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The 2026 AI Skills Shift

The government has pledged AI training for 10 million workers and Microsoft is focused on autonomous agentic tools. This issue provides the clarity needed to navigate new regulatory reviews, tools that reclaim 10 hours of admin per month and a pragmatic framework to identify spending waste.

Prompt Engineer

This prompt will help you transform messy financial data into a clear, pragmatic overview of your business spending, allowing you to identify waste and improve your margins immediately.

Copy and paste this into your AI assistant:

I am the [Job Title] of a UK-based [Business Type]. My primary goal is to gain better control over my business spending and identify where I can improve my profit margins.

Please act as a strategic financial advisor and provide:

  • A Categorised Expense Table: Based on the data I provide, group my spending into standard UK tax categories (e.g., Office Costs, Travel, Marketing).
  • The ‘Drain’ Analysis: Identify the top three areas where I am spending the most money and suggest one ‘lean’ or AI-driven alternative for each to reduce costs without hurting my operations.
  • A Cash-Flow Health Check: Identify any recurring subscriptions or ‘zombie’ costs that haven’t provided a clear ROI in the last 30 days.
  • UK Compliance Red Flags: Highlight any transactions that may require specific documentation for UK GDPR or HMRC purposes.

AI Updates Roundup

This week, the UK’s AI landscape has shifted from theoretical potential to practical, government-backed reality for businesses of all sizes.

Overview

  • Square has launched a free AI assistant to help UK retailers make better decisions using their own sales data.
  • The government is now offering free AI skills training to 10 million workers to help businesses modernise.
  • Financial regulators have started a major review into how AI will change customer service and competition.

Square has introduced a free conversational AI tool designed to help UK sellers turn their daily transaction data into actionable business insights.

  • So what? This means you can now chat with your own sales data to spot trends or plan inventory without needing to be a data scientist.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has expanded its national programme to provide free AI training to 10 million workers by 2030.

  • So what? You might want to explore these government-backed courses as a low-risk way to upskill your team and improve productivity without a huge price tag.

The Financial Conduct Authority has launched The Mills Review to examine how AI will reshape competition and consumer outcomes in financial services.

  • So what? If your business uses AI to interact with customers or manage finances, it’s worth keeping an eye on this review as it will likely set the rules for future compliance.

“AI is already delivering real value for our business, our colleagues and our customers. The progress we’ve made this year shows the scale of the opportunity ahead.” — Ron van Kemenade, Group Chief Operating Officer at Lloyds Banking Group.

Microsoft Copilot

Whether you are evaluating new tools or are already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem and looking to upskill, this week we are deep diving into Microsoft Copilot to help you identify the right generative AI assistant for your business operations.

Overview

  • Copilot integrates with Microsoft 365 to automate routine admin
  • New Agent Mode features allow businesses to move beyond basic chat toward autonomously managing complex workflows like reconciling vendor statements.
  • By targeting high-friction tasks like meeting triage and document drafting, the tool provides immediate time savings that can be reinvested elsewhere.

The core tool acts as a secure, web-grounded assistant, while the Microsoft 365 Copilot plan unlocks the ability to chat with your data by drawing insights from your private SharePoint and OneDrive files. The focus for 2026 has shifted toward Agent Mode, where Copilot moves from simply drafting text to autonomously managing multi-step financial workflows, like invoice processing and project tracking. For firms managing external finance or reporting to stakeholders, this provides a faster route to accurate, audit-ready data.

For those interested in the tech, Copilot runs on a sophisticated orchestration of the GPT-4.1 and GPT-5 series, including the GPT-5.2 ‘Thinking’ model for complex strategic reasoning and the Microsoft Phi family for fast, on-device processing.

Products & Services

How to Copilot can help your business

These are some examples of how you can use Copilot within your business:

  • Meetings & Communication: Use Copilot in Teams to generate instant summaries of missed meetings, including a list of action items and decisions made.
  • Complex Data Analysis: Use Copilot in Excel to identify trends, such as quarter-on-quarter revenue growth, using plain English commands rather than complex formulas.
  • Custom Agent Deployment: Use Copilot Studio to create a market research assistant that monitors industry trends or a payables agent to automate vendor invoice matching.

Quick Review: Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365💻

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a deeply embedded AI productivity platform that operates across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Powered by the latest GPT-5.2 models, it has evolved into a strategic building block for the digital workplace, offering agentic AI that can execute complex, multi-step workflows with minimal supervision.

Key Takeaways

  • Value & Features: Copilot now features agentic AI and specialised agents that act as autonomous coworkers within your Office apps. New updates include a thinking mode for deeper reasoning, a people agent for finding internal expertise and the ability to search your entire Copilot chat history.
  • Impact on Your Business: For UK SMEs, Copilot acts as a virtual assistant that can save approximately 10 hours per user each month by automating routine admin. It bridges the execution gap by transforming natural language commands into polished presentations, complex Excel formulas or summarised meeting actions instantly.
  • Example use case: Instead of manually comparing spreadsheets, a business owner can ask Copilot in Excel to identify budget overspends or forecast cash flow based on current growth rates.
  • Price Point: Copilot for Microsoft 365 is available as a paid add-on for approximately £24.70 per user per month, billed annually. Users

Upcoming Events & Conferences 📅

Member-focused briefing for security leaders and AI builders on AI security risks, supply chain issues, and adoption barriers.

Practical conference for project and change leaders building AI delivery capability beyond pilots.

Good for ops, data, and IT leaders comparing governance, transparency, and adoption approaches across vendors and peers.

Sector-focused day for construction and built environment leaders looking for applied AI use cases and workflow impacts.

For charity and public-benefit organisations wanting practical AI skills plus ethics and risk framing.

Deep-dive for governance, risk, and data leaders building operational AI governance at scale.

For Oracle customers evaluating AI enhancements across OCI, database, and Fusion apps with a measurable outcomes focus.

Training & Skills Development 🎓

Procurement and vendor teams align on AI due diligence questions, evaluation, and best practices.