FEATURE
Dan Reid, CTO, Xceptor
Manual, repetitive, error-prone tasks, such as reconciliations, tax reporting or regulatory disclosures, are ripe for automation. What automation unlocks is the ability to reallocate people, not replace them. Human expertise is still critical, especially in domains including compliance, judgment-led reviews, exception handling and client relationships.
The recent McKinsey study found that employees are already using AI three times more than their leaders assume. Moreover, what they want is more training and access, implying that too many firms underestimate their workforce’ s appetite and readiness for automation.
The lesson shouldn’ t be to scale AI while sidelining people, but to use data automation to elevate people by giving them tools to shift from administration to analysis, from input to insight.
Why so many AI initiatives stall and what to do instead
One of the main reasons AI projects struggle to move beyond a pilot stage is that they’ re built on unstable foundations. No matter how powerful a model is, it will fail if the underlying data processes are fragmented, manual or opaque.
Many firms jump into AI experimentation without first addressing how data flows through the organisation. Critical aspects of data management, such as ownership, access, integrity or traceability, are undervalued or even ignored. The result is proof-of-concept tools that cannot be deployed at scale because they require constant manual intervention or fail to meet audit requirements.
Data automation addresses this directly. By simplifying and standardising the way data is ingested, normalised, validated and processed, it creates the optimal conditions for scalable AI. This also ensures that teams have access to timely, trusted data, which is critical for both performance and compliance.
As AI regulation evolves with new laws emerging across the UK, EU and beyond, the need for traceability, explainability and auditability is only growing. Automation platforms that embed these features from the outset can give firms a significant head start.
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