Articles

Guides, case studies, and deep dives on AI transformation for consumer-facing businesses.

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Opinion18 September 20263 min read

Your Data Is Better Than You Think, and Worse Than You Think

A single data quality score hides more than it reveals. The honest answer to 'how good is our data' depends on whose data you're asking about, and for which decision.

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Guide5 minPractitioner

The Riskiest Assumption Test: How to Run a £5,000 Experiment Before You Spend £500,000

Every AI experiment rests on assumptions, and one of them usually decides whether the whole thing works. Testing that one first, cheaply, is the difference between finding out in week one and finding out in week three with the budget already spent.

Opinion4 minPractitioner

Transition States: Why You Can't Jump From Here to There

Most transformation programmes design the before and the after, and treat the space between as a scheduling detail. That space is where programmes fail or hold together, and it deserves the same design attention as the target operating model itself.

Opinion4 min

AI Traffic Is Becoming a Real Retail Channel. Here's What John Lewis Is Doing About It.

John Lewis says the share of its traffic arriving through AI tools rose from 0.3% to 2.5% in a year. That's still a small number, but the curve behind it is the reason mid-size retailers should be checking their AI discoverability now, not after it stops being small.

Opinion4 min

KPMG Withdrew Its AI Report After 40 of 45 Citations Failed Verification. Here's the Check Your Team Is Skipping.

KPMG withdrew a flagship AI report in June after The Register found that 40 of its 45 citations failed verification, and four named organisations told the Financial Times their AI use had been misrepresented. Here's the verification step that failure points to for any team publishing AI-drafted work.

Opinion6 min

British Gas Says Customers Prefer Chatbots. Its Own Numbers Say Something Else.

Centrica is cutting 1,300 customer service and support jobs while its CEO says customers prefer digital channels and insists AI isn't driving the reductions. The channel usage data doesn't prove preference, the survey data points the other way, and the messaging is a case study in how not to announce this kind of change.

Case Study7 min

When 'Mostly Right' Isn't Good Enough: How Thomson Reuters Builds AI You Can Defend

A 175-year-old information company rebuilt its flagship legal products on frontier AI, but optimised for something most firms ignore: whether the output survives professional review. The result is a working model for AI in any business where being wrong is expensive.

Case Study7 min

How JPMorgan Is Rolling Out AI Agents to a 318,000-Person Bank Without Breaking It

JPMorgan put an AI assistant in front of 250,000 employees, attributed $2 billion of annual value to AI, and only then started deploying multi-step agents. The sequencing is deliberate, and it makes this the most documented agentic AI programme in banking.

Case Study7 min

What Salesforce Learned From 4 Million AI Agent Conversations on Its Own Help Site

Salesforce put its own AI agent in front of every support request on help.salesforce.com in October 2024. Eighteen months later it has published the conversation volumes, resolution rates, failure modes, and workforce impact in more detail than any other agentic AI deployment. The honest bits are the most useful.

Case Study6 min

How Vodafone Gave Its Chatbot a Brain Transplant and Reached 70% Resolution on 60 Million Conversations a Month

Vodafone rebuilt its seven-year-old TOBi chatbot on Azure OpenAI, held it back until accuracy passed 90%, and rolled it out across every European market. The group now reports 60 million conversations a month with 70% resolved end to end, and its CTO spent the whole rollout calling generative AI overhyped.

Deep Dive15 min

AI Regulation: What the EU AI Act and GDPR Mean for Your Business

The EU has just delayed the AI Act's high-risk deadline from August 2026 to December 2027, but the transparency rules for chatbots and AI-generated content still land in August 2026. This guide explains the revised timeline, the risk classifications, the penalties, and what UK and North American businesses selling into the EU or UK need to do.

Case Study8 min

How Chemist Warehouse Cut Shelf Gaps by 30% in a Month With a Wearable AI Badge

Chemist Warehouse gave store associates a small camera badge worn on a lanyard. As staff walk the aisles doing their normal jobs, it scans the shelves hundreds of times a day and tells them what to restock. Inventory gaps fell 30% in the first month, and the rollout is heading for 550+ stores.

Case Study6 min

How Octopus Energy Used AI to Free Customer Service Agents From the Work Nobody Wanted

Octopus Energy's AI tool Magic Ink drafts over a third of customer service emails and outscores human-only emails on customer satisfaction. CEO Greg Jackson said in 2023 that it was doing the work of around 250 people. Despite the productivity gain, the company hasn't made a single redundancy. Agents moved to phone support and complex cases instead.

Case Study9 min

What Happened When Klarna Replaced 700 Customer Service Agents With AI

Klarna deployed an AI chatbot that handled two-thirds of customer service chats and projected $40 million in savings. Fourteen months later, the CEO admitted they'd gone too far. The company started rehiring humans, repositioning human support as a premium differentiator, not a cost line.

Case Study9 min

How Walmart Is Turning Cashiers Into Drone Technicians While Keeping 2.1 Million Jobs

Walmart deployed autonomous forklifts, AI-powered fulfilment centres, and generative AI tools across its operations, cutting delivery costs by 40%. Rather than reducing its 2.1 million workforce, the company invested nearly $1 billion in reskilling programmes, converting frontline workers into drone technicians, robot supervisors, and HVAC specialists earning up to $45 per hour.

Case Study8 min

How IKEA Turned 8,500 Call Centre Workers Into Interior Design Advisors Using AI

IKEA deployed an AI chatbot that handled 47% of customer queries. Instead of cutting the workforce, they analysed what the chatbot could not do, discovered latent demand for design services, and retrained call centre staff as interior design advisors. The remote design channel now generates EUR 1.3 billion annually.

Guide5 min

How to Set Up and Run an AI Hackathon

A practical guide to planning, running, and following through on an AI hackathon that produces real business outcomes, not just excitement.

Guide5 min

How to Run Your First AI Leadership Conversation

Most leadership teams need to have an honest conversation about AI before they can make any useful decisions about it. Here is how to run one that actually works.

Deep Dive17 min

AI Agents: What They Actually Are and What They Can Do for Your Business

Everyone is talking about AI agents. Most of what you hear is vendor marketing. This guide explains what agents actually are, what works today in consumer-facing businesses, what does not, and how to think about them for your programme.

Case Study4 min

How a Dutch Sports Retailer Cut Overstock by 47% with AI Forecasting

Daka, an 18-store sports retailer in the Netherlands, replaced manual replenishment with an AI forecasting tool. Forecast accuracy went from 49% to 96% and overstock nearly halved. Here is what they did.

Case Study4 min

How One Restaurant Cut Food Waste by 33% in a Month with an AI Camera

Sydney Opera Bar installed a single AI-powered device above their kitchen bin. Within weeks, food waste per cover dropped by a third. A look at what happened and why it matters for your programme.

Deep Dive13 min

The LLM Landscape: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Model

There are now dozens of large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, and others. This guide cuts through the noise and explains what each does well, what it costs, and how to choose.

Deep Dive5 min

What Is RAG and Why Should You Care?

Retrieval-Augmented Generation explained in plain English. What it is, how it works, where it adds value in consumer-facing businesses, and the tools that make it possible.