AI & automation
Where should human review sit in an AI workflow?
A useful checkpoint is specific, well-timed and easy to resolve. Design review around the decisions a deal team must own, not a generic approval button at the end.
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12 articles
From email10 October 2026 · 6 min read
A deal timeline should record decisions, not just email
Copying messages into another inbox creates a second place to search. A useful deal timeline captures the event, its source, the proposed change and the person who confirmed it.
9 October 2026 · 5 min read
An M&A brief is only useful if you can check its sources
A polished AI summary can hide a wrong period, an outdated model or an unresolved question. How to design a deal brief around evidence, document versions and a review your team can actually finish.
9 October 2026 · 5 min read
Connecting Outlook to your deal CRM without creating another inbox
Deal updates arrive in email, but the pipeline lives somewhere else. A practical way to capture activity, match it to the right mandate and give uncertain changes a human checkpoint.
3 September 2026 · 8 min read
AI agents or workflow automation: what a deal firm actually needs
The two get sold under one label, but they are different tools with different failure modes. Where deterministic automation quietly beats a language model, where a model earns its place, and how to tell which one a workflow is asking for.
3 September 2026 · 8 min read
How a ten-person deal firm should start with AI
Not with a tool, a pilot programme or a policy document. A practical sequence for a small M&A or corporate finance firm: find the hours, pick one workflow, ground the system in your own documents, and judge it on time returned.
2 September 2026 · 8 min read
What AI consulting actually involves for a financial firm
AI consulting is mostly sold as demos and delivered as chat windows. For a financial firm the useful version looks different: specific workflows, grounded in the firm's own documents, running under the firm's own controls. What an engagement should involve, and what to be sceptical of.
2 September 2026 · 8 min read
How to choose an AI consultancy for a financial services firm
The market is full of AI consultancies, and a financial firm cannot evaluate them on demos, because every demo works. Six questions that separate firms able to engineer AI into confidential financial work from firms selling the same slides to everyone.
2 September 2026 · 8 min read
AI and client data: what UK and Canadian financial firms should ask
Financial firms adopting AI in the UK and Canada face two privacy regimes, and in Quebec a third. A plain-language tour of the questions UK GDPR, PIPEDA and Law 25 raise for AI in deal work, and the architectural answer that satisfies all of them at once.
4 August 2026 · 8 min read
Why internal deal tools fail in the year after handover
Most tools built for advisory firms do not fail at launch. They fail quietly over the following year, and the causes are predictable. What to watch for, and how to commission software that survives.
4 August 2026 · 8 min read
What running inside your own Microsoft tenant actually means
Every vendor says your data is secure. The more useful question is structural: where does the data sit, and who is technically able to read it? A plain explanation of tenants, and the questions to ask any provider.
4 August 2026 · 8 min read
Build, buy or leave alone: a decision framework for a ten-person firm
Bespoke software is the right answer less often than a consultancy would like you to believe. A framework for deciding, workflow by workflow, whether to build, buy or change nothing at all.
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