett Group^®, quadrant logo, Digital World Class^® and Quantum Leap^® 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.

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Source: The Hackett Group, Inc.