bSMART AI · practical software for operational problems
Find the part of your business that costs too much, takes too long or simply does not work properly.
We understand how the work is really being done, work out where the time and money go, redesign the process, then build and run the software that makes the better way work. AI only where it earns its place.
We don't start with AI. We start with the operation.
Technology is useful when it removes a real cost, delay or problem. Before we build anything, we understand what people are doing today and why.
Understand what actually happens
We sit with the people doing the work and follow the real process. The spreadsheet, the inbox, the phone calls, the systems, the workarounds and the things people have learned to do because nobody ever fixed them.
Work out what it really costs
We break the work into activities and look at the time, people, repetition, errors, delays and cost behind them. That usually shows where the real problem sits.
Fix the process
We ask what should be removed, simplified, combined or done differently before anybody writes software. There is little value in automating a process that should not exist in the first place.
Build what is missing
If the better process needs software that does not exist, we build it around the people doing the job. If an existing product already solves it properly, we will say so.
Run it and keep improving it
The system is delivered as a service. We run it, support it and change it as the business changes.
The principle
Software is not always the answer.
Sometimes the answer is a better process. Sometimes it is connecting systems you already own. Sometimes it is automation. Sometimes AI can remove hours of reading or checking. And sometimes the sensible answer is to leave something alone.
The job is to find the improvement, not to find somewhere to put AI.
Problems we were shown, and what runs now.
The customers are left unnamed. The problems will be familiar.
Admissions · this week
Five disconnected jobs became one admissions operation.
A London school needed every family to receive a personal experience without continually adding administration. We built the CRM, visit booking, personalised prospectus, email follow-up and chatbot around the way its admissions team actually works.
76% of families who enquired went on to book an open day. Almost half booked within ten minutes of enquiring, more than half within the hour.
See how it worksChanges waiting for approval
Ninety-four analysts. Hundreds of fixtures. One coordinator.
One coordinator ran a freelance workforce out of spreadsheets, an inbox and a phone: who covers each match, holidays, call-offs, fixture changes, confirmations, expenses and pay. We built the whole operation into one system around the way the coordinator runs it, from the allocation and the communications to the month-end statements.
The coordinator puts the time it gives back at around 20 hours a month.
See how it worksThis week's movements
Fifty-one football clubs kept current every week.
Player movements can appear on a club website, a social post or in a local newspaper. We built one process that reads around 500 pages a night across 93 club websites, 29 local papers and news feeds and 139 club social pages, finds the changes, keeps the evidence for each one, asks clubs to confirm them and maintains the record.
Every change checked by the club itself, in leagues where there is no reliable public record.
See how it worksWaiting for approval · Xero
Stop typing paperwork that already contains the answer.
Invoices, receipts, credit notes and new supplier details arrive by email containing everything the accounts system needs. One tap files them into Xero, with two AI models checking every figure, bank details tested against fraud, and a person approving before anything is posted.
See how it worksFollow-through · Acme renewal
Catch what no single system can see.
A large organisation's week ran through its inbox, its CRM, delivery, support and finance, and what cost it money fell between them. We built SMART Hub to read them together, prepare the next step in the person's own words, and wait for one tap.
See how it worksDeliveries on Monday · packed today
Keep the box frozen without paying for early delivery every time.
A business ships frozen boxes by courier, and on a warm day a box can thaw before it is opened. We built a planner that reads the forecast for each delivery, follows the box from cold store to doorstep, and decides whether it needs early delivery, extra ice packs, both or neither. It writes a personal email to each customer whose delivery changes, then tracks what the courier actually did. No AI in it: rules the team can change, each decision explained.
See how it worksThe thinking started long before AI.
Before building software, bSMART AI founder Bob Ottley spent much of his career working on complex outsourced and technology-enabled operations for major private and public-sector organisations.
The work was often the same: understand why an operation cost what it did, find the bottleneck, redesign the process, make the economics work and build a solution the customer and the operation could actually live with.
bSMART AI applies the same thinking today, with modern software, automation and AI available as additional tools.
The technology has changed. The job is still to solve the right problem.
A service, not a software project.
Small setup fee
Enough to get the first working version live and make sure both sides are committed to solving the problem properly.
One monthly fee
Covers the software, hosting, support and the changes needed as the operation evolves. No new development invoice every time the process changes.
Your data stays yours
Your business data remains yours. If we stop working together, you can take it with you in a usable form.
Sometimes the problem is common enough to become a product
Salespeople don't keep CRMs current. So we changed the way the CRM gets updated.
TellMyCRM started with a behaviour problem, not a software problem. Salespeople will talk about what happened after a meeting, but many will not sit down and complete CRM forms.
Say it once. It's on the record.
A voice note or typed message through the tools they already use. It reads the change back, asks for confirmation and only then updates the CRM.
Ask about the pipeline.
Questions answered from the CRM, the emails and the meetings behind it.
Free for 14 days, then from £19 a person a month. Card needed. Cancel in the first 14 days and you pay nothing.
Show us the process that is costing you time or money.
It might be a spreadsheet everybody hates, an inbox somebody spends half the week watching, a system that needs the same information typed twice, or an operation that has simply grown beyond the way it was designed.
We'll look at how it works before talking about software.
Talk to us