A management consultant by background, Kieron started his career at Ernst and Young before establishing his own consultancy in 2002. He grew this business to over 80 staff with a £10 million turnover, and successfully achieved 12th in the Sunday Times Fast Track of fastest-growing companies. His consulting work included digital transformation and change management for large organisations and the UK Government.

What is the main problem you solve for your customers?

More than 80% of business data is unstructured, buried in a host of different formats like documents, emails, and social media posts. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to use effectively – resulting in missed opportunities for better-informed decisions, not to mention extra work in finding and cross-checking information.

Generative AI has the potential to unlock insights from these vast data sets and use them to train AI models to handle complex tasks, particularly repetitive tasks that consume the most time. This means businesses can scale more easily, provide better customer service, win more business, and be more efficient. AI really can do more for less. To me, it’s incredibly exciting and I can’t wait to see how AI can truly revolutionise businesses in the months and years to come.

What made you start your business?

I founded Engine to focus on solving client challenges with AI solutions. Too much digital transformation has been focused on the technology and not enough on the people and real-life challenges that it can solve.

My work as a transformation consultant means I have spent my career finding innovative solutions for client business problems. When Generative AI hit the headlines in November 2022, I wanted to understand how it could play a part in supporting businesses to deliver their strategy and overcome their challenges. As my research and learning deepened to understanding how Large Language Models are built and how they work, I realised the incredible potential of this technology to help with many of the business challenges I have spent my career trying to solve. I founded Engine to focus on solving client challenges with AI solutions. Too much digital transformation has been focused on the technology and not enough on the people and real-life challenges that it can solve.

Is team culture integral to your business?

Yes, team culture is crucial. We foster an environment of collaboration, continuous learning, and mutual respect, which drives our innovation and success. We have a work-from-home model and it can be hard to really understand how everyone is getting on if you only interact on Teams calls. We have a daily all-hands stand-up to ensure everyone is up to date with the latest developments and client challenges, and we get together regularly for dinners and events. But the challenge of working solely from home is an area I worry about and we need to keep improving how we bond as a team. It is essential to understand individual motivations in order to be an effective and persuasive leader. That’s much harder to understand over Teams.

Tell us your approach to client messaging?

We want to make complex AI concepts understandable and relevant to each clients' specific needs.

One of our challenges is the breadth of AI solutions, and each can deliver a transformative impact on a client business. It’s sometimes hard to focus on a single solution and that can confuse customers with too much choice. This is something I am working on. And because we are working at the leading edge of AI solutions, we often get to a point where the client says, “We love it, I want it, when can I have it?” but then takes a few steps back to consider their organisation’s wider AI strategy. This is the right approach, but it can be frustrating for us. We are going back to our roots and drawing on our consulting experience to launch an AI Strategy consulting offer to help guide clients to the right AI strategy for their business.

How often do you assess the data you pull in and address your KPIs and why?

We review our data and KPIs in real time in many cases, with some fixed reviews each month to make sure we are meet our goals and learn and adapt as we go.

Is tech playing a much larger part in your day-to-day running of your company?

We practice what we preach. Our business uses our own AI tools and some other specialist tools, like HeyGen and Aragon.ai when we need video or images. For example, we have AI Proposal Builder, which is trained on our case studies and sales literature and writes client proposals tailored to any brief, at the press of a button. We think every organisation should have one of these – it means you no longer have to prioritise the proposals or bids you respond to, you can just reply to them all with an individualised response. And it should give better responses because it will find relevant case studies that a human might have forgotten.

Do you have any advice for anyone starting out in business?

Start with some real customers, if you can. It’s seductive to start with weeks of web design, developing polished sales materials, attending entrepreneur events and creating detailed business plans, but it’s a whole lot better to find a handful of customers who are willing to work with you to develop your idea in real life situations. It also proves your concept before you invest time and money in developing something nobody is interested in.

My mantra has always been, “If there are two courses of action and one frightens you, do that one.” That way you are stretching yourself and not staying in your comfort zone.

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