Latest posts
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What Technical Due Diligence now expects to see around AI usage
Artificial intelligence is no longer experimental in UK SMEs. It is embedded in sales workflows, underwriting models, forecasting tools, customer communications and product features. In many cases it has become operationally critical without ever becoming formally governed. That shift matters in due diligence. Traditional technical due diligence has focused on platform scalability, cyber posture, code…
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The CPTO as AI translator: turning model capability into business decision-making
By the end of 2025, most mid sized organisations are already using AI in some form. Customer support teams are trialling copilots, finance teams are extracting data from documents, and product teams are embedding classification or recommendation into workflows. What has changed is not the presence of AI, but the number of business decisions it…
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From awareness to control: governing AI in practice in 2026
In our previous article, 2026: Technology and AI – what’s next for UK SME boards?, we argued that AI has now crossed a threshold. It is no longer an emerging technology that boards can safely delegate downward, nor is it a future concern that can be deferred until “things settle down”. AI is already influencing…
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2026: Technology and AI, what’s next for UK SME boards?
Looking forwards is always harder than looking backwards, but as we move into 2026, one theme is becoming unavoidable for UK SMEs: technology foundations matter again. Not because innovation has slowed, but because AI, automation, and digital services now amplify whatever sits underneath them. Strong foundations accelerate progress. Weak ones magnify risk, cost, and operational…
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Is Your Tech Stack AI-Ready? A CTO’s Guide to Scalable, Governable Foundations
For all the excitement around generative AI, most organisations are discovering a quieter truth. The biggest breakthroughs rarely come from a single model or vendor, but from the quality of the foundations that the Chief Technology Officer builds beneath them. The question is no longer “Should we adopt AI?” but “Is our technology stack ready…
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From Engineering to Intelligence: How CPTOs Must Adapt in the AI Era
For most of the last two decades, the arc of technology leadership has been clear: build reliable systems, scale them, keep them secure and resilient, and ensure the product vision is tethered to engineering reality. But the rise of AI has bent that into something much less predictable. Organisations are discovering that the shift from…
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The Ethics of AI at Board Level: Why Risk Is Not Just a Compliance Issue
AI now appears in almost every board pack I see. It is woven into growth plans, cost reduction exercises, investment cases and talent strategies. Yet, in many organisations, the ethical dimension receives far less attention than the commercial one. Too many boards still treat AI risk as if it were simply a matter of compliance,…
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The New Technical Debt: Unmaintainable or Misused AI Models
Technical debt used to be easy to spot. You could walk into a development team and see it in the codebase, the lack of tests, or the patchwork of quick fixes that no one wanted to touch. It had a smell to it. You knew that every release took longer, and every new feature came…
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Fractional CPTOs and AI strategy: Guiding innovation without overreach
AI is now a permanent topic in the boardroom, but not every board has the right expertise to turn that conversation into a coherent plan. Your company may already be experimenting with AI models or exploring automation, but without a clear strategy and governance framework these activities can quickly pull you away from your intended…
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Model Drift, Shadow AI, and Spaghetti ML: Why AI Governance Is Already a Problem
The promise of artificial intelligence in business is compelling. Increased efficiency, sharper insights, and products that adapt intelligently to customer needs are now part of the narrative in every boardroom. Yet beneath the enthusiasm lies a more uncomfortable reality. The technology is evolving faster than the structures designed to manage it, and companies are already…