Context
AI needs to understand your business — your terminology, your customers, your processes. Without it, outputs are generic. With it, they're genuinely useful.
Practical AI consulting for Oxfordshire businesses.
Stackstone Consulting is an independent, vendor-neutral AI consultancy based in Abingdon. We help small and mid-market organisations across Oxfordshire choose, govern and implement practical AI systems.
Best suited to organisations with a real workflow to improve and an internal owner who can test it. Unlike strategy-only advice, Stackstone can take work from discovery through a working pilot and production delivery. When deterministic automation is safer or more auditable, we recommend that instead.
Contact tom@stackstoneconsulting.co.uk.
Operational AI
What is Operational AI?
Most businesses think of AI as a tool — something you open, use, and close. Operational AI is different. It's AI doing actual work inside your business: reading, drafting, summarising, flagging, routing, deciding.
Working with it is more like managing a team member than running software. It needs context, clear instructions, good process, and someone checking it doesn't go off the rails.
Some of that work involves AI that can interpret information, choose what to do next, and use external tools — what people call agentic systems. That capability is genuinely useful in the right places, but only when the goal, boundaries, data access and human oversight are well defined.
The difference that matters: when you improve the way a human does work, the lesson often stays with that person. When you improve the way AI does the work, the improvement sticks — every time, for everyone.
Clear instructions
Vague prompts produce vague results. Well-defined processes and constraints are what separate AI that helps from AI that frustrates.
Good process
AI works best when it's embedded into a defined workflow — not bolted on as an afterthought. The process is the product.
Oversight
AI can go off the rails — hallucinating, missing nuance, or drifting from intent. Human review and correction loops keep it on track.
The Stackstone Approach
01 — Discover
We start by understanding your business, your challenges, and where AI can genuinely add value. No jargon, no assumptions.
02 — Design
We build a clear strategy and roadmap, prioritised by impact and practicality.
03 — Deliver
We build and deliver working AI systems — from early proof of concept through to production. Where larger-scale delivery is needed, we bring in trusted partners to get it across the line.
Experience in systems, process and practical change
As Director of Change at NewOrbit Limited, Tom Dean spent many years helping organisations improve business efficiency through process improvement, careful project delivery and consistent change. At Oxford Brookes University, he was Head of Enterprise Applications, Data and Project Delivery, working with large, complex integrated systems to deliver value.
With a background in molecular biology, Tom is interested in how processes and systems work. He founded Stackstone to show how AI can help run a business and to help other organisations get the most from a technology he finds exciting.
Access to AI models is broadly shared; business value comes from how they are brought together, integrated into operations and implemented in practice.
How we help.
AI Strategy & Roadmapping
Board-level advisory. Cut through the hype and build a practical plan aligned with your business goals.
AI Readiness Assessment
Evaluate your data, processes, and team to understand where you really stand before you start building.
Implementation Pilots
Working proof-of-concept builds that demonstrate real value in weeks, not months.
Governance & Compliance
Ensure your AI adoption is safe, ethical, and regulation-ready (GDPR, EU AI Act).
What we've built.
Operational AI in practice
Clearer Ownership, Faster Customer Service
Clear process ownership and helpful context in the customer-service inbox help teams respond sooner and resolve customer issues faster.
Meeting Agent
An AI agent that joins every Microsoft Teams meeting, coaches the user live, and automatically produces summaries, action items, and SharePoint archives when the call ends.
Architecture: Azure OpenAI · Microsoft Teams API · SharePoint
Client Thread
A business needed its whole team to have a complete, current picture of every client — without anyone maintaining it manually. We built an AI that monitors inboxes across the business and keeps a living knowledge file per client, updated automatically.
Architecture: Secure LLM Routing · Inbox Extraction
AI Briefing Tool
Built for an advisory firm that needed to stay current on AI without spending hours reading every week. Monitors 17+ sources, filters for enterprise relevance, and delivers a two-speaker briefing podcast every Sunday morning.
Prospecting Engine
A professional services firm was spending hours on manual outreach with poor results. An automated pipeline now discovers, qualifies, and verifies prospects overnight — delivering a ready-to-send list every morning for under £2/month.
Architecture: Agentic Workflows · Automated Pipeline
Iron Shed
Gym booking platform and AI technique coach that analyses exercise videos for a personal trainer.
When the right answer isn't AI
Partner Practice
Deterministic PDF extraction and review assembly pipeline for a wealth management practice. Structured automation — not AI — because precision and auditability matter more than flexibility for financial data.
Research & concepts
TaylrAI
An AI identity coach concept built to explore behaviour change design — habits around who you want to become, not goals you want to hit.
Immortalisation
A deep architectural walkthrough of how you'd build a portrait that speaks in your voice and thinks like you.
Explore practical Operational AI for your business
The free automated briefing uses public website information to suggest possible workflows. It does not assess internal processes; recommendations are hypotheses to validate.
Our Human-Led Advisory Methodology
Separate from the free automated briefing, our human-led advisory work can include:
- Sector Analysis: Review your sector and the current AI landscape to identify relevant opportunities and constraints.
- Operational Mapping: Work with your team to map processes, identify bottlenecks and distinguish tasks suited to deterministic automation from those that may benefit from agentic AI.
- Architecture Review: Assess data readiness, existing systems and integration options, including Azure AI Search and secure LLM integration where appropriate.
- Risk & Governance: Identify relevant governance and regulatory considerations, including GDPR and the EU AI Act, and define where human review is needed.