ICS.AI ends “Pilot Purgatory” with UK’s first guaranteed-savings AI Operating Model
- ICS AI
- Jan 21
- 2 min read
News comes as Derby City Council announces it has identified £12 million in savings through its partnership with ICS.AI
As 95% of generative AI projects fail to deliver value, the UK’s 23rd largest government AI supplier launches the transformation model to make councils AI-native
Basingstoke, UK: 21st January 2026: While 88% of organisations have adopted AI, only 5% of AI pilot programmes have achieved rapid revenue acceleration. Today, ICS.AI solves this value gap with its SMART: AI Transformation Programme – the first public sector solution to combine a unified platform with a guaranteed savings commercial model.
ICS.AI has already processed 11 million resident interactions and is now positioned as the leader in public sector AI for mid-market – offering a sovereign, cost-effective alternative to tech giants. Although proving the ROI of AI continues to be a global issue, ICS.AI’s systematic approach guarantees savings, demonstrated with Derby City Council announcing £12 million savings through its partnership with ICS.AI.
The end of “AI Curious”
With the UK public sector no longer able to afford piecemeal acts of digital innovation, the new SMART: model facilitates a binary shift from AI curious (disconnected pilots) to AI native (enterprise-wide adoption).
“The market is littered with failed pilots,” said Martin Neale, CEO of ICS.AI. “Leadership teams are stuck in ‘AI tourism’, running small experiments that never scale. To tackle this, ICS.AI has productised the entire transformation journey. We don't just sell you the software; we embed the AI Target Operating Model (AI TOM) that guarantees you capture the millions in efficiencies sitting on the table. The ROI is provable and guaranteed.”
The Derby City Council blueprint
Unlike the fragmented investment offered by global consultancies, ICS.AI delivers a single Unified AI Platform covering three critical domains:
Front Door: 24/7 resident access via phone and web
Staff Copilots: “AI for All” workforce augmentation
Agentic Back Office: Autonomous agents executing complex workflows
Already deployed at Derby City Council and underway in other UK Councils, the SMART: AI Transformation Programme has delivered the sector’s most robust set of verified outcomes:
£12 million in identified savings to date
1.4 million phone enquiries processed with a 56% deflection rate
Customer waiting times halved
Sovereign and scalable
Neale added: “We are proving that Sovereign AI is the only viable and sustainable path for UK public reform. We are taking the risk out of adoption so our partners can focus on the reward.”
The announcement coincides with the launch of ICS.AI’s white paper ‘Local Government AI Transformation: From Strategy to Value’.
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