Start with the tools you already pay for
A ten-minute read for directors and ops leads. Most agencies sell you a new platform. We put the agent inside the software your team already opens every morning, so you can try it on real work before you commit to anything.
Slingshot works with established businesses that take their operations seriously. Our proof today sits in engineering, rail and the trades around them.
Nobody should buy a platform to find out whether this works
The usual order is backwards. A firm gets sold a new system, migrates onto it, trains everybody, and only then finds out whether the thing pays. That is a large bet placed before a single piece of evidence exists.
We do it the other way round. The first agent goes where your team already works, on the licences you already pay for. No migration, no new logins, nothing new to learn. If it earns its place, we go further. If it does not, you have lost nothing but a fortnight of watching it.
We would rather tell you the thing you already own does the job than sell you something that duplicates it.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them
Nobody starts at step three. Most firms never get there, and that is a fine place to finish.
Start in what you have
For most corporate and professional firms that means Microsoft 365. Agents that live inside Teams, Planner and SharePoint, running on the licences already sitting on your bill. On Google Workspace the same principle applies with your own tooling. The point is that nobody buys anything new to find out whether this works.
Extend where it pays
Once a specific job proves worth automating, we build around it properly. An operator dashboard, a connected workflow, reporting that reaches the people who need it. Still joined to the stack you already run rather than replacing it.
Run it yourself if you want to
For firms with data they will not send anywhere, the same systems can run on hardware you control. That is a real option, not the default, and most firms never need it.
What we will not do
An honest scope is worth more than a big one. These are the four we hold to, and you are welcome to hold us to them.
We do not sell you a second copy of what you own
Plenty of the jobs firms ask us about can be handled by something already inside the software they pay for every month. When that is the case we say so, show you where it sits, and charge you nothing for the answer.
We tell you about licences before you start
Agent work inside Teams and Planner sits behind a Microsoft Copilot licence, which is a cost on top of your 365 subscription. We check what your tenant already carries and tell you what is missing at the start, not halfway through a build.
We do not claim a badge we do not hold
We build on Microsoft 365. We are not a Microsoft partner and will not describe ourselves as one. What we bring is the build, the governance around it and the person who answers the phone.
We do not automate what should not be automated
Some work needs a person. Some data should not move at all. Part of this job is telling you which is which before anyone writes a line of code.
What an AI agent actually is
Strip the noise away and an agent is a piece of software that watches for a trigger, does one well-defined job with your firm’s own information, and hands the result to a person for sign-off. A report lands, a draft case study comes back. A tender drops, a structured pack assembles. That is it.
The useful mental model is a fast, tireless junior who never sends anything without your signature. Not a chatbot bolted to your website, and not a black box making decisions on its own. If a vendor cannot tell you where the human gate sits, walk away.
The five jobs an agent pays for first
These five come up first in almost every conversation we have, and they have a shape in common: the work that wins and keeps clients is the work that gets pushed to Friday night. That is where an agent earns its keep first. The examples below read like engineering because that is where our proof sits. The shape holds in any firm that writes documents to win work.
The case-study agent
Takes a finished technical report and drafts the case study and bid section from it. The work nobody has time for, done the week the job closes instead of never.
The tender-pack agent
Assembles past performance, method statements and CVs against the tender's own headings, then queues the pack for your bid lead to review section by section.
The compliance-check agent
Reads a draft against the standard it claims to meet and flags every line that does not hold, with the clause pinned next to it. Your engineer resolves each flag.
The site-report agent
Turns the week's site notes and photos into the progress report your client actually reads, in your house format. Gaps are marked, never invented.
The enquiry-triage agent
Reads inbound enquiries, pulls the relevant past projects, and hands your team a brief with a suggested response instead of a bare email in an inbox.
Pick one. Not five. Every one of them can start inside the tools you already run, so prove a single agent on real work in the first month and let the next one earn its place.
The rules that keep a board comfortable
An AI conversation stalls on risk, and rightly so, if nobody can answer the governance questions. These four rules are the answers. Put them in place and the risk conversation gets short.
A human gate on everything
Nothing an agent drafts reaches a client, a tender portal or a channel without a named person approving it. The agent does the legwork, your people keep the judgement.
Claims from the source only
An agent that writes your bid section works from your reports and your project records. If it cannot source a claim, it flags the gap instead of filling it in.
An audit trail by default
Every draft, every approval and every change is logged. When a board or a client asks how a document was produced, the answer is a record, not a shrug.
Your data stays yours
Agents run in your own tenant or on your own infrastructure, not through third-party AI hubs. Client data never leaves the boundary your contracts already promise.
How to start without betting the firm
- Find out where you stand. Run a structured look at how the firm operates today: where hours go, what gets drafted by hand, what never gets done at all. Our free AI audit does exactly this across six questions.
- Get the board a number. Governance, data, delivery and risk, scored to a single figure the board can argue about. That is what the Board AI Readiness Score is for, and it is free too.
- Prove one agent where your team already works. Pick the workflow that hurts most, stand an agent up inside your existing stack with a human gate in front, and judge it on a month of real output. Keep it if it earns its place.
Twenty minutes with the person who builds these
No pitch deck, no pressure. Bring the workflow that eats your week and leave with a straight answer on whether an agent can take it, what it would take to stand it up, and what we would never automate. If your existing licences already cover it, we will tell you that as well.