Featured in Forbes
Few businesses emerged from Covid-19 lockdown unscathed. Some didn’t survive. Yet a surprising number used the challenges and difficulties they were experiencing to help other companies not only survive the pandemic but be in a better position to thrive once lockdown restrictions are eased.
Automating operations
AI company Nightingale HQ works with organizations to help them integrate AI and automation into their operations to save time, money, and improve efficiency.
The company secured £50,000 in funding from the Innovate UK grant fund, which they used to launch GoSmarter, a set of six AI-powered tools that automate manual tasks and processes, including social listening, robotic process automation (RPA), and invoice processing, etc.
Nightingale HQ founders Steph Locke and Ruth Kearny wanted to help other small businesses that couldn’t otherwise afford this kind of support, and be better prepared to deal with disruption similar to that of COVID19. “If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that businesses need to be able to adapt as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” says Locke. “Whether it is smart chatbots to deal with customer inquiries, or RPA to handle repetitive tasks and free up staff for more creative works, automation will be the way that organizations do more with less.”
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FAQs
What does Forbes covered and why it matter?
Forbes is one of the world’s most recognised business publications, with an audience that spans entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and business leaders globally. Being featured in a Forbes article — even as part of a roundup of five startups — places a company in a global conversation about business innovation, not just the UK or Irish startup ecosystem.
The “businesses helping companies survive and thrive beyond Covid-19” framing reflects exactly what GoSmarter was doing in mid-2020: not just building AI tools, but demonstrating that those tools could make a measurable difference to businesses under genuine pressure. The ÂŁ50,000 Innovate UK grant that funded the GoSmarter toolbox was itself a competitive win — 800 companies selected from a much larger pool of applicants.
What is the broader context of AI-powered automation?
The Forbes feature captures a moment in business history when AI automation shifted from being a luxury that large enterprises could afford to being a necessity that businesses of all sizes were considering. COVID-19 accelerated this shift significantly. Businesses that had been reluctant to invest in automation found themselves with no choice when the alternative was closing their doors.
Steph Locke’s quote in the article — “Whether it is smart chatbots to deal with customer inquiries, or RPA to handle repetitive tasks and free up staff for more creative works, automation will be the way that organizations do more with less” — captures the core GoSmarter thesis accurately: automation is not about replacing people, it is about removing the work that prevents people from doing their best work.