Insights
Thinking on technology, written plainly.
What we've learned building the systems organisations run on: AI where it pays, data you can trust, and when bespoke software earns its keep.
AI
Most businesses use a fraction of the AI already available to them
Most businesses have 'done' AI in one visible place: a chatbot, a licence, the odd drafted email. That's a fraction of what the same technology could already be doing, and the gap is rarely the budget or the model. It's the integrations nobody thought to ask for.
7 July 2026 · 5 min read
Bespoke software
Buy or build? When bespoke software pays for itself
Every mature estate is both bought and built: the question was never which side wins, but which parts of the business belong on each side. Get that allocation wrong and the bill arrives either way: as a licence renewal that never falls, or a bespoke system nobody needed.
1 July 2026 · 5 min read
AI monthly
AI in June 2026: what actually mattered
A regulatory intervention took one of the world's most capable AI models offline for weeks, and accidentally made the best case yet for never building your operation around a single provider. Our monthly read on the AI news that matters to a business.
30 June 2026 · 4 min read
Technology
The hidden cost of scattered systems
No single decision creates a scattered estate. It accumulates. A system here, a spreadsheet there, and a decade later nobody can answer a simple question without opening four tabs.
24 June 2026 · 6 min read
AI
Practical AI: where it actually pays inside an established business
Every board wants an AI strategy. Fewer ask what the model should actually do on a Tuesday afternoon, and that question, not the strategy, is what decides whether any of it pays for itself.
10 June 2026 · 4 min read
AI monthly
AI in May 2026: what actually mattered
Record sums moved into AI this month, and the most interesting spend wasn't on models, but on getting them deployed. Our monthly read on the AI news that matters to a business.
29 May 2026 · 4 min read
Bespoke software
What drives the cost of bespoke software?
Two suppliers can quote the same brief and land several times apart, and neither one is necessarily wrong. They're pricing different systems that happen to share a name. Knowing what moves the number matters more than knowing the number itself.
12 May 2026 · 6 min read
AI monthly
AI in April 2026: what actually mattered
The month AI agents moved from keynote slides to procurement line items, and a reminder, from an unexpected quarter, that capability and risk arrive together. Our monthly read on the AI news that matters to a business.
30 April 2026 · 4 min read
AI
What does AI actually do for an operations team?
The interesting question was never a headline about the future of work. It's what changes in an operations team's actual week. The honest answer: AI takes on the tasks nobody chose to do, and gives the team back the time for the parts of the job that always needed a person.
21 April 2026 · 6 min read
Data
What does ‘AI-ready’ data actually mean?
‘AI-ready’ has become the phrase every vendor uses and nobody defines, usually because a vague standard is easier to claim you've met than a specific one. Pin it down and it turns out to be a short list of unglamorous properties the business needed to sort out anyway.
9 April 2026 · 7 min read
AI monthly
AI in March 2026: what actually mattered
Agent platforms arrived from every direction this month, and a survey of 1,600 business leaders quietly explained why most organisations aren't ready to use them. Our monthly read on the AI news that matters to a business, minus the noise.
31 March 2026 · 4 min read
Technology
Legacy systems: when to modernise, and when to leave well alone
Old is not the same as broken, and "legacy" is not the same as "liability": plenty of ageing systems are stable, isolated, and doing their one job so well that nobody notices them. The skill is telling those apart from the ones quietly running out of road.
17 March 2026 · 6 min read
AI
What is an AI agent, actually? A plain-English guide
"Agent" has become the label stuck on almost anything with a chat window, which means it no longer tells a buyer very much. Underneath the marketing, though, it describes a specific and useful pattern, worth understanding on its own terms before anyone builds a business case around it.
6 March 2026 · 7 min read
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