Workday Podcast: Go for Growth - Can AI Help UK SMBs Take on the Big Boys

Speaker A: Welcome to the Go for Growth podcast where we explore how small and medium sized businesses in the UK can improve productivity and drive growth. I'm Ben Carter, Workday's VP for a medium enterprise and today I'm going to be joined by Andrew Sandiford and Richard Harborne from Bishop Fleming. Research recently published by Workday found that 65% of small business leaders are already deploying artificial intelligence in their businesses, unlocking more than 850 work hours per year. With AI giving small and medium sized businesses a much needed productivity boost and helping them punch above their weight. Are we now on the cusp of creating a more competitive business landscape where size is no longer a barrier to success? That's what I'm going to be discussing with Andrew and Richard today. We'll also dive into the detail behind the recent UK budget, what that means for small businesses, as well as hearing from Andrew and Richard in leading a fast growing business themselves. So thanks very much for joining us today, Andrew and Richard. To start off, tell us a bit about Bishop Fleming.

Speaker B: A bit about Bishop Fleming. Right, okay. So we are a full service firm of accountants based down in the southwest. We are uh, 500 people, uh, 40 partners and we do all the things that you'd expect a firm of accountants to do.

Speaker C: Well, perhaps relevant for this podcast, uh, we have a business strategy that we call Better Growth. So it's all about trying to grow our business more sustainably in the future.

Speaker A: So we're here to talk about AI, but before we dive into that, uh, we recently had the government spring statement, um, perhaps some short term headwinds in there for small businesses. Earlier in the year we had the AI Opportunity Action Plan, um, so a lot to get excited about there for the uk as an advisor to businesses, um, in the UK and Ireland, I'd love to get your take on the opportunities that lie ahead.

Speaker B: You got quite an interesting contrast there, haven't you? The action plan and the uh, and the, and the spring statement. Because I don't think there was a lot of good news in the spring statement. I don't think, you know, pulling the positives out of that is a challenge. Um, I think you have to accept that growth is, is not quite where we would like it to be. I think, uh, times are reasonably hard and growth is hard to come by, which absolutely plays into the idea of let's make it our uh, business, every business as, as efficient, as productive as it possibly can be. Let's make the most of the opportunities that are presenting because I think they've Got to be hard fought for, but absolutely they are there. I'm an optimist. I would always say let's, let's use the opportunities, let's make good businesses better.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think we would definitely be, you know, bullish on the British economy and bullish on the, the small and midsize business. Um, the economy is built on, um, and as Andrew says, I think it's about seeing the upside of that. And I suppose the call to action is to look at your business and make sure it is, you know, fit for the future. Technology plays a big role in that. Um, not putting your head in the sand but seeing what changes are needed to make sure you're well positioned.

Speaker A: That's great. And switching gears to AI, it's quite a nice segue because you talked about productivity, efficiency, making sure you're running a sustainable business. What role do you think AI has to play in, in uh, in those things?

Speaker B: The impact of AI probably will take longer than many anticipate. Certainly from that hype phase, I think things, things will become more balanced, but I think the impact is going to be beyond our wildest imagination. Um, I think it's going to fundamentally change the way businesses operate. It's going to change our everyday life. Um, and we're only just starting to see the implications of that.

Speaker A: Bishop Fleming perhaps is ahead of the curve as far as, um, AI implementation is concerned. I think the report that we recently published showed that about two thirds of organisations, um, small, medium sized businesses have implemented AI. Tell me a bit about where you are on that journey.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that it's recognized as a major disruptor, but a positive one. We can see, um, a way forward where our teams are more productive, where we can therefore reduce costs of delivery. Um, our client satisfaction can go up. Our uh, engagement of our people can go up if we embrace that technology and use it in the right ways. And that's what we're focused on, trying to figure out how the different technology use cases are that will work for us, um, as opposed to worrying about the technical side of things. We're not the size of business that would have the resources and the budget to look at developing our own technologies. But we can absolutely leverage the technologies that are there in the marketplace.

Speaker A: Interesting. You mentioned client satisfaction there. How is AI going to play a role there for Bishop Fleming?

Speaker B: I think when all said and done, we're a relationship business and nothing is ever going to change that relationship piece, but AI is absolutely going to help us to power those relationships. Just, you know, Very simply, I'll be able to surface relevant information. So you're about to have a conversation with a client, you can have relevant information at your fingertips. We can look at behaviors, um, we'll be able to do analysis that might have been beyond what would be commercial in the past. Whereas now that, that level of automation, that uh, degree of AI will be able to, to mean that we can do things that we didn't really dream of before. So, so that those relationships can become better quality relationships. But we very much see AI in a supporting role. Um, AI is going to become implicit in everything we do rather than be a thing that stands on its own.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, so speeding up things for, for, for the customer, providing a greater level of depth, um, for the customer, but not taking the human out of the equation. I guess trust for a business like yours is critical.

Speaker B: I think it also sort of illustrates that point that AI doesn't need to be a thing. AI is implicit in what we do. And I was mentioning just now about, I took my son to University Open Day, um, it happened to be the university that I went to and I showed him the room where I first used a spreadsheet and he couldn't quite believe that there was life before spreadsheets. But there was and I could. This is where it all began for me anyway. And we later had a conversation about AI and what impact AI would have on learning and courses and commerce and so on and so forth. And I think that sort of look back to technologies that have come and had such a unimaginable impact on our uh, industry and on our daily lives also shows how AI will become implicit in everything we do. We won't think about it as AI is a thing. It's AI is just what makes in this case a good piece of software. It's there and we use it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. How much autonomy did he have in his university selection?

Speaker B: He's decided that's not the place for him.

Speaker A: So. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. So over the years we've seen these big technologies, technological leaps, um, personal computer, the Internet, more recently the cloud, um, and they're always met with a bit of trepidation from the workforce in that what does it mean for them and that and their jobs? So I guess for, for, for you know, graduates, uh, 20, 20 somethings that are coming into your, your business, what advice would you give them?

Speaker B: There's a hard one. I mean it's be curious, seek, um, to understand what's going on in the world around us. Um, Explore a little bit and play with technology. Don't be afraid of it, embrace it. I mean, we've taken a bit of a wrap recently because I think it was Jeremy Hunt who said, don't train to be an accountant because the profession's going to be wiped out by AI. It's nonsense because no profession I don't think is going to be wiped out by AI. But I think there will be professions that change beyond imagination because of AI. And look back at our uh, job in that spreadsheet scenario. M if you'd said to a ledger clerk back in the 60s that you're not going to have to write up a ledger anymore, they would have said that is the end of accountancy. M Whereas now the profession is bigger than it ever was back then. And it's bigger because technology has enabled it to be bigger. And AI will be the next generation of that. It will enable our profession to be bigger. I don't think it'll cause our uh, profession to contract. And there are so many other professions I think that will be similar. They will change, but they will evolve.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's clear that AI is great at execution, but human judgment remains irreplaceable. Skills like creativity, human interaction, human ethical applications, um, and actually perhaps it's the newer entrance into industries that will be ahead of the curve, will embrace these technologies and find a way to add value, uh, on top of them. It's perhaps the, the older generations that might, might change with the um, might, might struggle with the shift, um, more generally, I guess. In your own implementation of AI and this tooling within Bishop Fleming, have you seen any resistance? Is there anything that you could, you could advise around managing these, managing that change?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I think the talent nowadays, and we have a lot of students and apprenticeship trainees, um, in the firm today. They expect consumer grade technology. They've been brought up with it. They get used to their mobile phone and what they can get done in a day. And so like any profession really, whether you're a carpenter or an accountant, you need the tools of trade. If you can get the best, most modern tools of trade to aid you in your role, then that can only be, you know, a beneficial thing. Um, we've been using, for example on all of the teams calls that we've had, um, AI chatbots to automatically transcribe those calls, use the summary notes. That's just become second nature now. A bit like what Andrew was saying earlier, it might feel like a bit of a new technology right now. And everyone's trying to figure out how best to use it but eventually it gets implemented in that day to day flow of work and becomes. Yeah, just something that's normal.

Speaker A: Yeah. When you, I think a lot of the um, obviously there's a lot of unknowns around AI about what value it's going to deliver into the future. And I think again the point was made around investing in platforms that have the promise of delivering or the m most likely to deliver the most value. But if you think about AI and humans together in the context of your business, if you've got an idea around the perfect dream team, what will humans do? What will AI do into the future?

Speaker C: I think that what we're trying to do at the moment is probably like from the research I've seen, like what many business owners are trying to do is just to figure out how for our business, the practices, the processes, the different work arrangements we have, how that technology can help that, how it can aid that. Um, and um, and then through that, ensure that whenever we are investing in technology that those different bits of software have AI embedded it like the example I gave before. And then we can fit that into the way of working for everybody. Um, for example, um, right now, um, we have teams as the chat in the organization. Um, and anyone who wants to book holiday can just type into a teams chat, oh, I want to go on a two week holiday in August and that initiates a conversation now an AI driven chatbot and they can conclude on that and have their holiday booked, um, without ever going into our actual, you know, HR platform.

Speaker B: I uh, like the idea of that, that dream team combination because I think that's the way that everybody should be thinking about it. And it's going to be different ratios, different balances in different businesses and I think each business is going to have to find its, its natural, its natural balance. Um, but for us there is, is absolutely a need, as you say, for that human intervention. I mean our business, when all said and done, is a relationship business. And AI is not going to replace those relationships, but it is absolutely going to change the way that we hold those relationships, the way we inform people, the way we uh, proactively surface data to be able to have a conversation relationship still remains, but the AI is going to help those relationships to manifest in a slightly different way.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So Bishop Fleming, as you've both said a couple of times, is a people, is a people business. And I think what we hear about, you know, the value that humans can deliver, ah, with AI into the Future is going to be around a lot of the soft skills. Um, so is there anything the organization's doing from a recruiting perspective or a talent, uh, development perspective to enhance those soft skills?

Speaker B: I smile when you say recruitment because at the moment we're trying to think about how we overcome AI in recruitment rather than embrace it. But we're probably gonna have to use AI to overcome the AI, which is ah, an interesting uh, scenario. But uh, to be honest, it's very early days and be entirely frank, how we get people to use AI in a, in a safe way, in a professional way is, is a challenge. And I don't think honestly we've, we've got the right answer to that yet, but it doesn't stop us from, from exploring and that's the key part. I don't want to be in a situation where we, we, we pull down the shutters and say AI is dangerous. We don't want to go there. We're a human type business. We've absolutely got to embrace but recognize those challenges and face those challenges head on.

Speaker A: Yeah. So how are you weighing up um, the benefits of AI with some of those potential ethical issues with AI? Because for a business like yourselves where trust is paramount, um, if you get that wrong, that could potentially be pretty damaging. So how are you keeping some kind of guardrails around the implementation of various, uh, tools?

Speaker B: We talk a lot about guardrails and sometimes, I've got to be honest, I think we set them too narrow and sometimes we set them too wide and finding the right places is difficult, is challenging. Um, but for instance at the moment we're saying absolutely no client names to ah, go outside the organization into anything that's public. Very, very simple, um, but a very, very much a red line. And I think we have to explore those red lines and we're not going to be in a situation in our business. We've got the Big four, they've got huge multinational, multi billion dollar budgets to be able to have AI running all over their internal databases and the like. And, and we're, we're going to be in a different place to that. Um, so, so we have to sort of find that natural place and think what is safe. I mean, I'm starting to sound like the old man, but going back to some of the, the older, uh, previous technologies that have come through emails. I mean I can remember when we were doing battle with emails and saying, well, every email must be reviewed by a partner before it's sent. Well, how nonsensical does that seem? Now, yeah. Uh, but back at the time, the guys that were brave enough to say we are going to use email, but we might use it in a slightly cumbersome way, they were the ones that got ahead first.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and that's why come back to this curiosity point, this exploring point. I think we've got to encourage that, but in a safe way and set some boundaries.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, it's about trying to find that balance, I suppose Ben, between experimenting with it, you know, using it to get like a first draft of a report for example, but being responsible at the same time, knowing that you need to read through it, verify it, check, check the sources, make sure it's relevant and so forth, um, in order to progress with it, um, and accept the stage we're at now is early doors, um, but eventually ah, it'll become um, more ingrained, more embedded in the organization, I imagine.

Speaker B: Let me think about it a little bit. As AI is like the most junior member of the team. Our profession is built up on pyramids and review structures and so on and so forth. If we think of AI as being the most junior member of the team that works because you review the work, you understand what's done, you make sure that it's got that human layer and that more m. Senior layer and that professional skepticism run over it. But it's absolutely, uh, the team doesn't work without the junior member.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: And it would be easier to put your head in the sand and just want to wait. Um, and I think there is something about not being at that sort of bleeding edge, that leading edge, um, but equally having your eyes open and looking ahead to what there could be. I had a demo recently, a couple of weeks ago on um, contract management, um, and there's now AI based software that can take a look at a whole series of different formats of contracts to identify, you know, hidden, um, hidden obligations or difficult to find clauses. That's going to aid doing a piece of work better and quicker than it ordinarily would. I would have thought that can only be helpful for the organization, helpful for the, the team that's involved in that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It sounds like a, uh, very sensible approach in the AI is helping in terms of productivity, but you're still layering on human judgment, human expertise, uh, certainly before anything goes out the door. What would you say to business leaders? We've talked a lot about employees, um, embracing AI, being fearful about AI, but I think we see that from business leaders as well. I think there's like We've been through the hype cycle. There's lots of different applications for AI. It's quite a confusing landscape. So, um, how would you suggest business leaders think about the application of IT within their organization, Particularly ones that are a bit hesitant about taking the plunge?

Speaker C: Yeah, we can definitely share that hesitation. But I think as we said before, if they're looking to take advantage of the opportunities in the marketplace, if they're looking to build a sustainable business that's growing and then technology is going to be a big enabler in that sense. And so I think it's about trying to understand how that technology can influence their business, um, and work on trying to think through the different applications of that technology, the different business processes that it can support and enable, um, and in time figure out how to implement it, um, and also take care of the people side of the change. It's not just about the technology. Um, the research out there is that I think there are a lot of employees understandably, um, questioning, you know, will it impact jobs or how does it change their role. And there needs to be a conversation internally within the businesses about that. The business leaders are probably ahead of the, ahead of their employees and seeing the benefits of it. But at the end of the day that people, uh, side, um, of change is important for it to be really successful.

Speaker A: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So really not burying your head in the sands. AI is here. You'll perhaps be left behind if you don't embrace it. Um, but really figure out the use case for your particular business. Where is it going to add value and make sure that you're taking your people along with the journey. Right, it's been great chatting to you both. Uh, we're gonna have a bit of a change of pace now. We've got five quick fire questions for you. So go for it.

Speaker B: Who's going first?

Speaker A: I don't know. How should we do this? Should we. We'll start just, just hit. Just go on. I'm gonna give you that privilege.

Speaker C: Go ahead.

Speaker A: I'm gonna throw them out.

Speaker B: Uh, and the first one to answer gets the credit.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: We'll give you an Easter egg. Right, first one. True or false? There's never been a better time to run an SMB.

Speaker C: True, Definitely true.

Speaker A: Andrew's the winner. That was the easy one, by the way. They get a lot harder. Right. One word to describe the future for small medium sized businesses.

Speaker C: Bright.

Speaker B: Exciting.

Speaker A: Oh, great. Uh, you're pros, absolute pros. This one's tough. If you could create your Own AI agent. What would it do?

Speaker B: Manage my diary.

Speaker A: Brilliant. So it's like an executive assistant.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Agent. Love that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Don't tell Claire, but she does a great job. But if someone could just do it automatically and it filtered out everything, oh, that would be awesome.

Speaker A: Love that. What's more valuable? This is a tricky one. AI insights or human intuition?

Speaker B: Human intuition.

Speaker A: Technology guy.

Speaker C: I'm not a technology guy, but I think you definitely have to say human

Speaker A: intuition, at least at the moment.

Speaker C: I'm sure the agents will get smarter over time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, there's no substitute for it. Uh, true or false. Size matters.

Speaker B: False.

Speaker C: Brilliant.

Speaker A: A lot quicker than I expected.

Speaker B: You said quick fire. We got good. I think size is relevant. Absolutely. Um, but I think it's back to that democratization point that we were talking about earlier in that small businesses can be hugely successful, large businesses can be hugely successful. It's about finding the right size to do what you want to do. I don't think there's any, um, one size fits all. There's no right or wrong answer, to be honest.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think we've seen that with the. The advent of the Internet, you know, you know, businesses now can be very, very small, but. But sell, uh, you know, a niche product worldwide. You know, um, the. The influencers can build a business, you know, from their bedroom. You know, the cloud software, bookkeeping systems. The small businesses now, they can operate as if they're much larger. They seem larger. So, yeah, I think that, um, whole leveling the playing field is very real.

Speaker A: Great, great. All right, so you heard it here first. Size doesn't matter. Um, thank you, guys. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I appreciate you being here and sharing your insights, um, with us. We look forward to having you again in the future. One final question, if I, if I may. If we were to interview anyone else as part of this podcast, any recommendations?

Speaker B: Ah, uh, there's a question. No, I would, I would say interview people from interesting businesses and go for the people that you've never heard of because they'll have some fascinating insights. I think if you go for the headlines, you're going to get a recurring theme. Just go for people that you never heard of.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it doesn't matter which industry they come from either. You know, I think the technology can be applied across the whole lot and they're all going to have their own different take on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great suggestion. We really want diversity of opinion. M here. So thank you again, giving us some great insight and thank you for joining us. I hope it's given you some food for thought.