AIMS - Information for Businesses

Free practical AI support for North West SMEs

Have a process in your business that is manual, repetitive, inefficient or simply takes too much time?

AIMS gives SMEs free, practical support to explore where AI and automation could make a difference.

You don’t need an AI strategy or a defined AI project. Bring us a business problem, process or workflow and we’ll help you work out where the opportunity is.

How it works

Over eight weeks, a small team of participants will work with your business on a real operational challenge, supported by experienced AI specialists and industry mentors.

That could include:

• reporting that takes hours to produce
• repetitive admin or customer enquiries
• moving information manually between spreadsheets, emails or systems
• sales research, lead management or follow-up
• marketing research and content workflows
• producing routine documents or proposals
• analysing, sorting or categorising information manually

The aim is to explore the problem, identify where AI or automation could help and develop and test a practical approach.

There is no cost to your business.

What we need from you

You don’t need technical expertise.

We need:

• a genuine business process or problem that you would like to improve
• someone in your organisation who understands how that process currently works
• time for that person to speak to the project team and provide feedback during the eight weeks
• access to the information and systems needed to understand the challenge, where appropriate
• an interest in exploring how AI could support your business now or in the future

We’ll help you shape the challenge before the project begins.

Why take part?

AIMS gives you access to additional capacity and AI expertise to investigate something you may not have had the time or resource to explore yourself.

It also gives you the opportunity to work directly with emerging AI talent and see how they operate in a real business environment.

Bring us the problem, not the AI solution.

Register your interest

If you're an individual looking to part,  click here. If you'd like to support the programme through mentorship, sign up for Switchboard.

What makes this different

This is not consultancy and it is not training in isolation.

It is structured, supported deployment designed to reduce employer risk while building long-term capability in the region.