Event

Beyond the
AI Hype

Are You Solving Problems or Buying Technology?

AI automation is dominating the boardroom agenda. Most leadership teams are under pressure to invest in it — but few have asked whether it’s the right answer for the problem in front of them, or whether they’re getting full value from the automation they already own.

Wed.
04 Nov 2026

09:00 – 14:30

London

Reserve Your Place

Places are limited. Register today to secure your seat.

From Process Automation to AI Automation

Choosing the right path to growth

Many organisations have yet to realise the full value of the process automation they already own. At the same time, leadership teams are being asked to invest in AI automation or agentic AI before solving the more fundamental problem: understanding how work actually happens across the business.

Join Responsiv and IBM for an interactive process and AI automation event in London, exploring how organisations can achieve meaningful business outcomes by starting with process, not technology.

What you’ll leave with

Clarity on AI vs Automation

Know where AI adds genuine value, and where traditional process automation is the better choice.

Leave better equipped to decide what to automate, where AI fits and where investment will lead to the greatest impact.

The right sequence for AI

Understand where AI fits alongside your existing automation.

A prioritisation framework

identify and prioritise the opportunities with the greatest impact.

A way to connect the pieces

Connect people, processes, systems and AI around shared outcomes.

Protection for what you’ve built

Maximise existing investments while planning what comes next.

A smarter path for better business outcomes

Discover

Map how work actually happens, and find the bottlenecks before you touch a single system.

Optimise

Remove friction and align the process to the outcome it’s meant to serve.

Automate

Orchestrate the process end to end, so it runs consistently, at speed, without depending on individual effort.

Augment

Layer in AI and agentic execution — once the foundation has earned it.

Who is the event for?

Operations Leaders

You’re running the business day to day — Salesforce, SAP, Dynamics or ServiceNow held together by email, spreadsheets, and manual handoffs, with pressure to do more without adding headcount. The opportunity usually isn’t buying new technology; it’s extending automation you already own to where the pain actually is.

Transformation Leaders

You’re mid-programme, under pressure to prove ROI, with a board asking why AI automation isn’t on the roadmap yet, while competing for time against other priorities. Process discovery and optimisation have to come before automation and AI, or you’re just automating the mess faster.

Agenda

Indicative running order below. Breakfast on arrival, lunch at the midpoint, and hands-on IBM experiences before the day closes. Final timings confirmed closer to the date.

Introduction

The Pressure to Invest in AI Automation

Session 01

Why Technology Alone Doesn’t Deliver Transformation

Session 02

Understanding the Work Before Automating It

Round table

Where Are Your Biggest Operational Challenges?

Session 03

Process Automation vs AI Automation: Choosing the Right Approach

Session 04

What’s Next: Trust, Governance and the Road Ahead

Our Guest Speaker

Mark Ketteman is a Senior Technical Sales Specialist at IBM with more than 40 years of experience in the IT industry.

His career has spanned some of the most transformative waves in computing: from early internet and e-commerce adoption, through Service-Oriented Architecture and API-led integration, to business process management and process mining.

Today, Mark focuses on IBM AI products, working with customers and partners to design, build, and deploy intelligent solutions using the IBM watsonx platform and AI agent technologies.

About Responsiv

Responsiv is built around a simple principle: technology should make organisations easier to run, not harder.

Since 2015, we’ve helped organisations solve complex challenges through a practical, straightforward approach grounded in deep technical expertise. We believe the best technology is not the most complex, but the most effective.

By combining consultancy, managed services and software under one roof, we provide a single trusted partner to design, deliver and support critical solutions. Our commitment to simplicity, accountability and long-term partnership helps customers move forward with confidence.

FAQ

Process automation (like IBM BAW) follows fixed, predefined rules to execute a workflow consistently — it’s fast, reliable, and cheap to run once a process is well understood. AI automation adds decision-making, judgement, and adaptability on top of that — useful when a process involves ambiguity, unstructured data, or decisions that can’t be reduced to a fixed rule. The event covers exactly how to tell which one a given process actually needs.

Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can plan and carry out multi-step tasks with a degree of autonomy, rather than simply responding to a single prompt. It’s powerful, but it isn’t a universal upgrade — it’s most valuable once the underlying process is well mapped and the simpler automation options have already been considered. We’ll cover where agentic automation genuinely accelerates outcomes, and where it adds risk or complexity without a clear return.

Operations and transformation leaders — COOs, Operations Directors, Heads of Transformation, Process Architects, and similar roles — from mid-market and enterprise organisations (roughly 500–10,000 employees) with existing automation investments or active transformation programmes. Financial services, insurance, utilities, and public sector organisations will find the content especially relevant, though the framework applies broadly.

Business-first throughout. The content is designed for operations and transformation leaders, not engineers — expect real-world examples, frameworks, and outcomes rather than implementation detail. No technical background is required.

Yes — several sessions include real case studies, including one on choosing traditional process automation over AI, and a full end-to-end example spanning process discovery through to automation and AI adoption.

This is a half-day event, with a mix of speaker sessions and round table discussions with a range of industry leaders and technology experts. The event is free to attend.
Complimentary breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be provided. Interactive IBM activities such as F1 simulator will be operating at the end of the sessions.

Ready to maximise your technology investments?

Join IBM and Responsiv for a practical morning of insights, examples and expert guidance.

Reserve your place

Wednesday 4^th November 2026

09:00 – 13:30