IT leader briefing 2026: AI and digital process automation

Hannah Colley00:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's IT leader briefing for 2026 on AI and digital process automation. I'm Hannah, digital marketing and events specialist here at FlowForma, and I'll be your host for today.

Hannah Colley00:12

Before we get started, a few tips for participating. This webinar is being recorded. For any assistance you might need, you can email info@flowforma.com. Your lines are muted, but we want to make this as interactive as possible, so you can type your questions in the chat box, and you can also take part in polls and a survey at the end.

Hannah Colley00:43

Let's meet your hosts. We have Robbie, our product expert, with us today. Robbie is committed to supporting organizations on their digitalization journeys. He has six years of experience onboarding enterprises to the FlowForma platform, and he brings deep expertise in helping companies digitalize processes ranging from simple workflows to complex enterprise-wide operations.

Hannah Colley01:13

We're also joined by Niamh Lordan, head of marketing. Niamh is committed to supporting FlowForma's vision of becoming the easiest to adopt no-code process automation tool on the market. With over 10 years of experience in technology marketing, Niamh drives FlowForma's marketing strategy and empowers its community through innovative, engaging content.

Hannah Colley01:39

Today's session focuses on what IT leaders are prioritizing in 2026, the common challenges they're facing, and how AI and automation are being applied through AI-assisted design and agents. Robbie will also share a light demonstration. We know your time is precious, so we hope to wrap up within about 40 minutes. I'll pass you over to Niamh.

Niamh Lordan02:10

Thanks, Hannah. It's really important to talk about why we're all here today. When we were designing this webinar, we wanted input from registrants on why they were coming and what their goals for 2026 are, so we included a question in the registration form. Thank you to everyone who shared their goals. On screen is an array of responses from the people on this session.

Niamh Lordan02:45

We weren't surprised by this feedback, Robbie; we hear it a lot. The number one trend in the goals was improving accuracy and speed. We see that in nearly every survey we run, but it came through very strongly here, so we'll definitely cover it today.

Niamh Lordan03:09

A more exciting one that's been trending for the last couple of years: a lot of registrants asked how they can use AI agents to support staff in everyday work, so we'll cover that too. And Robbie, one of your favorites: a lot of people want better dashboard visibility in 2026. What came up was improving decision-making, giving C-level better access to reports, and moving away from time wasted on manual report building.

Niamh Lordan03:54

Those are the goals of everyone on this session, and over the next 40 minutes we're here to give you practical advice to help you overcome these challenges and achieve your goals this year.

Niamh Lordan04:18

So those are the goals of the people on the call. On this next slide, I'm zooming out from what attendees said to what IT leaders care about globally. When we speak with our community, prospects, customers, and analysts, these are the top points that come up.

Niamh Lordan04:53

The conversations we're having with IT leaders about AI have evolved a lot over the last 12 months. Most enterprises have moved away from talking about AI in terms of copilots, pilots, and proofs of concept. Most are now focused on embedding AI into workflows that are already in production, and they're seeing the impact of adding AI on top of them. We'll talk about that later in the session.

Niamh Lordan05:29

Another top trend is automation with trust. Governance as a topic is nearly as topical now as AI is. It's all about scaling automation without increasing risk, and we'll cover that today.

Niamh Lordan05:58

People on the call are interested in AI agents, and everyone wants to bring AI agents in on top of their workflows. The challenge for IT leaders is creating a controlled environment for AI, humans, and automation to work together.

Niamh Lordan06:21

The next point wasn't submitted in the registration forms, but we hear about it a lot: IT leaders care about platform sprawl and having more unified platforms. It's becoming a C-level topic now; leaders want unified platforms. And at the end of the day, all these goals come back to efficiency and speed. Everyone wants faster workflows and faster decision-making, and that's what gives us measurable value.

Niamh Lordan07:27

We're all familiar with the challenges organizations are facing in 2026. If you look at the challenges on the left-hand side, a lot of them stem from fragmented automation. These challenges can be fixed with a governed AI automation platform that gives you end-to-end process visibility, improved compliance, and better data. Those are the key topics for today, so let's jump into the next section, where Robbie will show what's possible and how to overcome those challenges with a product like FlowForma.

Robbie Kane08:21

Thanks, Niamh. First, a quick overview of FlowForma. At its core, FlowForma is a process automation platform built to connect the people involved in work across the organization: employees, managers, customers, suppliers, risk and compliance, and operations.

Robbie Kane08:43

On the left of the slide is how automation initiatives tend to start. Sometimes it's an idea, a process diagram, or a Word document; sometimes it's literally a call or a workshop. FlowForma Copilot takes those inputs and turns them into governed execution. In the middle is the platform itself, with three core building blocks: forms to capture structured information, flow to orchestrate the end-to-end process including approvals and routing, and insights to see performance, bottlenecks, SLAs, and key performance metrics.

Robbie Kane09:19

Sitting at the top is the AI automation layer, where Copilot helps you design processes faster, agents take on repeatable tasks and decisions, and assistants support users during execution. Below is the integration layer, so processes can connect to Microsoft 365 services and wider systems such as databases, ERP, or GRC systems; essentially anything with a REST API connection.

Robbie Kane09:46

On the right is what leadership actually cares about: governed outcomes, automated processes, operational insight, and document generation, all delivered in a way that's auditable, secure, and compliant. The simple message is that with FlowForma you can think it through, build it quickly with Copilot, and then run the process with full visibility and control.

Niamh Lordan10:04

Thanks, Robbie. That's a great overview of the platform for people on the call who aren't as familiar with our product.

Robbie Kane10:23

Zooming in on the AI layer for a moment, it's worth sharing how we approached it internally, because it shaped the way the capabilities were built in FlowForma. In recent years we started experimenting with generative AI. We were enthusiastic to see what it could do, and we ran multiple experiments trying out different ideas and concepts around process automation.

Robbie Kane10:43

We realized those experiments were effectively disposable, but by going through the process we learned about generative AI's strengths and weaknesses and where in our domain it was particularly useful. I'd highly recommend this experiment-driven approach for those of you starting your AI journey. We focused on three areas: how AI can help organizations innovate and accelerate their process automation initiatives; how AI can automate the recurring tasks that exist in every process, which is our AI agent capability; and how AI can enhance existing process capabilities.

Robbie Kane11:24

Next, I'll show you how to use FlowForma Copilot to innovate rapidly as part of your process automation initiative. The idea is simple: I'll go from a blank canvas to a fully built process in a matter of minutes, and then you can refine it to match your controls and environment.

Robbie Kane11:43

To keep it practical, I'll use a workflow almost every organization recognizes but many still manage through tickets, email threads, and spreadsheets: the classic question of who has access to what, why they have it, and whether we can prove it. I'll use FlowForma Copilot to generate an ISO 27001-aligned access request and access review process, then make one small change to show how governance gets enforced automatically in the process.

Robbie Kane12:21

I'll open the FlowForma process designer and give my process a title: User access request. This is where we build processes end to end in FlowForma: the input of data, the routing and approvals, the rules that drive conditional steps, plus the audit trail for reporting. You can see FlowForma Copilot here in the flow designer, and I'm going to paste in a prompt that describes the process, the stakeholders, and the control requirements, specifically aligned to ISO 27001.

Robbie Kane12:56

The prompt on screen says: build a user access request and access review process with requester, line manager, application owner, and IT fulfillment; add InfoSec approval only when it's privileged access or sensitive data; enforce business justification; enforce time-bound privileged access; and include SLAs and an audit trail. Also create a quarterly access review task so you can evidence ongoing governance. You can structure your prompt any way you want, then copy and paste it into FlowForma Copilot.

Robbie Kane13:42

When I click Generate, in a few seconds we'll have the backbone of the process: the data fields, the approval stages, the fulfillment steps, and the review steps. FlowForma gives me its interpretation, a controlled, ISO 27001-compatible access request and review process, and Copilot builds all the steps, questions, and logic I'd expect: the access request comes in and routes through line manager approval, application owner approval, and information security.

Robbie Kane14:27

What I like is that it's already structured the way an auditor would expect. Justification is captured at the start, approvals are recorded, and an evidence step confirms what was provisioned. In the fields you can see request type, system or application, role, justification, start and end dates, and whether it's privileged access. On the workflow side, it routes through line manager, application owner, and then IT to fulfill. It's generating a usable process shape that matches how this real-world process works.

Robbie Kane15:14

You can go further in Copilot and give feedback in natural language to add steps or remove content as you see fit. I've clicked Build, and we now have the full process built end to end. Now I'll switch into the traditional designer for the governance bit: one small change that shows how control is enforced automatically.

Robbie Kane15:42

I'll open the step rules and set it so that when privileged access equals yes, an additional InfoSec approval step is required. Now if someone requests privileged access, the process doesn't rely on people remembering to loop in security. It's enforced every time, and it's provable. The question Privileged or admin access required, with choice values yes or no, is the trigger point, so that's where I place my rule. If the answer is yes, a simple no-code rule action shows the information security access control step.

Robbie Kane16:52

I can quickly create a test form to show that in action. When I select yes for privileged or admin access, you can see we now have a fourth step: information security approval is required. If I change my mind and select no, that step is no longer required. You can take the same approach for other conditions too, such as sensitive data classifications or external users, and tailor it any way you need to run your own process.

Hannah Colley17:31

Thanks so much for that demo, Robbie. Before we go any further, we'd love to get a sense of where everyone is at today. There's no right or wrong answer; just choose the option that best reflects your organization. I'll pop the poll up now.

Niamh Lordan17:53

It'll be interesting to find out where attendees are with AI in process automation. And Robbie, thanks for that great demo. It shows the speed of automation now: you can turn around working processes within minutes, have them tested within hours, and roll them out. We shared a blank canvas today, but it can be branded to the look and feel of your organization and customized exactly as you need.

Niamh Lordan18:37

We have a bit of a mixed bag here today. 45% are exploring options and 35% are piloting AI features. It's great to see 15% actively using AI in automation, and 0% cautious or waiting. That's great to see, isn't it, Robbie? Everyone's moving forward with their plans.

Robbie Kane19:03

I think we may be past that point.

Niamh Lordan19:14

This was a challenge that came up in the registrants' feedback for 2026: they want to find out more about how to achieve end-to-end process visibility. Could you share how our customers are doing that?

Robbie Kane19:28

This is the real value for leadership: you move from fragmented efforts to measurable control and visibility. As this dashboard view shows, you can see exactly how long approvals are taking, where requests are getting stuck, and whether SLAs are being breached. You can also see volumes over time, the workload sitting with each team, and the aging of requests that haven't moved or been actioned.

Robbie Kane19:54

Alongside that, you still have the audit evidence you need: who approved what, when they approved it, what the justification was, and what evidence was attached at fulfillment. So you're not just automating; you're making the process operationally visible and audit ready.

Niamh Lordan20:17

And it's pretty easy to achieve. This is all out of the box once you plug in FlowForma and have your process.

Robbie Kane20:24

Yes. You've seen the process Copilot built: I gave it a prompt, and it knows exactly what needs to be captured. You can extend it with natural language commands to give further feedback. Once those data points are captured in your process, they can be used to build the dashboards you need.

Niamh Lordan20:46

Then the exciting one that people want to learn about and do more of in 2026: continuing to add AI agents to your processes to drive more efficiency. Robbie, can you share how we're doing that in the FlowForma world?

Robbie Kane21:04

This is the broader AI capability in FlowForma, because Copilot, as we've just seen, is only one part of the AI suite. The next layer is what happens inside the process, and this is where AI agents drive efficiency. The key point is that agents work best when the task is clearly defined, has a clear outcome, and is repeatable. We're not trying to hand an agent an entire end-to-end business process and hope for the best. We use it to take on the recurring work that exists inside every workflow.

Robbie Kane21:37

You drive that with simple natural language instructions. The AI agent rule is just a no-code business rule: you give it a simple prompt, and the outcomes are very tangible. Agents can validate information automatically, apply decision logic consistently, and remove the manual checking and admin that slow everything down. That's where you see time back for your teams, faster throughput, and fewer errors.

Robbie Kane22:03

So Copilot helps you build the governed process quickly, and AI agents help you run that process more efficiently by automating the repeatable tasks that usually consume people's time. Even in the access request example, an agent could validate that there's a clear justification, confirm the end date is present for privileged access, or flag requests that look like exceptions before they ever reach an approver. That's the difference between a workflow that just routes work and a workflow that reduces the workload.

Niamh Lordan22:45

Great. We have a few AI agent use cases to touch on later in the webinar, so stay tuned for that.

Niamh Lordan22:58

I know this is a really popular one with today's registrants: what's possible with audit trails? Once your process is digitalized, how can you see who's done what, who's approved which steps, and what's been delegated?

Robbie Kane23:19

It's really simple with FlowForma. It's an inherent feature out of the box, with no configuration needed. As a SharePoint application, everything is version controlled, but FlowForma also has its own audit trail feature. For each individual instance of a form, it captures everything at a very granular level: who the user was, the date and time right down to the second, what the rule actions were, and what was said and captured, right the way through the process.

Robbie Kane23:49

In highly regulated environments where compliance and auditability are paramount, FlowForma is the gold standard. Everything captured in FlowForma is automatically tracked, so you have a full audit trail of everything that's happened in every one of your processes.

Niamh Lordan24:01

That's a great summary: you can see all the steps, who did what, and when they did it.

Robbie Kane24:07

It's really advantageous for external auditors, especially if you're subject to external audits. Someone can come in, pick a process from a long time ago, and see everything that happened in it end to end. That's one of the really strong points of FlowForma.

Niamh Lordan24:25

Governance is very topical at the moment, and it came up in the registration form. We've been talking about it for a long time, but it's become even more important with AI agents and with empowering more people in the business to digitalize. People probably have governance in the back of their mind: if I'm scaling automation, how can I do it without too much risk? Can you share a bit about our governance hub?

Robbie Kane24:48

FlowForma has its own centralized governance application that sits centrally on the tenant. Your product owner, whether that's your IT team or an administrative team in charge of oversight, has full visibility of everything happening in the tenant: all your environments, all your processes, right down to user licensing.

Robbie Kane25:17

You can give your users sandbox environments where they develop solutions for the organization. They then request promotion to a UAT environment, where product owners, administrative teams, or IT resources apply the final checks and balances. Once they're satisfied, they control what gets promoted to live environments, and that's all audit tracked. Approvals are date and time stamped, and only the right people have access to the right things at the right time. FlowForma has a dedicated governance app that gives you centralized visibility over all process automation in the organization.

Niamh Lordan25:54

I'm sure that's a big tick box for IT leaders on the call.

Niamh Lordan26:07

Reporting was the third biggest trend from people joining today. How can they give their leaders and C-level quick access to the KPIs and SLAs they want to see?

Robbie Kane26:22

As we saw in the product demonstration, I used Copilot to develop that access request process. When you build processes in FlowForma, they capture a lot of information and data, and FlowForma lets you convert that into meaningful key performance metrics. With our Insights module, every piece of data captured in your process can feed dynamic dashboards. That could be a macro view of the entire organization, so the senior leadership team can see what's happening across governance, finance, and the overall state of play.

Robbie Kane26:55

Dashboards can be compartmentalized for security, content control, and access, so only the right people see them. You can build them departmentally: only the right people have access to your finance metrics, and health and safety can have its own dashboard, without those users seeing confidential leadership information. Every time a step or a piece of information is captured in FlowForma, the dashboards update in real time. You could have multiple business-critical processes across the organization and a live dashboard in your boardroom, so leadership can make informed, up-to-the-minute decisions.

Niamh Lordan28:01

And if you're not in the IT team and don't have BI skills, heads of departments and process owners can build these out themselves without any coding.

Robbie Kane28:14

Absolutely. It's 100% no code, and because it's built on SharePoint and Microsoft Entra ID, sensitive data is already compartmentalized based on SharePoint access and the user's identity. If someone tries to open a dashboard they don't have access to, they just won't see it.

Niamh Lordan28:46

Everyone loves to hear real-world use cases, so we have three quick examples of trending ways to plug agents into your workflows. The first is a claims agent for insurance.

Robbie Kane29:07

The goal of the claims agent is to take unstructured, inconsistent claim notifications and submissions and turn them into a standardized, validated case your team can act on quickly. The inputs are what you'd expect: insured claims forms, broker notifications, and policy documents. The agent extracts key details, maps them into a consistent structure in a FlowForma process, and augments the claim with the right policy context based on things like the policy number.

Robbie Kane29:39

From there it validates the claim, flags gaps or anomalies, and supports the handler with an assessor view and risk analysis. The output is clean claim data, standardized policy data, a validated claim, and a recommendation that speeds up triage and reduces the manual time your team would spend going through these documents. It really streamlines and standardizes the process.

Niamh Lordan30:09

It helps with compliance, reduces errors, and makes everyone more efficient.

Niamh Lordan30:21

Use case number two came up quite a bit in the registration form, which surprised me: a lot of people are challenged with managing tender submissions. Robbie, how can we address that better and more efficiently with AI now?

Robbie Kane30:39

This process can be big, multi-departmental, with lots of teams contributing to a tender response, and it's a great example of where AI and workflow need to work together. On the left is the tender pack: the tender you're responding to, supporting documents, and your reference material. FlowForma can ingest that content into a controlled knowledge base, extract the key requirements and questions, and route the work to the right departments: commercial for costing, HSSE for safety responses, technical for methodology, and so on.

Robbie Kane31:25

AI agents can then help generate first-draft section responses based on the tender requirements and your approved reference content, and the process pulls it all back together for review, with a QA stage and final sign-offs. Importantly, FlowForma can then generate the final tender response document in the required format. You move from tender pack to submission with far less manual effort and far more consistency, which makes you agile in responding to tenders quickly.

Robbie Kane31:56

For people on the call who handle tender responses, it can be a long, laborious, multi-departmental process. FlowForma standardizes all of that, reduces the administrative overhead, and uses AI to generate content that's validated through QA before it produces the tender response.

Niamh Lordan32:27

Our third use case didn't come up in the feedback, but we added it because we have IT leaders and security teams on the call. Organizations are onboarding more software vendors than ever before, and managing that is difficult. Can you share how our new product, FlowAssure, can streamline that process?

Robbie Kane33:01

Vendor risk assessment with FlowAssure. The challenge is the same everywhere: vendor assessments are slow, inconsistent, and they drain security teams. FlowAssure gives you a governed workflow where your security analysts initiate the assessment and vendors securely submit evidence: questionnaires, pen test reports, certifications, whatever a particular use case requires.

Robbie Kane33:30

AI agent rules then review and classify what's been submitted. They can flag anomalies or gaps in the submissions, and they can even fast-track low-risk vendors. Your team gets back a structured summary, clear recommendations, and the next actions to take, so analysts spend time on real risk decisions rather than admin and document chasing. The agent identifies gaps before anything reaches your team's desk, which cuts out a lot of administrative time and lets them make an informed decision.

Niamh Lordan34:26

Those are three use cases for plugging AI agents in, but they can be added to nearly any process. Across our customer base, the product has been used to digitalize an A to Z of processes, from health and safety in hospitals to contract management in public sector bodies and student onboarding in educational institutions. That gives you a flavor of the processes digitalized on the platform.

Niamh Lordan35:10

We're coming up to the end, but before we move into Q&A, I thought it would be good to leave some tips for people on the call. One of my favorites came from Forrester: don't automate for the sake of automating, and don't add AI just to use new technology. Automate for business outcomes.

Niamh Lordan35:39

Think about the outcome you want to achieve, whether it's that tender management team in the office until 10:00 every night the week before a tender is due, and the outcome you could realize with smart AI on top of that. Think about the core processes with strong foundations that you can layer AI on top of quickly.

Niamh Lordan36:08

Embrace the change. It's a cultural shift, but there's a huge appetite among employees to use AI on top of their core processes to become more efficient, more compliant, and to work on more value-added tasks. And what we see all the time is the methodology of testing and rolling your process out to a pilot group, learning from it, and improving, and you'll scale quickly from there.

Robbie Kane36:41

Absolutely.

Niamh Lordan36:46

Those are the proven methodologies our customers have used to achieve success, so hopefully those tips are helpful. Hannah is going to launch another poll now. Thank you for joining us today. If we can help you with a next step, whether that's figuring out which processes are best for layering AI on top of or helping you on your automation journey, let us know if you're interested in a one-to-one consultation with Robbie or another of our consultants, a 7-day trial, or a demo.

Niamh Lordan37:50

Robbie, you shared FlowForma Copilot earlier in lots of detail. I want to plug our playground, which is a very tangible way for people on the call to experience how fast you can automate with FlowForma AI. At any time, go to flowforma.com, and in the hero banner on our homepage you'll see FlowForma Copilot. Pop in a prompt, or upload a picture, PDF, or diagram of a process, and see how quickly our AI turns it into an automated prototype for you. It's very speedy, so I recommend you try it out.

Hannah Colley38:50

Thanks so much, Niamh and Robbie. We're going to have our live Q&A. We have a couple of questions in already, but if you haven't had a chance, pop your questions in the questions box. We're running low on time, so if we don't get to your question now, we'll follow up with you. The first one is: what types of systems can FlowForma process automation integrate with? Niamh, are you okay to take that one?

Niamh Lordan39:28

It's funny how this always comes up on webinars. We've built FlowForma so that it can integrate with any of your core business systems. We have hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations, and we also have our no-code web API, so you can integrate with basically any other system.

Hannah Colley39:51

On our next question, we have a lot of responses saying they love the agents. How much training do these agents need?

Robbie Kane40:04

FlowForma agents don't need training. What they need is clear instructions. You need to be explicit about what you want the agent to do, what the expected outcome is, and how it should handle any unexpected scenarios. You may need to tweak those instructions and test them with a few different examples to make sure the agent delivers the results you expect, but there's no training involved.

Hannah Colley40:26

We also have: what types of documents or diagrams can FlowForma Copilot understand?

Niamh Lordan40:41

You can feed in PDFs and JPGs. If you already have your processes documented, or you've been brainstorming them, or even if you have pictures from a workshop where you've been mapping out your process, you can pop them in and see Copilot transform them very quickly.

Hannah Colley41:02

We're nearly over time, so just the last couple of questions. How do you track what the AI agent has done or suggested for audit purposes?

Robbie Kane41:19

It's a really important question. You do need visibility into agents' actions and the quality of the outputs they produce, and in many ways this is music to our ears, because we strongly believe the best place for agents is within your existing processes, or at least within a structured process environment. When agents sit within those processes, they work like an assistant would. They're subject to the same measurements, and you can clearly see the inputs they received, the outputs they produced, and how they performed. All that information flows into your Insights dashboard, so you can monitor what they're doing, how well they're performing, and how much work they're handling.

Hannah Colley42:02

We have two more questions, and then we'll have to get back to the rest. To what extent can we customize our processes in FlowForma to match our existing ways of working?

Niamh Lordan42:16

I love that question, and we get a lot of feedback on it. One of our customers, PJ Hegarty, a construction company, didn't want to adjust their processes too much to fit a software system when they went to market for a tool to digitalize them. They found FlowForma was the only one on the market where they could completely mirror their processes in the digital world. It's completely customizable and flexible, so the process works the way you want it to; you don't need to adjust it to fit our system.

Hannah Colley43:00

The last question we'll take today: where is our business data stored when we use FlowForma?

Robbie Kane43:10

Because FlowForma runs natively within your own Microsoft 365, all business data stays within your own tenant, governed by your existing Microsoft security, compliance, and data residency controls. Your data stays exactly where it is today, inside your Microsoft 365 environment. FlowForma simply orchestrates the process around it.

Hannah Colley43:37

Thanks so much, Robbie and Niamh. For all our listeners, you can choose your next steps through the post-webinar survey: schedule a complimentary demo tailored to your processes, or head to the FlowForma playground on our homepage and try it for yourself straight away. Thanks again for joining us, and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Niamh Lordan44:00

Thanks so much for joining us today. Best of luck this year.