On the Innovantage podcast, its host and Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov and his guests often talk about technology from a business perspective. In this episode, the focus is shifted to the role of technology in political and social life. What are the risks of online anonymity? And how can it harm democracy?To find answers to these questions, Max invited Belgian politician and former State Secretary for Digitalization Mathieu Michel to join him for a conversation.Today, Mathieu is a member of the Belgian parliament and focuses on innovation and emerging technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. His work centers on how these technologies shape democracy, economic development, and the daily lives of citizens.As Mathieu explained, his core mission is to ensure that technological progress is grounded in trust. According to him, innovation can create positive opportunities only when citizens have confidence in the systems behind it. And politics plays a critical role in establishing this trust and guiding technology toward the public good.Today, Mathieu is one of the leading voices behind Europe’s digital identity initiatives, such as eIDAS 2.0 and the Declaration of Leuven. He emphasized that digital tools must reinforce democratic values. However, at the same time, technology carries risks, and society should be ready to face them. Role of technologyMathieu views technology as a tool to improve human life. Being a liberal and an optimist, he believes deeply in people’s ability to create positive change. What motivates him is humanity’s constant capacity to invent new solutions that make life easier and better.Today’s major challenges, like climate, mobility, healthcare, and others, require forward momentum. However, when societies face uncertainty, many instinctively look backward.Though emerging technologies inevitably raise hard questions and introduce new risks, according to Mathieu, that is not a reason to slow down. It is a reason to stay creative and find solutions.The EU AI Act and its impact on technologyCurrently, we can observe the growing influence of artificial intelligence on democratic systems.Europe began discussing AI regulation four years ago. But the AI Act took effect only three years later. This illustrates how slowly governance moves compared to technological progress. Nevertheless, as Mathieu stressed, regulation is essential for establishing trust. But it must not become a barrier to innovation.Policymakers need a deeper understanding of emerging technologies and a more proactive mindset. Instead of slowing innovation, governments should guide and support it. As a result, AI will be able to develop in such a way that strengthens society and expands opportunities.Europe’s habit of limiting technologyEurope often responds to emerging technologies with excessive caution. Though the AI Act’s risk-based approach has its value, the final framework imposes more restrictions than necessary. According to Mathieu, Europe underestimates the global competitive landscape, particularly against regions moving faster on AI development.Overregulation could leave Europe technologically behind. The solution is not to suppress or fear new tools, but to guide their deployment responsibly. While some regulations prohibit innovation, it’s important to support it, especially on issues like misinformation and online harm.There are proposals that resemble “ministries of truth,” where authorities decide what is true or false online. Such initiatives could undermine democratic principles and even lead to dystopian scenarios.Fake news: Real threatFighting misinformation starts with strengthening people’s ability to think critically. And education here is central. Citizens need practical tools that will help them verify identity and understand who they are interacting with online. As a result, they will be able to apply the same judgment they use in the physical world.The core problem is that the online environment was built differently from the real world. Anonymity and unclear accountability are among the core characteristics of the online space. Reintroducing basic trust mechanisms would help people navigate AI-generated content, fake news, harassment, and social platforms more safely.As philosopher Hannah Arendt stated, without facts, genuine opinion becomes impossible. Fake news eliminates the possibility to create shared reality for all citizens, which weakens the foundation of democratic life. Freedom and responsibility in the digital ageMathieu noted that digital identity must balance two core pillars of human existence: freedom and responsibility. In the physical world, individuals exercise their freedom with the understanding that their actions have consequences for others. The introduction of the internet enabled access to information but also weakened accountability.When people operate anonymously, responsibility often disappears. This leads to harassment, misinformation, and harmful behavior online. At the same time, our real-world interactions rely on knowing who we engage with. Freedom of expression remains fundamental, but users must have the ability to evaluate who is speaking and whether they have relevant expertise. Today, there are a lot of examples of fake videos produced by AI. Some of them look quite realistic. This signals a shift to a world where digital content is false by default. It means that individuals now need to verify authenticity, instead of just assuming it.Verifying who we areIt is necessary to build efficient methods to bring responsibility back into the digital world. The first step is to understand how responsibility works in the real world.In real life, as citizens, we are accountable to our country and to society. If we commit a crime or break rules, we are responsible because our actions are tied to our citizenship.How do we reconnect responsibility in the digital world? The answer is simple: we need to know people who are online. This doesn’t mean everyone must be identifiable all the time, but when we want accountability, digital identities must be linked to real people.Technological standards make this possible. The EU regulation called eIDAS provides standards for applications that verify digital identities. This ensures that online, the person you are interacting with is real and accountable. For example, you can sign a digital contract knowing the other party is a real person, or verify that an article or research is signed by an actual expert.This approach doesn’t prevent people from speaking freely online. It simply allows verification when needed. Governments and private platforms can adopt these standards. For instance, Belgium has introduced a digital wallet, MyGov, where verified digital identities can be used across multiple applications.In Europe, the Declaration of Leuven standardized three types of online profiles:Verified profilesVerifiable profiles (like in blockchain-based systems)Anonymous profilesBeing anonymous is still allowed. But platforms can choose to apply these standards to differentiate profiles. For example, on Facebook, you could filter content to see only verified users or choose to include anonymous users. The experience changes completely when you can tell who is behind a post, message, or email.This also applies to AI and digital content. You could sign an algorithm, an AI output, or even a photo, to guarantee that you are responsible for it. Identity vs. profileIt’s important to distinguish between a profile and an identity. When you are on PlayStation, Facebook, or any forum, you are using a profile. A profile doesn’t make you responsible. It is just a representation of yourself online. You can be anyone you want.An identity, on the other hand, links you to responsibility. It allows others to verify who you are and keep you accountable for your actions. An identity doesn’t prevent anonymity entirely. But if you want to be responsible, there must be a way to trace actions back to you.When people know their actions are tied to a real identity, it can reduce aggression and help restore social norms from the real world into the digital space.Digital acceleration and its impact on democracyIn the real world, it took centuries to balance freedom of speech, social control, and responsibility. Laws and social norms evolved slowly over time.Digital technology, however, accelerated this process dramatically. The internet’s early anonymity temporarily removed personal accountability, which boosted unrestricted freedom of expression. While this allowed new voices to be heard, it also fueled polarization and misinformation.We can see the effects in modern politics, for example, in the United States, where digital dynamics have amplified divisions and challenged shared truths. The rules of the strongest or loudest voices dominate online discourse. If unchecked and not managed properly, it could threaten the foundations of democracy, as such a situation undermines trust and accountability.Democracies won’t be saved by a single action or the push of a button. They require ongoing reflection and effort.Bringing responsibility back into the digital world is key to slowing polarization. This isn’t just a problem in the United States. It is also visible in Italy, France, Belgium, and other countries. People often prefer black-and-white thinking as they don’t want to consider the nuances and shades of gray.Identity verification for privacy and securityAccording to Mathieu, identity verification tools should not just impose obligations. They should open new opportunities for people. The goal is to know who people are interacting with online and leave the choice of using verification to the individual. For instance, a platform like Facebook could offer verification, and users could decide whether to participate.Verified identities can improve online interactions and strengthen communities. Nevertheless, anonymity also has value, as it preserves freedom of speech when necessary. People might choose to be verified in some situations and anonymous in others. Flexibility is key.In certain cases, partial verification may be required, such as confirming a user is over 18 to access age-restricted content. These tools can provide security and accountability without limiting personal freedom.Building trust in digital identityMany citizens have some concerns about sharing personal data online. They may have fears of misuse, data leaks, or the implications for vulnerable groups, like immigrants. These concerns are valid and must be addressed carefully.The solution lies in building trust through secure, standardized identity verification. The eIDAS framework establishes technical standards for authenticating identity while prioritizing privacy by default. It is designed not to control people. Instead, it is aimed at confirming facts about them, such as age, citizenship, or other credentials. As a result, online interactions can be trusted.Trust is the foundation of digital innovation. People may trust different institutions, governments, banks, or companies like Google. But what matters is that they trust something.In Belgium, Mathieu led the MyData project. This platform allows citizens to see who accessed their data and for what purpose. This transparency is crucial for building confidence in how personal information is handled.Rethinking trust in social media platformsToday, all major platforms that Europeans use are American. But can people trust such platforms with their data? There is no simple answer. What matters is introducing digital tools that enhance user responsibility and experience.If platforms like Facebook choose not to adopt such tools, new European services that respect accountability and provide better experiences for users could emerge. Mathieu mentioned examples like Twitter’s transition to X, where changes in policy pushed many users to leave. Similar dynamics could occur across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Snapchat. By enabling users to choose how they are identified, Europe could foster new social media models that prioritize responsibility and trust.Why startups should invest in digital identityDigital identity regulation creates significant opportunities for innovation. Startups can develop secure, verifiable channels and even physical devices to store and manage digital identities.Many users avoid online markets simply because they don’t trust the system. If startups introduce reliable authentication tools, they can unlock a huge, untapped market.The eIDAS standards allow any company to build solutions that help users verify their identities. This could range from social media applications to secure email plugins that guarantee the sender’s identity.It would be a missed opportunity if only tech giants like Google, Facebook, or Microsoft dominated this space. Startups have the potential to lead the way and create innovative tools for the digital world.European values as a business opportunityAs Mathieu highlighted, Europe’s shared values can become a foundation for new business models. Many people prefer to engage with services that respect European principles, such as human-centered technology and personal data ownership.In the US, data often belongs to companies. In China, the government owns it. In Europe, it should belong to the people. This perspective opens opportunities for European companies to offer alternatives where users control their own data.How regulation can fuel startup growthAccording to Mathieu, the economy and startups should thrive through ideas and private investment, not government intervention. The government’s role is to create a positive environment and rules that unlock the potential of startups.Good regulation is more effective than incentives alone. Europe’s regulations, like GDPR and NIS2, protect citizens and human-centered values. But they can be heavy and challenging for startups. Lighter, well-designed regulations would help startups innovate while safeguarding essential principles.However, the main investment challenge in Europe isn’t for startups or early-stage scale-ups. In this region, companies transitioning to a larger scale have the biggest issues. At this stage, securing funds becomes difficult, and many promising European startups end up relocating to the United States.This isn’t a problem of subsidies. It’s a lack of investors willing to commit at this level. Europe nurtures seeds of innovation, but the gap in late-stage investment drives its most promising companies abroad. As a result, European success is often measured by exits to American companies.Investments in the future of technologies Ten years ago, companies like OpenAI and Nvidia were small or unknown. But they managed to become global leaders because they are ready to innovate. European startups can achieve the same, but only if they focus on the next generation of technologies.Blockchain can be a good example here. While some hesitate to adopt it due to financial risk or uncertainty about its future relevance, due to a lack of experimentation, Europe will always lag behind. The same applies to other emerging fields like quantum computing.Digital literacy: A cornerstone of democracyRapid digitization has outpaced society’s ability to adapt. Now, it is vital to address this gap in education, not just for young people, but for everyone.The impact of AI has grown very quickly, which makes it essential to help people navigate these technologies for themselves. Mathieu compared digital literacy to swimming. Just as physics behaves differently in water than on land, actions in the digital world have unique consequences that require understanding.Today, Belgium has a program on digital citizenship. The country also cooperates with the Council of Europe to create educational initiatives that can be very helpful. They focus on essential skills, like managing identity, passwords, and privacy online. Thanks to them, individuals can engage responsibly and freely. As Mathieu explained, digital identity and secure standards are not about restricting freedom. They are designed to restore the balance between freedom and responsibility that allowed democratic societies to flourish before the internet existed.Want to learn more about the future of technologies and the new challenges that they bring? Don’t miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast.

Business app creation without coding in Benelux has moved from a “nice productivity hack” to a serious operating model for many SMEs. Teams can ship workflow apps quickly, automate approvals, and reduce manual work, often without waiting for IT capacity. The catch is that as these apps start processing employee and customer data, the organization inherits GDPR, security, and continuity responsibilities that informal builds are rarely designed to meet.Why Business App Creation Without Coding in Benelux Is Booming and Getting RiskyAcross the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, SMEs are under constant pressure to digitize processes without adding large engineering teams. No-code platforms fit that reality: they shorten delivery cycles, make iteration easier, and let domain experts translate requirements directly into working tools.Risk enters because adoption tends to be organic. A small internal app becomes widely used, more fields get added, integrations appear, and suddenly you have a business-critical system that was never designed with role-based access, retention, logging, or clear accountability. In the Benelux market, this matters even more because GDPR expectations are operationally mature and enterprise customers often ask SMEs to demonstrate vendor and security due diligence.From Quick Wins to Compliance Headaches: The Dark Side of No-CodeThe “dark side” is rarely dramatic at first. It looks like success: more teams adopt the app, more data moves into it, and the app becomes the default place to work. Then the questions start, usually after a customer questionnaire, an internal audit request, or a data subject deletion request.Typical failure patterns tend to cluster into a few themes:App sprawl and unclear ownership (nobody can confidently say who owns which app or who approves changes)Sensitive data creeping in (personal data copied for convenience, then retained indefinitely)Access drift (too many admins, broad sharing links, offboarding gaps)Vendor/DPA blind spots (tools adopted quickly without processor terms and sub-processor clarity)New silos (each app becomes its own dataset, harming reporting and future AI initiatives)The core problem is not no-code itself. It is the absence of a repeatable operating model that matches how quickly business app creation without coding in Benelux can scale.Introducing Sigli’s No-Code Governance & Compliance Framework for Benelux SMEsSigli’s framework is built to preserve speed while introducing proportionate controls. It is not “enterprise bureaucracy for SMEs.” Instead, it standardises a few essentials such as visibility, risk-based approvals, GDPR-by-design defaults, production hardening for critical apps, and monitoring. This way, teams can keep building without creating avoidable exposure.Think of it as a set of reusable patterns. Builders get clear guidance and templates. Leadership gets accountability, auditability, and predictable risk management. IT and security get fewer surprises.Step 1: Map What You Already Have: App & Data InventoryYou cannot govern what you cannot see. The first step is an inventory that is quick to assemble but consistent enough to be actionable. Each app should have a named business owner, the platform it runs on, its user audience, and a short statement of purpose. From there, you add what matters most for risk: the types of data processed and the integrations that move data in and out.A simple Green / Amber / Red risk label works well for SMEs:Green: low-risk internal productivity appsAmber: apps processing personal data with limited scopeRed: business-critical apps, sensitive categories, or broad sharing/integration footprintsThis label becomes the engine for approvals and hardening later.Step 2: A GDPR-by-Design Blueprint for No-Code in BeneluxFor business app creation without coding in the Benelux, GDPR-by-design must be practical. The aim is to make the compliant approach the easiest approach by embedding good defaults into templates: minimal data collection, clear purpose, retention rules, controlled sharing, and deletion workflows.Allowed vs. forbidden data in citizen-built appsInstead of forcing every team into legal interpretation, classify data in plain language.Generally acceptable data is what you truly need to run the workflow: business contact details used for routing, operational status fields, and basic internal references.Restricted data — such as employee performance context, absence details, customer financial identifiers, or identity-document-related information—should trigger review and stronger safeguards.Typically off-limits (unless formally approved with robust controls) includes special category data and any form of high-impact profiling or automated decision-making that materially affects individuals.This approach keeps innovation moving while preventing the most common mistake: placing highly sensitive data into apps that were never designed for it.Data minimisation, retention defaults, and vendor/DPA checklistData minimisation is easiest when it is structural. Templates should encourage builders to collect only what the process needs and to avoid open-ended free-text fields where sensitive information tends to appear.Retention should be standardised as well: if nothing is configured, data often lives forever, which is both risky and unnecessary.Vendor due diligence can be lightweight without being optional. A short DPA and vendor checklist should confirm (at minimum) processor terms, sub-processor transparency, deletion/export procedures, breach notification expectations, and practical support routes. This is especially important when apps rely on multiple connectors and automation tools, because your data footprint can expand quickly.Step 3: Hardening Critical No-Code Apps: From Prototype to Production-GradeThe moment a no-code app becomes critical—supporting revenue operations, customer delivery, finance controls, or HR workflows—it needs production-grade discipline. Hardening is the transition from “useful tool” to “managed system,” and it reduces both security incidents and business disruption.A compact hardening checklist is usually sufficient for SMEs:SSO and MFA where supported, to centralise identity and reduce account sprawlLeast-privilege roles (viewer/editor/admin) with periodic admin reviewSecure secrets handling (vault/secure variables, never stored as fields)Audit logging enabled so access and changes are traceableControlled exports and integrations to reduce uncontrolled data replicationDeletion and retention enforcement that is tested, not assumedIf downtime or data loss would materially impact operations, this checklist should be non-negotiable.Step 4: Central Data Hub—Stopping No-Code from Creating New SilosNo-code can unintentionally fragment data. When each team builds an app with its own version of “customer,” “order,” or “employee,” reporting becomes inconsistent and confidence erodes. Over time, this becomes a major blocker for analytics, and especially for AI, which depends on reliable, well-defined data.A central data hub approach reduces this risk by establishing systems of record and encouraging apps to reference authoritative data rather than copying it. In practice, that means consistent identifiers, standard entity definitions, and controlled interfaces for reading and writing data. The result is fewer silos, stronger reporting, and a cleaner foundation for future automation and AI readiness.Step 5: Governance Guardrails That Don’t Kill InnovationGovernance fails when it treats every app like a high-risk system. SMEs need a fast lane for low-risk solutions and deeper review only when it is justified. A risk-based operating model makes that possible while improving visibility.App catalogue, traffic-light approvals, standard roles, short playbook trainingAn app catalogue creates a single source of truth: what exists, who owns it, what data it touches, and whether it is business-critical.From there, a traffic-light approval model keeps teams moving:Green apps follow pre-approved patternsAmber apps complete a short reviewRed apps require formal security/privacy inputTo make this work in real life, roles must be explicit. At minimum, someone owns the business purpose and risk, someone administers the platform controls, and reviewers exist for higher-risk cases.Finally, training should be brief and practical, focused on data classification, retention, access control, and safe integration patterns, so adoption is high.Step 6: Continuous Monitoring and Support: Staying Benelux-Compliant Over TimeEven well-built apps drift. People change roles, access accumulates, integrations expand, and new data fields appear. Continuous monitoring prevents “compliance decay” by making changes visible and reviewable.Use monitoring where it adds the most value:Periodic access reviews for critical apps (especially admins and external sharing)Change awareness when new fields, exports, or integrations affect data sensitivityVendor/DPA touchpoints aligned with renewals and major platform changesA clear support route so citizen developers can ask before shipping risky patternsThis keeps governance lightweight while ensuring it remains real.Turning No-Code Chaos into a Governed, AI-Ready App EcosystemWhen you combine visibility (inventory), safe defaults (GDPR-by-design), targeted hardening (for critical apps), and disciplined data patterns (central hub), business app creation without coding in Benelux becomes scalable. You reduce surprises, improve audit readiness, and raise the overall quality of your data landscape. Just as importantly, you keep delivery speed high because builders reuse proven templates instead of reinventing decisions and controls each time.How Sigli Helps Benelux SMEs Scale No-Code Safely and ConfidentlySigli helps SMEs across the Benelux operationalise no-code safely without killing momentum. That typically includes establishing the app and data inventory, implementing GDPR-by-design templates and review paths, hardening business-critical apps, designing central data patterns that reduce silos, and setting up monitoring routines that keep compliance stable over time.The practical outcome is consistent: faster delivery with fewer risks, clearer accountability, and a stronger foundation for analytics and AI initiatives.Ready to put governance in place without slowing delivery? Book a call with Sigli to assess your current no-code landscape and get a practical, risk-based plan for scaling safely.

A HubSpot to Pipedrive data migration is usually planned around moving contacts and deals. But the real risk for Benelux sales teams is losing the conversation history that explains what actually happened in the pipeline: emails, calls, meetings, notes, and the files attached to them. When that history is missing or no longer linked correctly, operational reporting dashboards stop being trustworthy. Trends break on the migration date, response-time reporting becomes meaningless, and sales cycle analytics suddenly looks better or worse for the wrong reasons.Why Conversation History Matters for Operational Reporting Dashboards BeneluxConversation history matters because most operational dashboards are built on activity data and timestamps. If you track time-to-first-response, number of touchpoints per stage, stage velocity, or handover quality between SDRs and Account Executives across the Netherlands and Belgium, you rely on a clean trail of activities connected to the right people, organisations, and deals. Once those links are gone, you don’t just lose context for the team. You lose the ability to report accurately and make decisions based on real performance.The Risk: What Gets Lost When You Move from HubSpot to PipedriveThe biggest mistake companies make when moving from HubSpot to Pipedrive is treating conversation history like a nice-to-have. In practice, it’s the hardest part to migrate because it’s not only data, it’s data with relationships. A single email might need to appear on a contact record and on a deal record. A meeting might involve multiple contacts. A note might have an attachment that should remain accessible later. If you only export the core records via CSV and import them into Pipedrive, you can end up with a CRM that looks complete at first glance, while the timeline of work is gone or disconnected.Step 1 – Scope the Migration: Which Conversations Must Survive the Move?Start by defining what you actually need to preserve. Keeping everything forever sounds safe, but it often creates cost and complexity without improving reporting. A practical approach is to decide which activity types must survive—emails, calls, meetings, tasks, notes—and what time window is required to keep dashboards and management reporting consistent. For many Benelux SMEs, keeping the last 12–24 months fully intact is enough to preserve the operational view, while older history can be archived externally if needed.Step 2 – Clean Up HubSpot Associations Before Touching Any DataBefore you export anything, fix broken links and messy associations in HubSpot. Conversation history only stays meaningful if it stays attached to the right objects. Duplicated contacts, deals linked to the wrong company, and activities logged only on a contact but not the deal are common problems. If you move that mess as-is, you will import confusion into Pipedrive, and you won’t be able to reconstruct accurate timelines later.Step 3 – API vs CSV: Choosing the Right Export Method for Reliable HistoryCSV exports are useful for static CRM objects such as contacts, companies, and deals. But conversation history often requires API-based extraction to be complete and reliably linked. If you care about preserving email and activity timelines, you need an export that captures the activity content, timestamps, and the associations that connect each activity to the correct contact, deal, and company. This is where many migrations silently lose fidelity because the export method simply doesn’t include all the relationships you need to rebuild the story.Step 4 – Build a Staging Layer: One Place to Reconstruct Deals, Contacts and ActivitiesOnce you have the data out of HubSpot, treat the migration like an engineering project, not a file upload. The safest approach is a staging layer: one place where you store raw exports, normalize them into a consistent structure (people, organisations, deals, activities, files), and build mapping between HubSpot IDs and the new Pipedrive IDs. That mapping is what lets you import conversation history into Pipedrive and still connect each email, call, meeting, or note to the right deal and the right person.Step 5 – Import into Pipedrive with Full Links: Deals, People, Organisations and ActivitiesImporting into Pipedrive should follow a simple logic: create the objects first, then bring in the timeline. Organisations and people come first, then deals linked to them, and only then activities and notes, so the links can be created correctly. If you import activities too early, you’ll either lose the linkages or spend time manually repairing them after go-live.Step 6 – Don’t Forget Files and Attachments: Contracts, Proposals and Key DocumentsFiles and attachments deserve special attention. Contracts, proposals, and key documents are often attached inside CRM timelines rather than stored in a separate document system. If you forget these, your team will feel it immediately after go-live—especially when they need to reference a signed agreement, confirm what version of a proposal was sent, or review key details in a handover.Step 7 – Quality Assurance: How to Prove Your Sales History Is IntactQuality assurance is where you prove the migration worked. Don’t rely on a couple of spot checks. Compare activity counts for a sample set of deals, verify that activities appear in the right timelines, and check that reporting still behaves as expected. If your dashboard previously showed average time-to-first-response or average stage duration, those numbers should not suddenly change because of the migration. If they do, the data may be present but the links or timestamps are not preserved in a way your reporting can use.How Preserved Conversation History Strengthens Operational Reporting Dashboards in the BeneluxWhen conversation history is migrated and linked correctly, Benelux operational dashboards stay reliable. You retain continuity in trend reporting, analyze pipeline velocity and conversion by segment, and track SLAs and team performance without the migration cliff that makes year-over-year comparisons impossible. More importantly, your sales team keeps the context they need to run deals and hand over accounts smoothly.How Sigli Can Help: A Practical HubSpot → Pipedrive Migration Checklist for Benelux SMEsSigli can help you run a HubSpot to Pipedrive data migration with reporting continuity as a primary requirement, not an afterthought. In practice, that means scoping the history that matters, cleaning up HubSpot associations before extraction, choosing the right export method for activities, using a staging layer to reconstruct links, importing into Pipedrive in the correct order, and validating the outcome with measurable QA checks tied to your dashboards. If your team relies on operational reporting for pipeline management across the Benelux, preserving conversation history is not optional. It’s the difference between a clean cutover and a CRM reset.

User training and onboarding UK is becoming a decisive capability for SMEs adopting AI faster than they are building the practical skills to use it safely, consistently, and profitably. That mismatch is widening the AI skills gap in ways that show up in everyday work: uneven quality, compliance anxiety, duplicated effort, and teams reverting to old habits when outputs feel unreliable. The competitive advantage is not simply “having AI,” but onboarding people to apply it well in real workflows, with clear standards and verification. This article explains what the AI skills gap looks like on the ground inside UK SMEs, why traditional training often underdelivers, and how in-context coaching can turn ad hoc experimentation into confident, measurable AI adoption.Why User Training and Onboarding in the UK Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AIAI is no longer confined to specialist teams. It is becoming a universal layer across drafting, summarising, analysis, and decision support, touching customer communication, proposals, internal documentation, reporting, and workflow automation. In SMEs, where people are generalists and capacity is tight, inconsistent AI usage creates operational volatility. One employee may accelerate work responsibly; another may produce confident-looking but inaccurate outputs that create rework or risk.This is why user training and onboarding now sits at the intersection of productivity and governance. When teams are taught to provide high-quality inputs, follow role-based boundaries, and validate outputs before they are relied upon, AI becomes a stabilising force. When they are not, AI becomes a source of noise, risk, and distrust.User Training and Onboarding UK: What’s Really Happening Inside SMEs TodayIn many UK SMEs, AI adoption begins organically. A few early adopters find value, and usage spreads informally. That informal spread is the first warning sign: it produces fast uptake but inconsistent practice because prompts, habits, and “rules” travel without context.What typically emerges is a patchwork of usage styles. Some people use AI for ideation, some for drafting, some for summarising meetings, and some for ad hoc analysis. Leaders then encounter two competing realities: apparent productivity gains in pockets, and an increase in quality control effort elsewhere. The organisation may feel “more active” but not necessarily “more effective.”A common pattern looks like this:A tool is introduced (or quietly adopted by individuals).A few high performers get real wins and share prompts informally.Quality becomes uneven as others copy prompts without understanding the underlying structure.Managers begin rewriting or double-checking more work than before.Risk concerns surface late (often after a near-miss), and adoption becomes hesitant or fragmented.This isn’t a motivation issue. It is an onboarding design issue: SMEs often train “AI awareness” rather than onboarding “AI-in-your-workflow.”The AI Skills Gap in UK SMEs: Everyday Symptoms You Can’t IgnoreThe AI skills gap is best diagnosed through operational symptoms. You will rarely see it described as “skills” internally; you will see it as friction, rework, and inconsistency.Typical symptoms include:Prompt roulette: success depends on who is asking and what they happen to type.Polished but thin output: content reads well but lacks substance, specificity, or correct context.Rework loops: drafts bounce between stakeholders because nobody trusts the first pass.Inconsistent tone and decisions: different employees produce different “company voices” and different levels of caution.Risk paralysis vs. risky overuse: some avoid AI entirely; others use it without boundaries.Shadow usage: unofficial tools or personal accounts appear because “approved” ways of working aren’t clear.If these patterns are visible, AI is not being onboarded as a capability. It is being “tried” as a tool.Real-Life Scenes from the Frontline: When User Training and Onboarding in the UK Goes WrongThe fastest way to understand the gap is to look at frontline scenes where the cost is real.A customer service agent drafts a response using AI. It is fast and polite, but it misses key context from earlier messages, fails to reference the company’s policy correctly, and creates the impression that the customer’s experience hasn’t been read. The complaint escalates, not because AI was used, but because there was no trained habit of context-checking and verification.A sales manager uses AI to accelerate a proposal under deadline pressure. The document is compelling, but it borrows outdated pricing language and implies delivery timelines that the operations team cannot support. The client spots inconsistencies later, trust erodes, and the team scrambles to correct what should never have been committed.An ops lead asks AI to “write an SOP” from scratch. The result looks professional but doesn’t match how the work actually happens, so nobody follows it. The business ends up with documentation theatre — more pages, less reliability.These are not edge cases. They are predictable outcomes of onboarding that does not teach the “how” of AI use inside real workflows.Why Traditional Workshops Don’t Work: The Limits of One-Off AI Training for UK TeamsTraditional workshops tend to underperform because they focus on capability awareness rather than capability execution. People leave knowing what AI can do, but not knowing what they should do in their specific role, with their specific systems, under their specific constraints.One-off training also fails to create durable behaviour change. AI competence is built through repetition: writing better inputs, setting boundaries, validating outputs, and learning when not to use AI. That is a practice loop, not a single event.Workshops can be useful as an introduction, but they should not be mistaken for onboarding. In SMEs, the impact comes from training that is embedded into work and reinforced over time.In-Context Coaching: A New Model for User Training and Onboarding in UK SMEsIn-context coaching shifts training from “learning about AI” to “learning with AI while doing real work.” It works particularly well for SMEs because it is lightweight, specific, and creates immediate operational benefit.A practical coaching model usually includes these steps:Select high-frequency workflows where speed and quality matter (e.g., first-response customer emails, proposal outlines, meeting follow-ups, internal SOPs, reporting commentary).Define what “good” looks like for each workflow (tone, completeness, factual accuracy, escalation rules).Create reusable patterns (prompt templates, input checklists, output formats, verification routines).Coach in short cycles (15–30 minutes) using live work and immediate feedback.Update patterns continuously based on what fails in practice, not what sounds good in theory.The value is not the “perfect prompt.” The value is operational consistency: people learn the same approach, apply it repeatedly, and improve it together.From Copy-Paste Chaos to Confident AI Use: Practical Examples from Typical UK WorkflowsIn customer service, the shift is from “paste the customer message and hope” to a consistent first-response method. The agent learns to summarise the situation, highlight relevant policy points, draft a response in the company’s tone, and then validate that the draft contains no invented facts. The result is faster replies that reduce escalation risk because the workflow forces the right checks.In sales, strong onboarding reduces the temptation to let AI generate entire proposals unchecked. AI is used to create a structured outline, produce a first-pass executive summary, and surface clarifying questions. Commercial terms, pricing, and delivery commitments remain controlled through approved references and human confirmation. That keeps the speed benefit while reducing the risk of overpromising.In operations, AI becomes a powerful way to turn messy notes into standard operating procedures that people will actually follow. The key is that SMEs train staff to feed AI what it needs, real steps, exceptions, definitions of “done”—and to review outputs with process owners who understand edge cases. That combination creates documentation that is both readable and operationally accurate.In finance and reporting, the biggest leap often comes from using AI for narrative clarity rather than unverified analysis. When teams provide confirmed drivers and metrics, AI can produce sharper commentary, risk summaries, and action framing. This reduces the burden of writing while protecting analytical integrity.How to Measure the Impact of Better User Training and Onboarding in UK OrganisationsMeasurement should be simple enough that an SME will actually keep doing it. The most useful approach is to pick a small number of workflows and track changes in time, quality, and risk.Time is the easiest starting point. If first drafts take less time to produce and require fewer revisions, adoption is working. Quality can be captured through a basic acceptance signal: how often does a draft go through with minimal edits, and how often does it require manager rewrites? Risk and governance can be tracked through reduction in avoidable incidents, improved use of approved tools, and fewer “shadow” processes.A straightforward measurement set for each workflow typically includes:Productivity: time to first draft or time to resolution.Quality: first-pass acceptance rate or reduction in escalations/corrections.Governance: fewer policy breaches and less unofficial tool usage.You do not need perfect attribution. You need directional proof that onboarding is reducing rework and increasing consistency.First Steps for UK SME Leaders: Closing the AI Skills Gap Through Smarter User Training and OnboardingFor most SMEs, progress comes from focus and clarity rather than big programmes. The most effective first steps are:Choose 3–5 workflows where AI can help and where inconsistency is costly.Set clear boundaries on what information can be used with AI tools and what must never be used.Create role-based templates employees can reuse immediately (inputs, output format, verification routine).Run short in-context coaching sessions weekly for a month using real work and capturing learnings.Measure before and after using simple indicators that leaders care about: speed, quality, and risk.When user training and onboarding UK is done this way, the AI skills gap shrinks in a visible, operational manner: fewer rewrites, fewer errors, faster cycle times, and a workforce that can use AI confidently within the reality of UK SME operations.

In the Innovantage podcast, we have often discussed technology and its role in business, but we have never talked directly about market fit. What are investors looking for today? And how do they determine whether a project is set up for success? To find the answers to these questions, podcast host and Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov, invited Gytenis Galkis, Partner at Superhero Capital, to his studio.Gytenis is a venture capitalist with over a decade of experience investing across the Baltic and Nordic startup ecosystems. Over the years, he has reviewed hundreds of startups annually and made direct and fund-based investments in nearly 100 tech companies. He works with pre-seed and seed-stage companies, which provides him with a comprehensive picture of the market trends. Thanks to this, he has a deep understanding of the patterns and traits that separate high-potential teams from the rest. And he agreed to share his expert insights with the audience of the Innovantage podcast.Filtering 600 startups a year: Is it possible?To find the projects that align with the fund’s investment strategy, Gytenis and his team review approximately 600 startups every year. Over a decade, this process has amounted to thousands of startup evaluations, including both direct reviews and indirect exposure through events and pitch sessions.Gytenis explained that filtering such a high volume is essential to identify the few startups with true potential. When it comes to early-stage investments, traditional product-market fit is very difficult to assess. That’s why he prefers evaluating so-called founder-market fit. It means that in the first turn, he looks at the entrepreneur’s skills and vision of the market opportunities, as every project starts with a founder.Nevertheless, even with a very careful selection, outcomes are often uncertain. But identifying strong founder-market fit increases the likelihood of success. Product-market fit vs. founder-market fitIs there a huge difference between the approaches to assessing product-market and founder-market fit? According to Gytenis, product-market fit occurs when a company clearly defines its value proposition, and customers understand and actively adopt the product. In such a way, a product is moving beyond early adopters to broader market awareness. Here, he named OpenAI as an example. Mainstream recognition came only several years after initial development. Product-market fit was achieved after a row of iterative improvements.Meanwhile, founder-market fit refers to the alignment between the founding team’s skills, experience, and the market they aim to serve. Gytenis noted that teams with relevant industry knowledge or unique insights are always better positioned to succeed. Bill Gates can be named as a good example of a founder who determines the future success of his company. His early exposure to one of the first computers gave him a competitive advantage that later enabled software innovation.Startup success rarely comes overnight. Very often, a team needs to accumulate sufficient experience and insight over years (or even decades) to address a particular market need effectively and build a sustainable venture.The role of experience (and founder’s age) in startup successAge and experience provide founders with an advantage in building successful startups. More mature entrepreneurs typically understand fundamental business operations, possess relevant industry contacts, and have experience in such basic processes as hiring, training, and scaling teams. These skills allow them to methodically grow companies and navigate challenges effectively.That’s why, according to statistics, there are more successful entrepreneurs among those who started businesses in their 40s than among people who try to launch their projects in their 20s and 30s.Of course, younger founders can also succeed, especially when they bring unique insights and the ability to learn rapidly. Such cases are quite rare, but they still exist and demonstrate that experience is not an absolute requirement for startup success. Timing and insight in startup evaluationWhen communicating with founders, Gytenis always pays attention to whether they can clearly explain why their team is uniquely positioned to solve a problem and why the timing is right. YouTube and Uber were among those companies that came to the market when they were needed, which enabled their success. In these cases, founders were able to detect the missing pieces in the ecosystem and leveraged emerging technologies to create scalable solutions.Gytenis explained that evaluating market fit is both art and science. Many founders often overestimate demand and rely heavily on marketing without deep technology. Others assume that a great product alone will drive adoption. At the same time, some teams possess strong technological capabilities but lack go-to-market understanding. As a result, though their ideas may be good from a tech perspective, they simply don’t align with the market realities.Consensus vs. non-consensus investingGytenis and Max also discussed the balance between consensus and non-consensus investing in venture capital. Highly hyped deals are often expensive and competitive, similar to public stock markets. At the same time, non-consensus opportunities are riskier, but they can generate outsized returns. In this context, it’s worth mentioning Airbnb. Most investors initially rejected this startup. But ultimately, it delivered exceptional outcomes.Early-stage investing has some similarities with poker. Initial investments are modest, which allows the investor to monitor whether a company shows signs of product-market fitIf the startup progresses, additional funding follows through subsequent rounds. If not, the position is cut. Such a staged approach helps manage risk and still maintain the potential for high returns.Speaking about efficient investing, Gytenis highlighted that access to deals is critical. VCs with broader networks can evaluate and select more opportunities. This gives them a better chance to identify undervalued startups. Investment size, stage, and risk tolerance all influence portfolio strategy. While some funds favor high-conviction bets, others, like Superhero Capital, prioritize diversification across many early-stage companies to have more chances for higher yields.Why great teams still fail without market demandThe interplay between founders and market opportunity is a must for a startup to succeed. As Gytenis explained, even the best teams struggle if the market is not ready or the product does not address a pressing need. He used the analogy of vitamins versus painkillers. We always forget to take vitamins, but we never forget to take a painkiller if we have pain. So if you find the product that can address a big market pain, you will buy it. That’s why products that solve urgent problems naturally attract customers. However, desirable but non-essential offerings often fail to gain traction. In venture capital, success often comes when an “A” team meets an “A” market, which means that both the founder’s capabilities and the market’s demand align.Companies like Tesla and Better Place can illustrate the importance of timing and market readiness. Despite significant funding and an innovative battery-swapping model, Better Place failed. It happened because the mass market was unprepared for widespread EV adoption. Tesla chose another approach. It targeted affluent early adopters and then gradually scaled to broader markets over a decade.It’s also important to define the right way to access the market. Even with a strong product, founders must understand distribution, early adopters, and positioning. Otherwise, their projects will easily fail. Historical examples like MySpace, Kodak, and Nokia demonstrate that early technological insight alone is insufficient without market alignment and the patience to grow in step with adoption.Balancing risk and reward in early-stage investingEarly-stage investing is a balance between founder-market fit and risk-return assessment. At Superhero Capital, the team first evaluates whether a startup’s founders have the right experience and insight to succeed in their market. Once that alignment is confirmed, they assess the risk-reward profile. It means that they consider potential ownership stake and the likelihood of generating meaningful returns for the fund.When assessing a startup’s risk-reward profile, Gytenis considers whether an investment can realistically return the entire fund within 7–10 years. For a €50M fund making around 30 early-stage investments, he expects most to fail or only return the initial capital. Given this, the top five must generate the full returns.This is why ownership size and valuation discipline matter: buying only 1% of a company requires a multi-billion-euro exit (and that is an unlikely outcome at the early stage). At the same time, acquiring 15% or 20% at a reasonable price can deliver a full-fund return even with a nearly €250 million exit, which is far more achievable.While unicorns are desirable, the fund aims for several “mid-sized” outcomes (investments returning between €100 million and €500 million) that cumulatively meet the fund’s target returns. This disciplined approach balances exposure across multiple bets, because it is still crucial to bear in mind that many early-stage investments will either break even or fail.Learning from missed opportunitiesSpeaking about investments, it also makes sense to touch on the topic of missed opportunities. As well as any other investors, Gytenis has experience of this kind. He recalled passing on investments due to personal conviction or competing priorities. These cases provide valuable lessons in evaluating founders and market potential.Gytenis shared that early-stage decisions often involve not only data-driven analysis but also subjective judgment, which can be quite dangerous for decision-making. Factors such as founder drive, insight, and market understanding may be difficult to quantify but crucial for success. That’s why documenting decisions and learning from both successful and missed investments helps improve evaluation processes over time.While many early-stage investments may fail, systematic reflection on what worked, what didn’t, and why can enhance long-term venture performance.How preparedness meets luck in entrepreneurshipDoes luck play an important role in entrepreneurial success? Definitely yes, but not only. Preparedness also makes a huge contribution. Gytenis mentioned an example of a young startup entering a rapidly growing market. Initially, it was rejected by investors. But later, the company secured a contract with a major unicorn customer, which became a milestone in its business journey and opened new horizons for it.Such an opportunity could be seen as luck. However, Gytenis noted that the founders’ preparation for offering a competitive system and effectively executing the tender was critical. The contract enabled the startup to scale rapidly, growing 70-fold within two years, and attract additional customers.Luck alone is insufficient. Success comes when consistent effort, market understanding, and operational readiness intersect with favorable circumstances. Founders must be ready to act decisively when luck strikes.Practical tips for foundersGytenis advised founders to focus on market insight and anticipate how the world will evolve. Successful startups often emerge from bets on future trends and technological shifts. For instance, Netflix was among those companies that capitalized on changes in internet speed and content consumption. Founders must develop a unique perspective on how markets and technologies will change, even if the outcome is uncertain.The importance of complementary founding teams shouldn’t be underestimated as well. Solo founders can succeed, but they must be able to hire talented individuals who can fill the existing gaps in their knowledge or skills.Ideal teams often form through prior collaboration on projects or professional relationships where complementary skills (like marketing or technology) are already proven. This shared experience and understanding of each other’s strengths, together with a clear market insight, provides a stronger foundation for building successful ventures.Baltic startup ecosystemIn their conversation, Max also asked Gytenis to share his opinion about the current state of the Baltic startup ecosystem. This ecosystem is relatively small, but it is gradually growing, and each country is working in its own niche. Government initiatives (such as Lithuania’s 2017 program to become a regional hub) have delivered tangible results and already attracted international companies to establish local operations there.Strong GDP growth and rising purchasing power further support the ecosystem’s development. Nevertheless, talent acquisition remains the primary constraint. Attracting skilled professionals (especially from abroad) and retaining them is a challenging task due to cultural and geographic factors.According to Gytenis, education and high-quality job opportunities are key levers for building the talent pool. It’s crucial to understand that salaries in the region are lower than in Western Europe. However, infrastructure and lifestyle quality make it an attractive location for startups. Relocation to Silicon Valley can be a necessary step for later-stage funding, but pre-seed and early-stage ventures can succeed by focusing on building a global product locally and securing regional investor validation.Trust and relationships remain central to venture investment in the Baltics. Face-to-face interaction helps investors gauge founder credibility and commitment. Long-term collaboration always relies on mutual confidence and shared vision for growth.Humans in the Age of AIAlready today, we can see how powerful computers can be in optimizing various tasks, like deal-making or data analysis. Nevertheless, Gytenis believes that humans will continue to engage in activities, but it’s highly likely that they will do it for enjoyment and personal fulfillment. Even if fully autonomous vehicles dominate, some people will still choose to drive classic cars for pleasure.Gytenis assumed that business will also retain a human dimension, particularly in areas like relationship building and judgment-based decision-making. Despite the efficiency of AI, markets are not purely logical. Human behavior, sentiment, and psychological biases will continue to shape outcomes. FOMO, trends, and other emotional drivers ensure that human participation remains essential, even in a highly automated future.Nowadays, a lot of experts agree that the future will be hybrid: AI will ensure efficiency and scale, while humans will focus on creativity and meaningful engagement in business and life. This sounds like a quite optimistic forecast.Want to learn more about the present and future of technologies in the business world? That’s what you can find in the episodes of the Innovantage podcast. Don’t miss the next one!

SaaS customer success UK is how you help customers get real results from your product so renewals, expansion and referrals become predictable – not accidental. It is the shift from “we sold a licence” to “we own an outcome together”, and it is the difference between a fragile subscription business and a resilient growth engine.This matters more than ever. UK SaaS companies are operating in a crowded market, with rising acquisition costs and increasingly cautious buyers. New deals are harder to win, procurement cycles are longer, and finance teams are asking tough questions about every line item. In this environment, the companies that win are the ones that keep and grow the customers they already have.In this article, we will walk through a practical way to think about SaaS customer success UK: the realities of the market, the most common pain points for SMEs, the roles and processes you actually need, and the metrics that matter. Then we will give you a practical checklist you can use to design your own SaaS customer success UK strategy, content and service page, plus a 30-day action plan to get started.The Reality of SaaS Customer Success UK TodayThe UK SaaS market has matured. There are more products than ever competing for the same budget, and most buyers already have a stack of tools in place. Recurring revenue sounds stable on paper, but in reality it can be fragile: one quarter of unexpected churn or a batch of downsells can wipe out a big portion of your new ARR.For a long time, SaaS customer success was treated as “support with a nicer name”. A few onboarding calls, some ad hoc training sessions, maybe a quarterly check-in – and then everyone hopes for renewal. That approach no longer works. Customers expect you to be proactive, outcome-focused and aligned with their internal pressures.Modern SaaS customer success UK teams tend to work toward three big goals. First, reduce churn by making sure customers get to value quickly and stay engaged. Second, increase expansion and Net Revenue Retention (NRR) by spotting growth opportunities inside existing accounts. And third, turn customers into advocates who are willing to provide testimonials, referrals and participate in case studies that fuel your go-to-market.Common SaaS Customer Success UK Pain Points for SMEsMany UK SaaS SMEs know customer success is important, but day-to-day reality often looks messy and reactive. The symptoms tend to repeat themselves across different companies and products.Churn that feels randomCustomers look happy, then suddenly go quiet. Emails slow down, usage drops a little, and by the time someone notices, there is a cancellation email with vague reasons like “budget cuts” or “moving in a different direction”. Without clear health signals or an early warning system, churn feels random – and leadership starts to believe nothing can be done.Weak product adoption and low engagementEven when sales cycles go well, the energy often collapses after onboarding. Logins drop dramatically after the first month. Only one champion really uses the product, and the wider team never gets past the basics. Key features that drive real value remain untouched, and renewal conversations become a debate about price instead of a conversation about impact.Overloaded team stuck in reactive modeIn many SaaS SMEs, “customer success” is a catch-all label. The same people handle tickets, chase invoices, join every training call, prepare custom reports and get pulled into last-minute sales demos. They want to be strategic, but they spend most of their week firefighting, doing unpaid consultancy and answering the same questions over and over.No clear link between CS activity and revenueOn top of all this, it can be difficult to prove the impact of customer success to leadership or investors. The team is busy, customers like them, but there is no clean way to show how specific activities drive renewals, expansion or NRR. That makes it hard to argue for more resources or to prioritise CS initiatives over short-term sales targets.Foundations of SaaS Customer Success UK – Roles, Processes, MetricsTo move from “busy and reactive” to “predictable and strategic”, you need a few solid foundations. For UK SaaS SMEs, this does not mean building a huge department; it means being deliberate about roles, processes and metrics.Key roles in a right-sized UK SaaS CS functionAt the core, you have your Customer Success Manager. The CSM is responsible for understanding customer goals, designing success plans, coordinating onboarding and driving ongoing adoption. They are the main strategic point of contact for the customer.For heavier products – for example, those involving integrations, data migration or change management – an Onboarding or Implementation Specialist is extremely valuable. This role focuses on the initial setup, technical configuration and project-style delivery so that time-to-value is kept under control.Finally, even in a small team, it helps to have someone thinking about Customer Success Operations or Digital CS, even if that is part of another role. This person looks after playbooks, automations, data and tooling: email sequences, in-app journeys, health scores and reporting. They make sure your CSMs are not reinventing the wheel for every account.Core processes across the customer lifecycleStrong SaaS customer success UK programmes are built around a few repeatable processes across the customer lifecycle. Onboarding is the first. You should have a clear journey for the first 30, 60 and 90 days that outlines responsibilities, milestones and success criteria for both your team and the customer.Adoption is the second. This is where you actively drive usage of the features that matter most for your customers’ outcomes. Regular value check-ins, training sessions, in-app prompts and targeted content all play a role here.Then come QBRs or strategic reviews. Whether you call them Quarterly Business Reviews or something more appropriate to your cadence, these meetings are where you connect product usage to business results, re-align on goals and discuss future opportunities.Finally, you need renewal and expansion playbooks. That means having structured steps for how you run renewal conversations, what you do when risk signals appear and how you identify and pursue expansion opportunities such as additional seats, modules or regions.Essential metrics for SaaS customer success UKThe right metrics bring all of this together. At the top level, you need to track both logo churn and revenue churn, as well as Net Revenue Retention. These metrics tell you if you are keeping customers, and whether your existing base is shrinking or expanding financially.You also need leading indicators. Time-to-value and onboarding completion rates show how effectively new customers are getting started. Product usage metrics and health scores help you spot accounts that are thriving or struggling long before renewals come up.If your CS team does not know these numbers, you are flying blind. Even simple dashboards built from your product analytics and billing data can transform how you prioritise your time and conversations.Modern Challenges in SaaS Customer Success UK (and How to Handle Them)Once the foundations are in place, most UK SaaS SMEs face a new set of challenges: how to scale without burning out the team, how to balance human touch with automation and how to ensure customer success stays tightly connected to the product roadmap.Doing more with less – scaling with digital and automationNo SME can afford to run high-touch, bespoke programmes for every customer. Scaling SaaS customer success UK usually means introducing more digital and automated elements without losing the human element where it matters.Email sequences that guide customers through key milestones, in-app product tours and tips, recorded webinars and self-serve help centres can all offload repetitive work. AI can help summarise call notes, extract action items, flag risk signals in conversations and personalise outreach based on usage or segment.The goal is not to remove people but to make sure their time is spent on high-value, strategic conversations instead of manual follow-ups and repetitive tasks.Balancing high-touch vs tech-touch in UK SMEsA simple but powerful move is to segment your customers by ARR and complexity, then choose touch models accordingly. Your largest, most complex accounts may need a dedicated CSM, regular strategic sessions and tailored success plans. Mid-market or lower-ARR customers might be better served with a mix of digital journeys and periodic group sessions or office hours.The important thing is to be intentional. Decide what “high-touch”, “low-touch” and “tech-touch” look like in your world, document what each segment gets, and make sure the experience still feels coherent and valuable.Closing the loop with productCustomer success is also a rich source of insight for your product team. Every day, CSMs hear about friction points, missing features and emerging use cases. If that information stays in individual inboxes or call notes, you lose a competitive advantage.Establish a simple cadence between CS and Product: for example, a monthly review where key patterns are shared, top issues are prioritised and upcoming roadmap items are discussed. Use a common template to capture feedback and impact. This turns customer voices into structured input rather than noise, and shows customers their feedback genuinely influences the product.Real-World SaaS Customer Success UK in Action – Learning From Case StudiesTheory is useful, but real examples are what usually change minds. When you look at successful SaaS customer success UK programmes in the wild, certain patterns show up again and again, not only in pure SaaS companies but also in modernisation, data and automation projects.Strong onboarding and implementation are usually the foundation. Complex implementations – such as legacy system upgrades or new data platforms – succeed when there is a clear plan, shared milestones and ongoing collaboration between provider and client. That is customer success thinking in action, even if the label is never used.Long-term engagements often show how continuous improvement and automation increase value over time. Instead of a one-off project, the relationship evolves into an ongoing partnership where each iteration brings more efficiency, better insight or new capabilities.There are also many examples where external teams effectively augment internal product or engineering teams in UK and EU product companies, helping them execute faster while maintaining ownership of the product. That model resonates strongly with how many SaaS customer success functions want to operate: as an extension of the customer’s team, not just a vendor.If you want to see how structured implementation, automation and long-term partnership look in practice, explore our customer stories on the Sigli case studies page – from legacy system upgrades to data platforms and AI-powered tools.As you read, look for patterns: how onboarding is structured, how value is tracked over time and how collaboration evolves from project to partnership. These stories can act as a mirror for your own SaaS customer success UK journey and highlight where your approach is already strong and where you may need to invest.A Practical SaaS Customer Success UK Checklist for Your Own Content and Service PageYour website is often the first real contact point where prospects try to understand whether you take customer success seriously. You can use the following lens as a checklist when designing or refreshing your SaaS customer success UK content and service page.Start with the hero. In one clear sentence, define SaaS customer success UK in your own words and make sure you mention retention and expansion explicitly. A visitor should immediately understand that you care about outcomes, not just features.Give the context. Anchor your message in the UK SaaS market reality. Explain that acquisition is getting more expensive, churn is a real risk and that customer success is strategic, not just a support function. This helps decision-makers justify investing time and budget in CS.Reflect your audience’s problems. Speak directly to pains like unpredictable churn, weak adoption and overloaded teams. When readers see their reality described clearly, they are more likely to trust your proposed approach.Show the substance. Do not stop at nice-sounding principles. Describe the roles, processes and metrics that make your customer success model real. Explain how CSMs work with customers day-to-day, what your onboarding journey looks like and how you track value.Address modern challenges. Demonstrate that you are not stuck in 2015. Talk about how you use automation, digital CS and product alignment to scale, and how you balance high-touch engagement with efficient tech-touch at different customer segments.Provide proof. Link to case studies and share specific outcomes where possible: improvements in adoption, reductions in churn, uplift in NRR or expansion. If you do not have your own stories yet, start by looking at patterns on our Sigli case studies page and think about how similar principles might apply to your product.End with a clear call to action. Offer a low-friction next step such as a discovery call, a success audit, a benchmark review or a playbook download. Make it obvious what a curious prospect should do if they recognise themselves in your content.How to Get Started With SaaS Customer Success UK in 30 DaysYou do not have to rebuild your entire operating model to make progress. You can make meaningful changes to your SaaS customer success UK approach in a month, especially in an SME environment where decisions can be taken quickly.In week one, map your customer journey and define your basic metrics. Write down the steps from contract signature to renewal, and identify where customers typically stall. At the same time, make sure you can calculate logo churn, revenue churn and Net Revenue Retention, and that you have at least a rough view of product usage by account.In week two, create a simple success plan template and outline a 30/60/90-day onboarding journey. The success plan captures customer goals, key milestones and responsibilities on both sides. The onboarding journey lays out the touchpoints, content and outcomes you expect in the first three months.In week three, define one or two basic health signals and a simple risk review cadence. For example, you might combine usage trends, support volume and sentiment into a health score. Then schedule a weekly or bi-weekly review where the team looks at at-risk accounts, agrees on actions and tracks outcomes.In week four, update your SaaS customer success UK website page using the checklist above. Refine the hero message, add context about the UK market, describe your processes and metrics, and link to relevant case studies. Make sure there is at least one clear CTA that invites visitors to take the next step with you.If you are an SME leader in the UK running a SaaS business, you do not need a 20-person CS team. You need a clear strategy, a realistic operating model and a way to communicate it to customers, investors and your own team. The sooner you make customer success intentional, the sooner your existing customer base can become a genuine growth engine.One easy way to move forward is to book a 30-minute SaaS customer success UK assessment call. Share your current churn, ARR and team setup, and we will help you identify the three most important priorities for your situation: whether that is tightening onboarding, improving adoption or building the right digital layer.If you prefer to start more quietly, begin by reviewing patterns in our case studies and mapping them to your own customer journey. As you recognise similar challenges and solutions, you will see more clearly what your next step in SaaS customer success UK should be.

Before you can truly augment in-house development team UK capabilities, you need clarity: which legacy systems are holding you back, which cloud moves are safe, and where extra capacity or specialist skills will actually pay off. A focused 4–6 week modernisation assessment gives UK SMEs that clarity. It turns scattered tech problems into a prioritised roadmap your internal developers and carefully chosen augmented talent can deliver without risking downtime, runaway cloud spend, or endless “digital transformation” talk that never becomes real change.Why Augment In-House Development Team UK SMEs Struggle With Legacy and Cloud ChaosIf you run a UK SME with an in-house dev or IT team, you’re probably caught in the same trap as many others: too much legacy, not enough time, and a confusing mix of on-prem, SaaS and cloud platforms.Your developers are capable—but they’re stuck maintaining yesterday’s systems instead of building tomorrow’s products. That’s exactly where a structured modernisation assessment helps you safely augment in-house development team UK capacity and direction.Old systems blocking growth and innovationLegacy tech doesn’t just look old; it silently throttles your growth.Think of a typical “day in the life”:A minor change to pricing logic takes days because nobody is confident touching the old codebase.A third-party integration fails, and only one developer remembers how the brittle script works.You discover a key platform is going end-of-support next year, but it’s glued into everything.You’ll often see a combination of:Outdated applications built on ageing frameworks or languages few people now know.Fragile integrations stitched together with ad-hoc scripts and manual workarounds.End-of-support platforms (old OS, databases, CMS or ERP modules) creating compliance and security headaches.The result: your in-house team spends energy protecting the past instead of enabling the future, and any attempt to modernise feels risky and exhausting.Cloud migration feels risky and overwhelmingCloud should simplify things, but without a plan, it often feels like a gamble.The common fears usually fall into three buckets:Downtime risk “What if we move the wrong thing first and break order processing, warehousing or billing?”Data risk “What if we lose customer history or transactional data during migration—or fall foul of compliance?”Cost risk “What if our cloud bill spirals and we can’t explain why to the board?”Without a structured approach, “move to the cloud” becomes an intimidating slogan. Your in-house developers are asked to change everything while keeping everything the same, which is impossible. So projects stall, shortcuts multiply, and confidence drops.Limited internal IT resourcesMost UK SMEs don’t have huge engineering departments. You probably recognise this pattern:Two or three key developers + one over-stretched IT lead = a backlog that never shrinks.These small teams are:Handling daily support tickets.Delivering urgent tactical fixes for operations and sales.Trying (and failing) to make progress on longer-term modernisation.They know what’s wrong with the legacy stack, but with limited time and budget, they can’t see where to start or how to justify extra help. That’s where a modernisation assessment becomes the decision-making engine for augment in-house development team UK models.How a 4–6 Week Modernisation Assessment Helps Augment In-House Development Team UK OrganisationsA 4–6 week modernisation assessment is a short, focused engagement that converts “we’re drowning in legacy” into a clear, ranked set of actions that your in-house and augmented teams can execute.From “we’re drowning” to a clear planInstead of yet another 100-page strategy deck, the assessment gives you:A fact-based map of your systems, risks and dependencies.A prioritised set of initiatives with indicative cost and timescales.A decision framework for when to use your internal team vs augmented specialists.Think of it as swapping chaos for clarity:Before: unclear estate, random priorities, nervous leadership.After: shared understanding, ranked initiatives, and a realistic 3–6 month roadmap.It’s less about documentation and more about creating a backlog your teams can start on immediately.Designed for UK SMEs, not enterprisesThis style of assessment is intentionally shaped for UK SMEs:Pragmatic scope – focus on systems that drive revenue, operations or compliance.Business-first language – benefits explained in terms of margin, risk, speed and customer experience.Quick wins – early, low-risk moves that build confidence and free capacity.The result is something your leadership team can approve and your in-house developers—and any augmented talent—can actually deliver.Step 1 – Inventory & Risk Map to Augment In-House Development Team UK DecisionsThe first step is brutally simple: understand what you have. It’s hard to modernise what you can’t see.Map your systems, apps, databases, and integrationsThe assessment builds a single, structured view of your estate. This often takes the form of a lightweight system catalogue, for example:For many SMEs, this is the first time IT, operations and leadership share one accurate picture of the technology that keeps the business running.Separate business-critical from “nice to have”Once the inventory is clear, systems are categorised by business importance. A simple three-tier model works well:Tier 1 – Business-critical Systems that directly drive revenue, compliance, safety or core operations.Tier 2 – Important Systems that significantly improve efficiency or quality, but won’t stop the business overnight.Tier 3 – “Nice to have” Convenience tools, legacy reports, one-off utilities and experiments.This classification lets you focus your internal and augmented effort where it matters most, instead of spreading everyone thin across dozens of low-impact tools.Highlight key risksNext, the assessment overlays risk onto this map. Typical risk types include:Security gaps – missing patches, weak authentication, exposed interfaces.End-of-life technology – operating systems, databases or frameworks with no vendor support.Single points of failure – critical systems or scripts only one person understands.The output is often a risk heatmap, where red items are those you simply cannot ignore. This becomes a powerful tool for:Justifying modernisation investment to the board.Deciding where augment in-house development team UK efforts (e.g. security experts, cloud architects) will deliver the most protection.Step 2 – Cloud Suitability & Migration Options to Augment In-House Development Team UK CapacityWith the current landscape mapped, the assessment evaluates which systems belong in the cloud, when, and how, in a way your existing team can realistically deliver.Keep, rehost, replatform, or replaceEach key system is mapped to one of four high-level options:Keep (for now) Leave on-prem if risk and cost are low, and there is no immediate benefit in moving.Rehost Move “as-is” onto cloud infrastructure (VMs, managed servers) with minimal change.Replatform Shift to managed services (databases, app services, containers) for better scalability, reliability and cost control.Replace Retire the system and move to SaaS or a new cloud-native solution.This per-system view avoids vague “move everything to the cloud” mandates and gives your internal and augmented teams a realistic technical path.Identify low-risk quick winsNot every move needs to be a big bang. The assessment pinpoints low-risk, high-confidence migrations that:Have clear boundaries.Are well-understood by your internal team.Deliver noticeable business value quickly.Typical examples include:Productivity tools (email, collaboration, file storage).Simple line-of-business applications with minimal integrations.Reporting and analytics workloads that benefit from scalable cloud services.By tackling these first, often with the help of specialised augmentation, you build trust in cloud approaches and free up internal capacity to work on more complex initiatives.Align cloud moves to business goalsCloud migration isn’t a goal in itself; it’s a means to serve the business. The assessment explicitly links each proposed cloud move to outcomes such as:Faster onboarding of customers or suppliers.Reduced downtime during peak trading periods.Better data and reporting to support decisions.Reduced operational and security risk.This keeps discussions focused on value, not just technology, and makes it easier to justify team augmentation where it unlocks tangible business benefit.Step 3 – Business-Value Ranking That Lets You Augment In-House Development Team UK StrategicallyBy this stage, you know your systems and options. Step 3 is about choosing what to do first in a transparent, defensible way.Score by impact vs effortEach candidate initiative (e.g. “rehost CRM database”, “retire legacy reporting server”) is scored against:Business impact – revenue protection, cost savings, risk reduction, customer experience, staff productivity.Delivery effort – complexity, dependencies, skills required, and expected duration.A simple ranking table might look like this:This visual makes it easy for both technical and non-technical stakeholders to see why certain projects go first, and where to apply augment in-house development team UK resources for maximum return.Build a top 3–5 “no-regret” movesInstead of a huge, overwhelming programme, the assessment distills a top 3–5 “no-regret” initiatives for the next 3–6 months. For each, you’ll typically see:Clear problem statement and desired outcome.Rough cost range and timescale.Dependencies and risks.Named owner (internal) plus any recommended augmented roles.This turns modernisation from an abstract ambition into a manageable portfolio of work.Avoid abstract, never-ending transformation programmesMany SMEs have been burned by big-bang “digital transformation” visions that never land. The assessment takes the opposite approach:Concrete initiatives instead of vague themes.Timeboxed phases instead of open-ended programmes.Clear “definition of done” for each step.The result is a living backlog that your in-house team and external specialists can iteratively deliver, rather than a one-off slide deck that gathers dust.Step 4 – Skills & Capacity Gap Analysis to Augment In-House Development Team UK With the Right TalentFinally, the assessment compares the roadmap to your current team’s skills and capacity, so you know exactly where to enhance, hire, or buy in help.Compare roadmap to your current teamThis step looks at your team from two angles:Capabilities – cloud architecture, integration and APIs, data engineering, information security, UX/product, QA/automation.Capacity – how much time they can realistically spare from BAU and mandatory work.You might discover patterns like:Strong domain knowledge and backend development, but limited cloud-native experience.Good service desk and infrastructure support, but no-one comfortable leading a security review.Talented junior developers who need guidance from experienced architects.Understanding these gaps is essential before you augment in-house development team UK capacity. Otherwise you risk buying the wrong kind of help.Decide when to augment vs train vs outsourceWith the gaps on the table, you can make deliberate decisions:Augment Bring in targeted external specialists (e.g. cloud architect, integration engineer, data/BI expert) to lead or accelerate key initiatives, while mentoring your internal devs.Train Invest in upskilling where the gap is moderate and there is long-term benefit in owning the capability (e.g. DevOps practices, cloud fundamentals).Outsource Hand off well-defined, non-core projects where it’s more efficient for a partner to deliver end-to-end.Instead of reacting to problems with ad-hoc contractors, you get a planned, blended model aligned to the roadmap.Build a blended model that fits SME budgetsThe assessment typically recommends a mix along these lines:In-house team: owns business-critical knowledge and day-to-day operations.Augmented specialists: lead complex migrations, architecture and key integrations for defined periods.External partners: deliver specific projects or components with clear boundaries.This approach lets you scale up and down sensibly, keeping costs under control while ensuring your SME always has access to the right expertise at the right time.Case Study – Legacy System Upgrade That Mirrors Augment In-House Development Team UK ProjectsImagine a UK wholesale SME with:A decade-old on-prem order management system.Four-person in-house dev/IT team.Frequent outages in peak season and no agreed cloud strategy.Before the modernisation assessment:The team spent most of its time firefighting.Leadership wanted “to move to the cloud” but had no budgeted plan.Nobody had a complete view of integrations around the order system.During the 4–6 week assessment:Inventory & risk map revealed nine downstream integrations and an end-of-support database version within 12 months.Cloud suitability concluded that rehosting to cloud VMs was the safest interim step, with a later path towards a SaaS or rebuilt solution.Business-value ranking put stabilising the order system ahead of less critical internal tools.Skills & capacity analysis recommended augmenting the team with: A part-time cloud architect for three months.An integration specialist to untangle and harden interfaces.After the assessment and first 6 months of delivery:The order system ran in the cloud with improved resilience and monitoring.Outages reduced significantly, freeing internal time for incremental improvements.Leadership had a realistic 18–24 month plan—and budget—to replace the system fully.The augmented specialists upskilled the internal team, leaving lasting capability behind.This story is typical of augment in-house development team UK modernisation projects: focused external support, clear boundaries, and a roadmap that makes sense for SME budgets and realities. If you’d like to see the journey in more depth, you can explore the full legacy modernisation case study for UK SMEs here: Read the full legacy system upgrade case studyWhat You Get – A 3–6 Month Roadmap to Safely Augment In-House Development Team UK SMEsBy the end of the modernisation assessment, you don’t just receive documents; you own a roadmap and decision toolkit your organisation can act on immediately.Clear, SME-sized planThe final deliverable is a concise plan that answers, in plain language:Which 1–3 systems to focus on first.The expected cost range for stabilisation and migration.Which roles and skills are needed internally and via augmentation.The benefits in terms of risk reduction, efficiency and revenue enablement.It’s the kind of document you can share with your board or leadership team to justify investment and explain trade-offs.Visual timeline and prioritiesYou also get a visual roadmap, often broken into phases such as:Months 1–3 – quick wins, high-risk fixes, foundational cloud steps.Months 4–6 – follow-on migrations, optimisation and process improvements.Months 6–12 – larger replacements or re-platforming where justified.This gives everyone, from developers to directors, a shared view of what happens when, and what can wait.Concrete inputs for hiring and augmentationFinally, the assessment produces ready-to-use inputs for hiring, engaging partners, or bringing in contractors, such as:Role profiles and responsibilities (e.g. “Cloud Architect – 2 days/week for 12 weeks”).Recommended skills and experience levels.Indicative engagement length and timing.How each external role will complement your in-house development team.This turns “we should probably get some help” into specific, actionable requests that vendors and candidates can respond to and prevents wasted spend on mismatched resources.Next Steps – Book Your Modernisation Assessment to Augment In-House Development Team UKIf your in-house dev or IT team is overwhelmed by legacy systems and uncertain cloud choices, a focused 4–6 week modernisation assessment is often the safest way to regain control and plan smart augmentation.Who this is forThis assessment is ideal if you are:A UK SME (roughly 20–500 employees).Running an existing in-house dev/IT team that is stuck in firefighting mode.Reliant on critical legacy systems with growing risk.Unsure how to augment in-house development team UK capability without losing control or overspending.If that sounds familiar, the assessment is designed specifically for your environment.What happens after you contact usThe journey typically looks like this:Discovery call (30–45 minutes) We discuss your current systems, team, pain points and objectives, and confirm that a modernisation assessment is the right starting point.Scope confirmation We agree which systems and areas to include, define success criteria, and align on timings and key stakeholders.4–6 week assessment We run workshops, interviews and technical reviews to create your inventory, risk map, cloud options, business-value ranking and skills/capacity analysis.Roadmap presentation We walk you through your 3–6 month roadmap, highlighting where and how to augment your in-house team and answering questions from both technical and business stakeholders.If you’re ready to turn legacy chaos into a clear, actionable plan, book a 30-minute consultation to explore whether a modernisation assessment is right for your UK SME.‍‍

Today, data has become one of the most valuable assets. Organizations that can effectively manage, analyze, and apply their data (often with the help of artificial intelligence) gain a significant competitive advantage. But with new opportunities come new responsibilities and risks. How is data-driven thinking transforming organizations? Why do so many companies still misuse AI? And how can businesses prepare their employees for a future powered by automation and analytics? That’s what this episode of the Innovantage podcast, hosted by Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov, explores.To talk about these topics, Max invited Dennis van Bregt, Head of Data Analytics & AI at Allnex, a global leader in materials science.Dennis’s work at Allnex centers on three main areas: data, analytics, and AI. His team ensures that core data related to customers, suppliers, and materials is efficiently managed and accessible. They develop and maintain a robust data platform designed to support analytics and reporting. The analytics function translates data into actionable insights. While traditionally linked to SAP and Business Objects, Allnex is now transitioning to Power BI to leverage the new data platform for more flexible and scalable reporting.Dennis also drives the company’s adoption of AI and machine learning to enhance operational efficiency.With a background in econometrics (which is today’s equivalent of data science), Dennis brings over 30 years of experience in the field. Despite major advances in tools and technology, he notes that the fundamentals remain the same: roughly 80% of the work still revolves around collecting and preparing data.The volume and complexity of data have grown exponentially. Apart from this, we can observe the introduction of stricter privacy and security requirements.How LLMs Turn Unstructured Data into Usable KnowledgeIn recent years, the world of data has experienced a dramatic evolution with the rise of large language models (LLMs). For more than two decades, unstructured data (like PDFs, presentations, and meeting transcripts) had to be manually converted into structured tables before it could be analyzed. This was a very time-consuming process, which limited the volume of an organization’s knowledge that could be used effectively.Over the past five years, the emergence of LLMs has changed that. These models can interpret meaning directly from unstructured data. They can extract context without the need for manual structuring.One of the key challenges for companies now is knowledge retention. A significant portion of the experienced workforce will retire within the next decade and take years of expertise with them. To preserve that knowledge, Dennis’s team is exploring how AI can process materials such as work instructions, technical documents, and meeting transcripts and automatically summarize insights.But despite these advancements, Dennis emphasized that AI is not a magic wand. Effective use of AI still depends on solid data foundations and literacy across the organization, and that’s exactly what his team is focused on today.Digital Literacy for Employees at Scale: Inside Allnex’s ProgramAt Allnex, Dennis is currently leading the rollout of a company-wide data literacy program. It is designed to help employees understand the impact of data on their work and their own influence on the organization’s data ecosystem.The program aims to make data and AI more accessible and relevant to each role. For example, operators will gain insights that make daily work easier. Thanks to this, they will be able to concentrate on exceptions instead of checking every detail manually. As AI technologies develop and become more powerful, they are expected to function more like virtual assistants. They can identify patterns and correlations that humans might miss due to the enormous volume of data.Employees should also understand their responsibility in creating data. Every person continuously generates data through daily activities, like system entries or virtual meetings. This data should be clear, accurate, and usable for others across the company.Although Allnex operates with standardized global systems, its 33 factories and 22 R&D centers sometimes interpret data fields differently. This can create challenges when it comes to expanding analytics or AI use cases across sites. The data literacy initiative highlights the importance of shared understanding and data integrity across all operations.Apart from this, it's crucial to explain to employees the specificity of the key regulations, such as the EU AI Act and GDPR, teach them how to handle personal identifiable information responsibly, and how to leverage aggregated data for insights. Will AI Replace You at Work – or Augment You?Concerns regarding the replacement of human employees with AI tools have been widely discussed for a couple of years already. However, Dennis believes that AI is not a threat to all jobs. Automation can increase productivity. But human oversight remains essential in many processes. AI is intended to augment human work, while employees can focus on higher-value tasks.The significant role of AI for businesses is undeniable. As mentioned above, AI provides a valuable tool for preserving knowledge and maintaining operational continuity. Moreover, it enables faster, more flexible learning. Unstructured data can be transformed into interactive training materials so that employees can learn at their own pace through AR/VR applications.AI models are good at processing massive amounts of information and identifying patterns. Thanks to this, AI can support decision-making and even assist with some core business processes, like strategy development (when guided by humans). However, it still can’t independently replace domain expertise or generate a competitive advantage without context-specific input.AI Skills and Digital Literacy for Different Employee RolesWithout any doubt, the mass adoption of new tools in workplaces requires new knowledge and behaviors from their potential users. Nevertheless, the AI skills needed nowadays depend on the role and goals of the user. For employees focused on analytics or data mining, foundational programming knowledge in languages like Python remains valuable. Even though AI can now automate certain aspects of coding, understanding these languages helps professionals grasp how data processes connect and function. For marketing, content creation, or multimedia roles, proficiency in prompt engineering is increasingly important. It is vital to know how to create precise prompts. This will allow you to generate high-quality outputs from AI tools.Using ChatGPT Safely: Digital Literacy for Employees and Data ProtectionAccording to Dennis, one of the biggest risks of using generative AI at work is the unintentional leakage of confidential information. Many employees already experiment with ChatGPT. But quite often, they are unaware that inputting proprietary data into public models can expose corporate secrets. To prevent this, Allnex has built a secure, internal version of ChatGPT on Azure that offers the same functionality without external connections.However, simply blocking access to public tools is not a solution. When employees are restricted, they often find ways to work around these restrictions. For example, they may start emailing sensitive files to private accounts to use ChatGPT at home. This can create even more data-leak risks. And here is when AI literacy enters the game again. It is vital to explain the dangers to people, show real-world examples (like Samsung’s leaked source code incident), and offer safe internal alternatives.Apart from this, tool adoption remains a major challenge. Many companies quickly adopt new AI tools without fully understanding their true needs or adequately preparing employees for the change. As Dennis emphasized, success depends not only on technology but also on aspects such as training and continuous improvement. New tools can shift roles and responsibilities. That’s why organizations should prioritize and invest in upskilling as well.Responsible Access to Data and AI Tools Across a Global WorkforceFor Dennis, role-based access control is a cornerstone of responsible data management. Every organization should ensure that its employees have access only to the data that is relevant to their work. Such efforts protect sensitive information and allow organizations to tailor AI literacy programs to specific audiences. Those people who handle proprietary or personal data require deeper understanding of GDPR and confidentiality. At the same time, others benefit from simpler guidance focused on general awareness.But even with the right approaches to corporate education, a lot of businesses can face difficulties in proper communication with their team members. For instance, Allnex employs people across 50 countries. Their ages range from 17 to 70, and all of them have different levels of English and digital fluency. To reach everyone effectively, his team uses multiple communication channels, including newsletters, webinars, and internal podcasts. These initiatives translate complex topics, such as the EU AI Act, into clear language for everyone.Nevertheless, Dennis mentioned another serious issue. Employees spend less time consuming educational content than the team spends creating it. That’s why organisations should do their best to make materials more engaging and accessible for different groups based on their needs.Different demographics consume information differently. Younger employees respond better to short, social-style formats such as TikTok-style teasers that drive interest toward deeper materials. Older audiences often prefer traditional written guides or webinars. For a big team, mixing different formats remains key.Dennis and his team are continuously experimenting with new ways to communicate AI and data literacy across a global workforce. After discovering that very few employees watched long explainer videos, the team restructured learning into shorter, modular clips. Now, the materials are broken into three- to five-minute clips, which have subtitles in over 30 languages. To save time and ensure consistency, Dennis even used AI voice cloning for narration and text-to-speech tools that can mimic his tone.Experimentation extends to written materials as well. Policy documents are now repurposed into conversational audio formats with advanced tools like Google’s NotebookLM. They help turn static text into AI-generated dialogue podcasts.Data Storytelling: Making Analytics and Learning EngagingIn his conversation with Max, Dennis explained that data and storytelling share a common foundation. They can be viewed as art forms. It doesn't matter whether you are designing a dashboard or producing a video, success depends on capturing attention and conveying a clear message.In analytics, the huge volume of data that is available today can easily overwhelm people. A well-designed dashboard should do more than display numbers. It should turn data into information and information into insight. The visuals should tell a story that makes sense in context.The same creative principles can be applied to communication. Even educational business podcasts and videos can mix professionalism with a touch of humor. This makes content more natural and engaging.Vision 2040: The Future of Work, AI and Digital Literacy for EmployeesDennis expects a workplace to be transformed by technological social responsibility. In his Vision video, he explores what companies might look like fifteen years from now.The video imagines an ordinary workday in 2040: employees commute in self-driving cars, navigate offices using augmented-reality glasses, and enter meetings preconfigured by AI-powered assistants. Even small details, like the coffee being ready upon arrival, make the future more relatable.According to Dennis, the future of work is already taking shape, and society must adapt thoughtfully. The upcoming shifts can be compared with the impact of the industrial revolutions. Productivity gains historically led to shorter workweeks (from six days to five), and the next evolution may be a 32-hour workweek. However, technological progress must not come at the cost of massive unemployment or widening inequality.In a good scenario, we will build a society where productivity and prosperity are shared. In such a society, people contribute through their passions and strengths, not just necessity. In his predictions, Dennis also pointed to the growing influence of AI on entry-level jobs. As he explained, automation often impacts the youngest generations first. While many young people want to become influencers today, an economy can’t sustain millions of content creators without a foundation of real production and services. To prevent this imbalance, governments and institutions must guide AI adoption responsibly.Europe should play a unique role in this transition. The EU’s GDPR and the AI Act set a global standard for responsible data and technology use. However, the region needs to find the right balance between regulation and innovation.Closing thoughtsDennis views artificial intelligence as a dual force. It can bring great progress, but can also cause harm if misused. The growing strength of open communities such as GitHub, Hugging Face, and others plays a crucial role in maintaining balance and transparency.AI is not limited to language models. It includes a broad spectrum of technologies, like computer vision, image recognition, and advanced analytics. The real value lies in how these systems interact. The rapid pace of innovation that we can observe today signals a bright and promising future.Nevertheless, there are also some risks. As technology simplifies mental tasks, people can become intellectually passive. Studies show reduced brain activity when people use generative tools. That's why AI literacy and conscious engagement are essential. Dennis stressed the importance of maintaining critical thinking and empathy. For him, responsible AI begins with human awareness. People should be ready to question assumptions and test ideas, despite the fact that AI can provide them with ready-to-use insights.Overall, Dennis remains optimistic about the future. He is ready to explore new developments but stays critical because he strongly believes that we should embrace any innovation responsibly.Want to explore more insights about the future from tech experts and business leaders? Don't miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast hosted by Max Golikov!‍

Idea validation workshops in the Benelux can either save your SME months of waste or become yet another nice-looking exercise that goes nowhere. The tricky part is that choosing the right format rarely feels straightforward. If you run an SME in Belgium, the Netherlands or Luxembourg, you are constantly bombarded with offers for innovation sessions, design sprints, bootcamps, labs and strategy workshops. Many of them promise the same thing: faster decisions and less risk when launching new products or services. On paper they sound similar. In reality, the format you choose for your Idea Validation Workshops Benelux can make or break your initiative. If you pick something too light, you end up with sticky notes on the wall but no validated decision. If you choose something too heavy, your team loses momentum or you never manage to get all stakeholders in the room.This article walks through the three most common formats for Idea Validation Workshops Benelux — short 1–2 day sessions, full Design Sprint–style weeks and multi-week bootcamps or mentoring — and shows how to choose the one that actually fits your SME.Types of Idea Validation Workshops Benelux: 1-Day, Design Sprint, or Bootcamp?Most offers you see around idea validation in the Benelux fall into one of three categories. The first is the 1–2 day workshop. This is a short, focused format that helps you sharpen an idea, map your assumptions and prioritise what to test next. It often looks like a strategy offsite, but with a strong validation angle. You gather key people in a room, clarify the problem, agree on who the customer is, and leave with a concrete plan for what you need to learn.The second format is a Design Sprint–style Idea Validation Workshops Benelux approach. A Design Sprint usually runs for four to five days and is based on a structured process that moves from problem to tested prototype in a week. A small cross-functional team—product, business, tech and someone close to the customer — works together to frame the challenge, sketch solutions, decide on one concept, build a prototype and test it with real users. The outcome is not just a better idea, but real evidence from customers.The third type is the multi-week bootcamp or mentoring programme. These Idea Validation Workshops Benelux are spread over several weeks and often organised by innovation hubs, clusters or public programmes. They combine workshops, homework, mentoring sessions and sometimes a final pitch. Instead of one intense burst, you move through several cycles of customer discovery, solution refinement and business model evolution. This format is less about one workshop and more about building validation as a habit inside your company.Each of these formats can be effective, but only if you match it to the maturity of your idea, the risk involved and the capacity you actually have inside your SME.How to Choose the Right Idea Validation Workshops Benelux Format for Your SMEBefore you compare prices or ask about facilitation methods, it helps to get very clear on the outcome you want. The simplest way to do that is to ask yourself what decision you expect at the end of your Idea Validation Workshops Benelux. Sometimes you just need a rough direction and a prioritised list of next steps. In other cases you want a clear Go or No-Go for a specific product concept. And for bigger bets, you might need enough evidence to support an investment decision and a roadmap for the next three to six months.You also need an honest view of how risky and complex the idea is. An incremental feature for existing customers sits in a different risk category than a completely new subscription service in a new market. A small improvement can often be addressed with a compact workshop. A new business model that touches multiple teams usually deserves something more intensive. Finally, you must be realistic about what your team can commit to. Some SMEs simply cannot free up key people for a full week, while others can only make progress if they block that time and escape day-to-day operations. The number of stakeholders and decision-makers you need to involve will also influence your choice of format.Once you have clarity on decision, risk and capacity, it becomes much easier to see which Idea Validation Workshops Benelux formats are overkill and which ones are dangerously shallow.When a 1–2 Day Idea Validation Workshops Benelux Session Is EnoughShort Idea Validation Workshops Benelux of one or two days work best when your idea is relatively contained and the risk is low to medium. They shine in situations where you have several ideas on the table and need to narrow them down, or where different departments are looking at the same problem from different angles and you need a shared understanding. In a compact timeframe, you can clarify your target segment, agree on the problem you are trying to solve, and list the assumptions that need to be tested around desirability, feasibility and viability.At the end of a 1–2 day workshop, you should expect to leave with a focused problem statement, a structured set of assumptions and a prioritised list of simple experiments you can run afterwards. These experiments might be customer interviews, landing pages, prototypes, or internal data analyses. For smaller bets and incremental improvements, this type of Idea Validation Workshops Benelux often delivers a very good return on investment. It can also be an excellent way to kill weak ideas early, which usually saves more money than anything else.However, there are clear warning signs that a short workshop is not enough. If you are about to commit serious budget, if the idea cuts across multiple business units or countries, or if you need to show clear, tested outcomes to a board or investors, then a simple two-day alignment session will probably leave you with more questions than answers. In those situations, a Design Sprint–style format gives you more depth and more evidence.When You Need a Full Design Sprint-Style Idea Validation Workshops Benelux FormatA Design Sprint–style Idea Validation Workshops Benelux is designed for cases where the stakes are higher and the uncertainty is real. The classic Design Sprint is a four- or five-day process developed to answer critical business questions through design, prototyping and testing ideas with users. For an SME in the Benelux, this format is particularly useful when you are dealing with a strategic digital product or service: a new platform, a major feature, a new customer portal, or a significant redesign that will require substantial development effort.In a Design Sprint–style week, you bring together a small, dedicated team with a clear decision-maker. The week starts by aligning on the problem and defining what success would look like. The team then explores different solutions, decides on one concept to prototype, and spends a day or two building a realistic prototype. At the end of the week, you put this prototype in front of real customers or close proxies and gather feedback. The strength of this format is that it compresses months of debate and unclear slides into a single, intense week with concrete user reactions.This approach to Idea Validation Workshops Benelux is a good fit if internal stakeholders are stuck in endless discussions, if you have already done some discovery but still face too many unknowns, or if you need direct user feedback before committing to a significant development budget. It does require a higher level of commitment compared to a short workshop: you must free the core team for several days in a row and be ready to make decisions based on what you learn. In exchange, you dramatically reduce the risk of building the wrong thing.When Multi-Week Idea Validation Workshops Benelux Bootcamps or Mentoring Make SenseMulti-week bootcamps or mentoring-style Idea Validation Workshops Benelux are a different animal. Rather than one intense block of time, they are spread over three to eight weeks or even longer. Participants join a sequence of workshops, perform assignments between sessions and work with mentors or coaches. This format is especially relevant when your idea is still vague or when the main goal is to build innovation capability inside your organisation instead of validating just one project.In these programmes, you move through several cycles of problem exploration, customer discovery, solution shaping and business model design. There is more space to conduct interviews, explore partnerships, run small experiments and adjust your direction based on feedback. By the end of a multi-week Idea Validation Workshops Benelux bootcamp, you are likely to have a clearer value proposition, a more credible business model and evidence from multiple validation cycles. For some SMEs, especially those exploring new markets, data-driven services or AI-based offerings, this approach provides the structure and accountability needed to move steadily forward instead of getting stuck in wishful thinking.This format does, however, require steady commitment over time. You need people who can consistently work on the idea between sessions and an organisation willing to accept that not everything can be rushed into a single week. In return, you get a deeper and more robust validation process that can support larger funding decisions or more ambitious pivots.Decision Matrix: Comparing Idea Validation Workshops Benelux Formats Side by SideEven without a table, you can think of these three formats along a few simple dimensions. A 1–2 day Idea Validation Workshops Benelux session is the lightest option. It demands the least time, works well for lower-risk ideas and focuses on clarity, alignment and a backlog of experiments. It is ideal when you need a shared understanding and better prioritisation rather than a fully tested solution.A Design Sprint–style week sits in the middle in terms of duration but high in terms of intensity. It suits strategic digital products and services, requires a small cross-functional team that is available for almost the entire week, and culminates in a tested prototype and a concrete decision to proceed, pivot or stop. This format delivers a very high reduction in risk for medium- to large-sized bets.A multi-week bootcamp or mentoring programme spreads the effort over several weeks. The time commitment per day is usually lower than during a sprint, but it extends over a longer period. This format is best for early, high-uncertainty ideas, new markets and new business models. It is also the best option when you want to develop people and culture around innovation, because teams practice validation repeatedly instead of treating it as a one-off event.By mentally placing your idea on this spectrum — small and incremental, strategic but defined, or early and highly uncertain — you can quickly see which type of Idea Validation Workshops Benelux is the closest match.Mini Case: How a Belgian SME Chose the Right Idea Validation Workshops Benelux FormatImagine a 70-person logistics SME based in Flanders. The company has a strong base of existing customers and a good reputation in its niche. The leadership team has an idea for a subscription-based digital portal that would allow small retailers to track deliveries and see the CO₂ impact of their orders in real time. Building such a portal would require significant investment in data integration and user experience. Management wants a clear Go or No-Go decision within a month, and there is already tension between sales, operations and IT about priorities.At first, the CEO leans towards a one-day strategy workshop. It feels easier to schedule and less disruptive. However, once the team looks at the stakes more honestly, they realise they are not simply prioritising between many ideas; they are discussing one big bet. They also recognise that internal opinions will not be enough: they need real feedback from retailers before they can commit budget with confidence.In the end, they opt for a Design Sprint–style Idea Validation Workshops Benelux. During the week, they start by selecting a very specific customer segment and identifying the main risk: whether small retailers would actually pay extra for better visibility and CO₂ insights. Over the next two days, they sketch different approaches and converge on one concept for a portal that combines shipment tracking with alerts for delays and clear, visual sustainability metrics. Then they build a clickable prototype. On the final day, they test this prototype with several existing customers and a few prospects.The conversations are revealing. Retailers appreciate the transparency but admit they are primarily interested in tools that save them time. While sustainability information is nice to have, it is not the first thing they would pay for. The team realises that the initial idea has to be adjusted: the portal should focus on exception management and time-saving features, with CO₂ insights added as a secondary benefit. The final decision is a confident “yes” to the portal, but with a sharper and more realistic scope. Without the sprint, the SME might easily have invested in the wrong priorities based on assumptions rather than evidence.Checklist: Are You About to Choose the Wrong Idea Validation Workshops Benelux Format?Many SMEs choose the wrong Idea Validation Workshops Benelux format because they decide based on what seems easy to organise rather than on what they truly need. A good way to avoid this is to ask yourself whether you can clearly articulate the decision you expect at the end of the workshop and whether the duration matches the risk of the idea. A one-day workshop for a million-euro bet should immediately feel suspicious. You should also check whether you can genuinely free the right people, including someone who can make decisions, for the proposed time.Another important question is whether the provider’s format includes actual validation rather than just ideation. If someone offers you a “Design Sprint” that does not involve building a prototype or testing with users, you are not buying a sprint, just a brainstorming session with a trendy label. For multi-week bootcamps, be realistic about whether your team has the capacity to do the interviews, experiments and follow-ups between sessions. Consider whether the style of the workshop, the language, and the online or offline set-up fit your company culture. Finally, ask yourself if the budget is proportional to the risk and potential upside of the idea. The point is not to spend as little as possible, but to invest an amount that makes sense compared to the decision you are trying to make.If, while going through these questions, you notice that you cannot answer them clearly, or that the format you are looking at is mostly convenient but not truly aligned with your needs, there is a good chance you are about to choose the wrong workshop.Next Steps: Turning Idea Validation Workshops Benelux into a Clear, Low-Risk DecisionThe good news is that Idea Validation Workshops Benelux do not need to be a gamble. You can treat the choice of format as a strategic decision. Start by defining the decision you want to make at the end of the process and work backwards from there. For small, lower-risk ideas, a well-designed 1–2 day workshop is often enough. For strategic products and services where development will be expensive, a Design Sprint–style week that culminates in user tests is usually a better fit. For early, high-uncertainty ideas and new business models, or when you want to build lasting innovation skills inside your company, a multi-week bootcamp or mentoring programme will serve you better.Whatever format you choose, it is worth co-designing the agenda with your provider so that it reflects your sector, your customer reality in the Benelux and your internal constraints. And importantly, you should plan what will happen after the workshop before it even starts. The true return on investment of Idea Validation Workshops Benelux comes from what you do in the weeks and months afterward: the experiments you run, the pilots you launch, and the product or business decisions you finally make.When you approach idea validation in this way, the confusion around formats fades. Instead of asking “Which workshop should we book?”, you begin to ask “What decision are we trying to make, and what is the smartest way to de-risk it?” That is how Idea Validation Workshops Benelux become a clear, low-risk step in your innovation roadmap rather than an expensive, one-off event.