Flow is your team at their best: doing challenging, meaningful work. Not the stuff AI can handle. I build the engine to take that off their plate, giving them the time to focus on growth.
I built OnBrief.ai to solve a problem I know from the inside. Talented, expensive people stuck doing work that a well-built system should be doing for them.
Getting that right is not about throwing AI at everything. It is about working out exactly where it adds value: the processing, the repetition, the data-heavy work. So your team can get back to the strategy, the creativity, and the decisions that move the business.
I'm a commercial strategist with over 25 years of experience leading digital agencies and technology businesses (including Future Platforms, Dare and Engine) working with organisations like Aviva, Barclays, First Bus, Virgin Active and Waitrose.
Most businesses know they could be more efficient. The hard part is knowing where to start.
We look across your operations to find exactly where busy work is undermining performance. Not a generic AI pitch. A specific diagnosis of where your team's time is going, and where it shouldn't be.
We prioritise. Not every inefficiency is worth fixing first. I find the tasks that are the biggest drain on your best people, and that are also the quickest wins to address.
I build the engine, using automation and AI appropriately for your business. Not a replacement for your team. A system that handles the grind so they don't have to.
For teams that want to keep building. I work alongside you on a retainer, extending, iterating, and expanding your AI stack as your needs evolve. Think fractional Head of AI Ops.
Case studies where removing friction gave clients back time to focus on what's important.
The Jolly Hog runs regular brand tracking surveys. Every wave produces a detailed picture of awareness, consideration, and purchase intent across different audiences. Exactly the kind of data a growing brand needs to make confident decisions.
The problem was what happened between each new wave arriving and anyone being able to use it. The raw files needed significant manual preparation before any analysis could start. With 12 million-plus data points, the insight was always there. Getting to it was the busy work.
An automated pipeline built to handle the messy reality of real-world data: inconsistent column names, format changes between waves, slight differences in how questions are asked. The mapping rules live in a simple schema; when the survey changes, the pipeline updates itself. No developer required.
When a new file arrives, it triggers the process. Everything loads into a structured BigQuery database, ready to query the moment it completes. On top of the pipeline: an AI query layer. The team types a question in plain English (how awareness has shifted in the last two waves, how consideration compares across audiences, which metrics have moved most) and a routing agent writes the SQL in the background and returns a clear answer.
"On my (and everyone's?) to do list for 2026 - explore how A.I can make me more efficient. Fergus has created a platform that allows me to look at my brand tracking data instantly.... I'm not going to be attempting the back end of the A.I systems (what a minefield) so thank goodness for people like Fergus!"— Christine Everett, Marketing Director, The Jolly Hog | B Corp
This unique business is a change agency built for agility: combining strategic insight, cultural intelligence and creative bravery for business leaders and industry rebels. That work demands full focus.
But like any fast-moving comms agency, every new brief brought a stack of documents to read, research to cross-reference, and angles to surface before the real thinking could begin. Essential groundwork. But not where a team like this should be spending its time.
The starting point was their workflow, not a generic AI tool. Phase by phase: audit and current-state analysis, competitive positioning, workshop preparation, strategic narrative, content execution. A specialist agent for each stage. Multiple agents that each do one thing well.
The design principle throughout was simple: AI handles what AI is good at. The team controls the inputs at every stage, reviews what comes back, and brings their judgment to bear where it counts. The more creative the work, the more that human layer matters. The agents clear the path. The strategists decide where to go. Their Google Drive is the control panel. Every agent has a folder. Agent instructions are updatable in plain English via a Google Doc, no developer needed. The system is theirs to direct, not the other way around.
Every month, someone at Specialised Fire & Security sat down with a pricing spreadsheet of over 40,000 rows. The job was straightforward in theory: update the prices, check the figures, get it ready for the team. In practice, it was two days of slow, careful, manual work: easy to get wrong, hard to delegate, and difficult to justify as the best use of a specialist team's time.
This is what we call busy work. It is not the reason anyone joins a specialist business. And it accumulates, month after month, in ways that are easy to accept and hard to fix.
The solution didn't require new software or a replacement system. Using Power Query in Excel, a built-in feature most teams never reach, all the manual handling could be rebuilt to run automatically at the click of a button.
AI played a supporting role here. Not as the engine doing the work, but as the means of getting to the right solution faster. The result is a properly-built, reliable process running inside the tool the team already knows.
"If you are looking for advice on how you can get the most out of AI, you would do well to speak with Fergus, who's been brilliant."— Albert Hall, Director, Specialised Fire & Security
Is there a process in your business that your team has accepted as "just how it works"? That's usually a good place to start.
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We will talk through the friction and whether it is something I can fix. No PowerPoint. Just a useful conversation.
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