Articles by Thomas Burke
Agentic AI for UK Mid-Market Finance Teams — What Sage Intacct and Dynamics 365 Finance Can Actually Do Today
Agentic AI — software agents that can plan, act, and iterate without constant human prompting — arrived in UK mid-market finance in late 2025. Sage Intacct launched a network of five AI agents covering close management, accounts payable, time tracking, assurance, and a Finance Intelligence Agent that answers natural-language questions through Sage Copilot. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance shipped an Account Reconciliation Agent and Copilot for Finance as a production add-on. Both platforms target the same pain point: finance teams spending 64 per cent of their time on manual work that leaves no capacity for strategic analysis. But the products differ in design, pricing, and readiness. Sage Intacct starts from around £6,570 per year and uses modular pricing with AI included at no extra licence cost. Dynamics 365 Finance costs £161.50 per user per month before Copilot credits, which are billed separately. The comparison covers what each platform can do right now, maps the capabilities against Making Tax Digital for Income Tax deadlines starting April 2026, and provides a practical evaluation checklist for UK mid-market CFOs.
How to Build a Customer Data Platform for a UK Mid-Market Retailer Without Breaking PECR or UK GDPR
Walks UK mid-market retailers through building a customer data platform that complies with PECR and UK GDPR. Covers platform selection between Segment, HubSpot, and Bloomreach, consent management, data residency, ICO enforcement priorities, and the specific traps in direct marketing law that CDP projects routinely fall into.
How to Digitise Client Onboarding for a UK Financial Services Firm While Meeting FCA Consumer Duty
UK financial services firms are under twin pressure: the FCA Consumer Duty demands that onboarding processes deliver good outcomes for clients, while competitive pressure demands that those processes happen quickly. This guide covers the technology stack — DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Onfido, and Salesforce Financial Services Cloud — alongside the regulatory framework, with specific attention to where digital onboarding intersects with AML obligations, client categorisation, and the FCA's forthcoming digital journeys assessment.
How to Replace Paper Quality Management with a Digital QMS for UK Manufacturers — Ideagen vs Qualio Tested
UK manufacturers still running quality management on paper, spreadsheets, and shared drives face a tightening window. The ISO 9001:2026 revision will place greater weight on digital capability and data-driven decision-making. This guide walks through the practical steps of replacing paper-based QMS processes with a digital platform, compares Ideagen and Qualio head-to-head on cost, deployment, and audit readiness, and sets out a realistic timeline for a mid-market manufacturer to go live.
How Small UK MSPs With Under 10 Staff Can Punch Above Their Weight Using Automation and AI Tooling
Shows UK MSPs with under 10 staff how to use automation and AI tooling to compete with larger providers. Covers ConnectWise Asio RPA and AI scripting, Datto Autotask Cooper Copilot for smart ticket triage, NinjaOne per-endpoint RMM, and Halo PSA all-inclusive pricing. Includes what to automate first, what the tools actually cost, and where small MSPs waste time.
How UK Mid-Market IT Directors Should Vet an MSP's Security Posture Before Signing a Managed Services Deal
Gives UK mid-market IT directors a structured approach to vetting managed service providers on security. Covers the differences between Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type II. Explains the NCSC MSP guidance published in late 2025, NIS Regulations obligations for MSPs, incident reporting requirements, and the specific due diligence questions that separate competent providers from those trading on trust.
How UK Mid-Market Companies Should Structure a Multi-Vendor IT Arrangement Without Leaving Gaps Between Providers
A technical guide for UK mid-market IT directors managing two or more external IT providers. Covers the specific failure modes of multi-vendor arrangements — incident ownership disputes, security responsibility gaps, and compliance blind spots — and provides a practical framework for structuring vendor relationships using SIAM governance, RACI matrices, and contractual accountability. Includes a responsibility matrix template, risk assessment for common gap areas, and guidance on controller obligations under UK GDPR when data flows across multiple processors.
How to Build a RAG Chatbot on Azure UK South Using Your Own Company Documents Without a Data Science Team
Retrieval-augmented generation lets a chatbot answer questions using your own company documents rather than general internet knowledge. Azure now makes this buildable in a day, with all data staying in the UK South region. This guide walks through the three Azure services you need — Azure AI Search for retrieval, Azure OpenAI Service for the language model, and Azure AI Foundry as the orchestration layer — from a Basic-tier pilot costing around £120 per month to a production deployment handling thousands of daily queries. No Python scripting is required for the initial build: Foundry's guided 'On Your Data' experience handles indexing, chunking and prompt configuration through a browser interface. The article covers architecture options, realistic cost breakdowns for 50-person and 200-person organisations, failure modes worth planning for, and a 12-point checklist to run before going live.