UiPath and the Reality of Managing AI at Enterprise Scale

[00:00:03] What actually happens when AI moves past experimentation and starts doing real work inside an organisation? That's the question behind today's conversation, because I think so many teams still find themselves stuck in proofs of concepts, running pilots that never quite make it into production, let alone scale. The so-called promise of AI everywhere dominates conversations,

[00:00:29] but the path to business value still feels unclear for a lot of leaders today. So today's guest, though, he's going to bring a refreshingly grounded view on the front lines. And he's from a company called UiPath, where he spent years working directly with organisations, turning automation and AI into something operational, measurable, sustainable, something that delivers real business value. But more than anything, we're going to talk about what he's seeing right now.

[00:00:59] Where AI is delivering value, where teams are getting stuck, and why scaling matters far more than flashy demos. And yet we'll also talk about agentic workflows, orchestration, cost controls, and why enthusiasm for AI is spreading well beyond IT into everything from HR, finance and operations. So if you're looking for a clear-eyed view of how AI and automation are actually being used today, and what leaders should be focusing on next,

[00:01:29] and how to avoid repeating the same mistakes we've made during those early cloud years, I know I'm biased, but I think this conversation is well worth your time. Now, before we begin today's interview, and there's some great insights in that, I just want to give a special mention to my friends at Donodo, who are passionate about the future and logical data management and agentic AI. Because everywhere you look, agentic AI is undoubtedly the next big shift. But here's the truth.

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[00:02:27] And now it's time for me to officially introduce you to today's guest. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? No, thank you, and good morning. So yes, I'm Simon Pettit. I'm the Area Vice President for UiPath for the UKNI. I've been at UiPath for just over seven years now, so a pretty long time in these day and age.

[00:02:56] I joined from a company called NetApp, who was backed by a data storage company. I spent 19 years there, which was a good haul. And previous to that, I was a chief weapons engineer in the Royal Navy. So there's something a bit different for you. Yeah, I mean, I can't just let you drop that and walk away. Chief weapons officer. Tell me more about that. Was it a tech role? Yeah, it was a technology role.

[00:03:25] So we were looking after the missile guidance systems. So that was my role. Seawolf was the system. I doubt very much it's still around. But yeah, so I spent 10 years, traveled the world, had a great time. And the last job the Navy gave me was setting up the IT school for the Royal Navy and the Army. So that kind of led me into a nice transition into tech, really. Love it. What a great story. One of the reasons I always ask that question is,

[00:03:52] well, I love finding out more about the origin story and how people ended up in that career in tech. I'm curious, as someone that was traveling the world, learning about technology, etc. Anywhere in particular, any big highlights of places you've got particularly fond memories of? So I was really fortunate, actually. I managed to sail all the way down to Darwin in Australia and back. So going through the Med, sailing through the Suez Canal, which is obviously a massive experience.

[00:04:21] Really, really kind of impressive. Yeah, all the way down to Australia. Papua New Guinea, which is a place not many people have been to. And it's not on too many people's holidays lists, that's for sure. But yeah, fascinating countries. So many different cultures to learn and appreciate. It was probably the best trip I've ever experienced, without a doubt. Wow, that's incredible. There were lots of fun trips as well, but we'll just talk about the good ones. Yeah. Yeah, loads of those.

[00:04:50] We have had people from UiPath and indeed NetApp on over the years. And although we have people listening around the world, why is the UK and Ireland such an important region for UiPath right now? And why is it such a pivotal moment for businesses here? We hear a lot about the doom and gloom over here in North. I'd love to restore the balance in the universe and talk about something positive. Yeah.

[00:05:13] So I think obviously the financial hub of London gives London a big standing across Europe. And if American companies are going to break into Europe, usually London and Germany are the two places they kind of target first. Big size of the markets. The variety of the markets as well. Not only have we got the banks, we've got pharmaceuticals, we've got big insurance houses,

[00:05:40] some really big companies that are based in the UK. And with AI as well, I think UK is becoming a good hub spot for AI in general. We've acquired two companies in UiPath. Both are UK and I based. So it gives you a kind of a standing of how important the UK is to the global market. And what we're doing well as well in the space of AI.

[00:06:05] And at the moment, we're seeing many organisations all around the world experimenting with AI. Many are unfortunately caught in pilot phase, not making it into production. And the ones that do, very few of them have scaled it successfully. So I'm curious, from everyone you're talking to out there, what are you seeing as the biggest challenges and equally the opportunities when it comes to turning AI into real business value, getting that ROI? And I think there is.

[00:06:34] I think everyone is stuck in kind of proof of value, POC, swarm. Everybody's trying to do lots of different things. A lot of hype as well. So kind of created by lots of people. All this hype about what a genetic AI will deliver, what it won't deliver even sometimes. But people are getting bogged down a lot, trying different things, trying to see how it's going to work. But I think scaling is going to be the big question mark. How do we scale this?

[00:07:03] How do we make it enterprise ready? It's all well and good having a POC in the up and running. But if you can't deploy it or scale it, it's a totally different ballgame. So I think we're beginning to see the transition. We're beginning to see some proof of concepts move over and go into production. That's certainly beginning to happen now. And how we scale those when they're into production is the question.

[00:07:31] I'm chatting with the guys this morning in the office to say, right, okay, give me the latest use case that we've done a POC. And there was actually one of the chaps got on ordering yesterday, building materials company. It was the quote creation. You know, people want 10 tons of aggregate or whatever it is that they want to buy using agents to do that. And they kind of talked me through the process that they have to check if it's an existing customer, which quarry has got the stock in, have they got lorries that can move it,

[00:08:00] all of this thing that was manually done previously. Yeah, that's all being done with agents now. And the POC was successful. The proof of value. I think they got 100,000 of these quote requests a year. So that one's moving into production. And I was thinking, oh, can we talk about them yet? And they said, no, but as soon as it's in production, Neil, I'll give you a shout. And we get them on and they can tell you what they're doing. They've agreed to talk about it when it's in production. So I'll give you a heads up when they're ready.

[00:08:28] And we can certainly talk about that one because it's a cracking use case of somebody that's gone through the process. They've identified a process. They know what the return of investment is going to be on it. So they've done the proof of concept. Everything worked perfectly. And so they've moved into production. But I think we're beginning to see those. Definitely beginning to start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. And I do love a good teaser.

[00:08:55] We will have to get you on later in the year to find out more about that particular use case. And from other conversations that you're having and everything that you've seen, again, don't have to mention any names here. But are there any other examples of how you've seen automation and AI already making a real difference for organizations? Yeah, obviously, I've been here, as I said, seven years. And one of the biggest customers we always used to talk about back then was DWP, which is a public reference for us.

[00:09:25] Getting people that need money, getting the money into their hands as quickly as possible. So there was a big backlog that was going on there. The only way that DWP were going to solve that problem was automation. You could just not throw enough people out. I think they had 30,000 in backlog. So they put in automation, cleared the backlog off in weeks and got money in people's hands that needed it the most. And I think DWP is a classic example that's been doing this, not in the last year, but seven years.

[00:09:55] I think they've probably been in production now because I remember speaking about it on my first ever sales kickoff. It was a big case, Sonny. So, yeah, there's some classic examples as well. Just pure automation with just pure RPA that are still up, still running, still delivering an ROI, which is the most important thing. And I'm curious from everything you've seen and heard. Are there also any myths or misconceptions that you've seen around AI and automation over the years? You've had an incredible career.

[00:10:24] I suspect you see a lot of things on your newsfeed that might frustrate you. Is there anything we can lay to rest today? No, I try and stay away from all the myths and things. I try and stick to my facts. And you could waste a lot of time talking about myths and fighting all that. Like FUD, I don't like to talk about my competition either. They're doing what they're doing. My job is to prove value to a customer.

[00:10:51] And that's what I can continue to do throughout my career because that seems to be what's the most successful thing. So, no, I stay away from the myths. There's lots of people that have lots of different opinions and they're more than welcome to them in my world. Love it. And looking forward as you can continue to deliver value to your customers throughout this year and the next few years and into the future, what do you think AI success looks like for organizations?

[00:11:19] And what role do you see UiPath playing in that journey too? So, I think one of the reasons I took this role back on is obviously I've been working at an international level. Everything outside of America, that is for UiPath. Seeing what all the different countries were doing was fascinating because you've got some leaders, laggers, and seeing markets, who's leading with AI.

[00:11:43] And I think that AI landscape going ahead is not just about a single product. It's about an ecosystem. This new companies appear with fantastic products almost overnight. So, I think the way that I see the market going is we've got to build the partnerships with the different companies that are coming along that are new, that really add value, that may have a point or a vertical solution.

[00:12:12] So, this is the way that we – I'm looking at how we change the way that we work is create this ecosystem with the right partners, maybe more verticalized solutions. And I see that as the way forward. It's not going to be a one product fits all, that's for sure. And I can see people changing their products overnight. You know, we have this product. It worked great. It was doing a great job. But something new came along in two months down the road, and you may want to swap it out. And I think that's a good position to be in.

[00:12:42] But, yeah, we've got to be part of an ecosystem to help deliver this value to our end customers. I just want to give a big thank you to my sponsor, who is supporting every show, every episode across the Tech Talks network this month. And this month, I'm proud to be partnering with Alcor. And anyone who's tried to scale an engineering team across borders, they will know firsthand how messy it can get. Because they deal with endless providers. Then there's confusing rules to deal with in each and every region.

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[00:14:08] And before you came on today, I was reading that UiPath was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI augmented software testing tools. This has got to mean a lot to you guys too, right? To be recognized in this way. Yeah, yeah. So, the testing is a very high-growth product line for us at the moment. Agentic testing. Getting an agent to create the test for you, run the test and everything else. This all helps speed up the lifecycle of software.

[00:14:36] The quicker you can get software out, the quicker you can get to market. Obviously, a public reference for us is NatWest and how they're using our software. They talk about the NatWest banking app. Fortunately, they are my customer and I do bank with NatWest. And I do. I love their app. And they were talking about how they release new features in it, basically, because they can test this product a lot quicker and get the product out there to market a lot quicker.

[00:15:04] So, the augmented kind of testing is growing fast and it's built, if you think about RPA, if we take it back all the years. We had customers doing kind of doing testing with RPA anyway because it's just a repetitive task. But bringing in the AI element has just speeded up the whole process. We're recording this right at the beginning of 2026.

[00:15:29] And I'm curious, from all your focus, everything you're working towards this year, what makes you excited to jump out of bed in the morning? Anything in particular that has particularly excited you around AI, enhancing human potential, or just your work in general and delivering that value to customers? No, the buzz I get is the potential. I love speaking to customers. I love listening to what their issues are. And it just gets the mind thinking about how we can help solve that problem.

[00:15:57] I love the idea of this. And I'm an engineer by trade, as we mentioned. So, I like to fix problems. So, I love listening to customers. That's the best bit is the customer stories. And bringing together a team, whether it's just UiPath or whether it's our partner ecosystem, bringing them all together to try and help solve that problem. That's what I get my personal buzz out of. What am I excited about this year is the scaling of Egentic.

[00:16:26] But it has its challenges. And I'll kind of talk about those. I had breakfast with somebody that's one of our head of legal. And we were talking. We're both of a generation that was here when cloud computing came around. And we were discussing cloud. Obviously, I worked at NetApp when cloud came around. And selling on-prem storage and cloud computing coming around was probably a bit of a threat to us. But we carried on. But we were talking about VM sprawl.

[00:16:55] If you remember when people moved to the cloud, everyone was creating VMs here, there. Whoever had a credit card could basically create a virtual machine, stand up in a cloud, and then forget about it. And the company was still paying for it two or three years later. We were talking about how similar this may be with agents. My 17-year-old son, yes, he's computer literate. He can create an agent. Okay? He's not studying computing or anything like that. He's studying economics and business.

[00:17:24] And he can create an agent. If he can create an agent, anybody can create an agent. That's not disrespecting him, by the way. I hope he's not going to listen. But, yeah, this is a concern. This is the thing that's going through in my head. And then we could get a cost. We could lose control of our costs. Because I've got these agents that people are creating that are making calls to VMs. We've got to pay for this somehow. There's got to be a pay. So I think this is where the orchestration side of things is going to come along in a big way.

[00:17:54] So to help scale, there's going to be this big focus on, okay, if I want to scale, how can I orchestrate this? How can I see how much a workflow is costing me from start to finish? I need to be able to see that. And that may not be – it could be any vendors, agents in there. It could be robots or even human beings. And I kind of roll back to those days with cloud and when all these costs went out the window and everybody just moved it for the sake of it.

[00:18:19] And I still have this concern around that we've got to be very conscious about when we move to this agentic world and bringing in not just agents but robots and people, how we can understand the actual cost of that workflow. That is going to be really, really important. And that's going to be something that we're going to have conversations with kind of going into this year and seeing the maturity around the product and how people are driving this out. Yeah, I completely agree.

[00:18:48] I was talking to a large enterprise on here a few weeks ago and they were talking about launching thousands of agents at once. And the IT guy made me a little overcautious on that. And, of course, you talked there a few moments ago about one of the things that you love is talking to customers. And you've got quite a unique vantage point here. If you were to put all those conversations that you've had in the last 6 to 12 months and call it a big melting pot, are any trends in the kind of things that they're coming to you and asking for your help with?

[00:19:18] Are there any big things that everyone's chasing now? So the biggest thing I like, first of all, is the enthusiasm from our customers. So our customers are driving this. Everybody wants to be doing this. Not everybody knows where to start. But what I'm most impressed with, when we have customers, we have a nice office in London. We have customers coming in to do these agentic workshops. And the difference I see is in the RPA world, we'd have the COE. They would come in and they'd learn the latest.

[00:19:46] And when we're doing agentic workshops now with customers, we're not just getting the COE in. We're getting HR. We're getting finance. Everybody's got a problem they want to solve. So that's the one thing that I am noticing, which is considerably different, which is really handy. We moved into this new office a year ago. Fortunately, we put in much bigger meeting rooms because if we'd stuck with the old office, we could never have handled this because the meeting rooms weren't big enough. We're not getting three, four people from a customer. We're getting 10, 15.

[00:20:16] It's huge. So we're seeing that expanding, more people buying into it, more people want to do things. And if you've got a customer that wants to drive something, it makes it really easy to work with them. But we also have to kind of be very cautious about where we spend our time. So we've got to make sure there is an ROI on the project they want to do.

[00:20:40] So we're spending a lot more time doing qualification of, right, okay, this is your use case that you've brought to us that you think's a problem. Is the cost of solving it there? Is the cost of solving it too high that actually it's not worth solving? We do come to it. We do come to it. We sit there and go, actually, it's not worth it. Let's find another one. Let's find the right one to go after. And I think this is where people are getting stuck on this POC, POV, just merry-go-round and keep churning these things through.

[00:21:09] But actually doing the qualification is probably the most important part. And I think that's a great moment to end on. But before I do let you go, it's time to have a little bit of fun with you. I always ask my guests to leave everyone listening with a book that means something to them that we can add to our Amazon wishlist and they can check out, or a song that we can add to our Spotify playlist. Could be anything at all. Guilty pleasures are allowed. But what would you like to leave us with and why? So I did have a thing. They did give me a heads up.

[00:21:38] So I was trying to have a thing. And, you know, I'm a Navy boy at heart. I kind of live on the sea. I love being on the sea. And I like my water sports and everything else. So I listen to a lot of Jack Johnson. I do like it. It's my happy place. It takes me to a beach in an evening with a fire on the beach and preferably with a beer in my hand. So I can shut my eyes. And Jack Johnson always takes me there.

[00:22:08] And I was also thinking about what's the most relevant song at the moment. And I came up with Better Together. So Better Together by Jack Johnson was my song because I think the next guy of 9, 12 months is all going to be about partnerships and working together to solve our customer problems. Lots of different vendors involved in that. So, yeah, Better Together, Jack Johnson. Awesome. What a great song. I'll get that added straight to the Spotify playlist.

[00:22:36] If I'm honest with you, I was just relieved you weren't going to say In the Navy by the village people there. I thought you were taking me down that road for a moment. Well, I will tell you an embarrassing story. We were in Singapore and I was doing a presentation at our sales kickoff. And they put that on as my walk-on music, which was entertaining for everybody apart from me, I think, Neil. I love it. And as I know you're a football fan, a final question I'm going to ask you. Are Wolves going to beat Derby County as the worst premiership team of all time?

[00:23:06] And for people listening, Derby are my team. Yeah, I actually think Wolves, obviously they've picked up a bit of form recently. So I think they might do a Southampton and just scrape by. So unfortunately, Neil, for you, I think you're going to keep that record for a long time to come. Beautiful. Thank you for that. And finally, for anyone listening wanting to learn more about UiPath, some of the big announcements that might be coming out, etc. Where would you like to point everyone?

[00:23:33] So obviously, UiPath.com is our place to go. We do have a big event coming up in March for the UK and I. So UiPath Fusion. We also have another one in Las Vegas in October, I think it is. They're always great customer events. But yeah, UiPath.com is always a great place to start. And LinkedIn, obviously. Awesome. Well, I'll have links to everything that you mentioned there. So much I loved about our conversation, the ground we covered. And most importantly, it's not about the technology. It's delivering value to customers.

[00:24:03] And just listening to you today, that really comes across. So thank you for sharing your story. Oh, perfect. It's been great having a conversation. And I look forward to coming back with a customer in hand for you now. I think if there's one thing Simon made clear today, it's that success with AI, it has very little to do with chasing trends and everything to do with discipline, focus and following through. And you heard today why scaling is where most initiatives succeed or fail.

[00:24:31] And how agentic automation can unlock very real outcomes when it's orchestrated properly. And why cost visibility will become a defining issue as more teams start building agents. And Simon also shared a powerful reminder that AI adoption works best when it becomes a shared effort across the business, not something owned by a single team or a function that are busy working away on an AI project.

[00:24:58] And there's a calm confidence in that conversation. I think it comes from experience, whether it was clearing backlogs in the public sector or accelerating software delivery and banking. The example Simon talked through today show what happens when automation is tiered to clear outcomes and clear accountability. And hopefully this episode has helped you think a little bit differently about your own AI roadmap.

[00:25:26] So please pass it along to anyone that you think is currently struggling and wrestling with pilots, budgets or scale right now. And if you want to stay close to where automation and agentic AI are heading next, keep an eye on Simon's work and the conversations that are coming out of UI path over the next year ahead. But over to you, as AI becomes easier for anyone to build,

[00:25:50] how will your organisation make sure it stays intentional, governed and delivering genuine value? techtalksnetwork.com at Neil C. Hughes on LinkedIn and all social channels. Let me know your thoughts and I'll return again very soon with another guest. Meet me here, same time, same place. Bye for now.