The framework page shows the five stages applied to knowledge-heavy professional services work, including internal knowledge retrieval across a fragmented SharePoint structure.
See the framework in practiceLocations / Cambridge
AI agents for technical, knowledge-heavy teams.
AI agents and Copilot consultancy in Cambridge
We design and build AI agents inside Microsoft 365 for Cambridge organisations, then train your own people to build the next ones. The work goes to the depth technical teams expect: grounding, permissions and the data underneath, not a surface-level demo.
FiveForward is an AI consultancy serving Cambridge that designs and builds AI agents inside Microsoft 365 using Copilot Studio and the Power Platform, trains Cambridge teams to build their own and delivers on site or online through Microsoft Teams, using its five-stage framework: Discover, Design, Enable, Automate and Embed.
This page is for consultancies, professional services firms and knowledge-work organisations with technical staff who will not sign off an agent they cannot interrogate. Before an agent goes near real work, they want to know what it is grounded on, what it can see, how it behaves at the edges of its knowledge and where it hands over to a person. The build has to be credible at that level.
Agents lead, but they depend on the layers underneath. The same engagement usually takes in SharePoint information architecture for trustworthy grounding, permissions that limit what each agent can see and Copilot Studio and Power Automate work for the intake, retrieval and filing jobs worth automating. Alongside the builds, we run agent workshops so your own builder group learns to ship agents in your tenant.
With technical teams, agent projects rarely stall for lack of skill. Someone gets a Copilot Studio agent running in an afternoon and the demo impresses, then the agent quietly falls out of use. The usual cause is that the build started before the job was named: no agreed workflow, untidy source content, no owner and no review point where a person checks the output.
The FiveForward Framework gives Cambridge teams a route that respects that. Discover finds the workflows genuinely worth an agent, Design fixes the scope and price before anything is built, Enable gets your builder group hands on, Automate ships the builds and Embed keeps them owned and improving. The job, the source data and the owner are named before the first agent exists.
How an engagement runs in Cambridge
Five stages, framed for Cambridge teams.
The route in is the free consultation, then Discover. The stages that follow are sized by the roadmap.
01
Discover
The paid input phase, £1,500 fixed covering Discover and Design. We sit with your Cambridge teams and map the knowledge-heavy workflows where an agent could take real weight: intake, retrieval, chasing and filing.
02
Design
The production phase, covered by the same fee. Discover and Design together produce the workflow map, prioritised agent use cases and costed roadmap. Design ends with a playback of about an hour where you choose the route and the price is fixed.
03
Enable
Agent workshops for your builder group, from £850. Sessions run against your own data and end with a working first agent built and running in your tenant.
04
Automate
We build the agents and automations from the roadmap, typically £5,000 to £15,000 depending on the number of agents, the systems they connect to and the state of the source data. On route two, £3,950 fixed, your team ships the first agents with us alongside.
05
Embed
A retainer from £750 a month keeps live agents reviewed, measured and improved, with an experienced builder within reach of your team.
Who this suits
- Consultancies, professional services firms and knowledge-work organisations
- Technical staff who want to see how an agent is grounded, permissioned and reviewed before they trust it
- Teams that want to build agents in house once the first builds have shipped
- Remote and multi-site teams that suit workshops, build reviews and playback sessions through Microsoft Teams
Common work
- Internal knowledge agents grounded in SharePoint for the repeat questions technical teams are tired of answering
- Intake and triage agents that read new enquiries and requests and route them with the right context
- Records-chasing flows that request missing information, follow up and file what comes back
- Document filing automation that names and stores reports, letters and deliverables to a consistent structure
- Approval and reporting flows in Power Automate with agreed review points where judgement stays with people
- SharePoint information architecture so agents ground on trusted, current sources
The work often needs depth: grounding, permissions, SharePoint structure and how an agent behaves at the edges of its knowledge. Cambridge teams ask harder questions, and the answers have to hold up.
Cambridge is further from our Colchester base than the Essex towns, so we plan on-site days deliberately: Discover interviews, the Design playback or an agent workshop where being in the room earns the journey.
Much of the rest runs well online, where build reviews, playback sessions and workshops happen in your own tenant against your own data. Blended delivery, a few on-site days around a mostly online programme, is the usual shape here.
Delivery can be remote, on site or blended. The important part is making each agent credible enough for technical users and owned by your own team once we step back.
Proof and examples
Worked examples, not local name-drops.
The examples below are worked scenarios showing how we build these engagements.
A worked example shows an AI post room agent that reads scanned letters, matches them against more than 1,500 live clients and files them in about two minutes, with people handling only the exceptions.
Read the AI post room case studyAnother worked example shows a clunky CRM replaced with a SharePoint, Power Apps and Outlook build, the kind of clean data backbone that makes agent grounding reliable.
Read the SharePoint backbone worked exampleCommon questions
Questions before you choose the next step.
Do you work on site in Cambridge?
Yes. We plan on-site days deliberately given the distance from our Colchester base: Discover interviews, the Design playback or an agent workshop where being in the room helps. Build reviews and most working sessions run well online in your own tenant.
What does an agent build cost?
Discover is £1,500 fixed and covers Discover and Design together, priced for organisations up to around 50 staff, with larger organisations scoped individually on the free consultation with the same credit terms. Builds are typically £5,000 to £15,000 depending on the number of agents, the systems they connect to and the state of the source data, with the price fixed at the Design playback before work begins. Route two, where your team builds with us alongside, is £3,950 fixed.
Is our data safe with an agent?
Agents run inside your own Microsoft 365 tenant and inherit your existing permissions, so an agent can only see what the person using it could already see. Your data stays inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary and is not used to train models. For technical teams we walk through the grounding sources and review points before anything goes live.
Can our team learn to build agents themselves?
Yes, and Cambridge teams often want exactly that. Agent workshops start from £850 and end with a working first agent built and running in your tenant; a first declarative agent takes about 15 minutes. Route two, £3,950 fixed, adds two delivery days, two build reviews and 90 days of async support answered within 2 working days, so your team ships its first agents and automations from the roadmap with us alongside.
How technical can the work get?
As technical as your team needs. Grounding behaviour, permissions, SharePoint structure, connector choices and where an agent should refuse to answer are all part of the conversation, because technical users will not trust an agent they cannot interrogate.
How do we start?
With a free 30 minute consultation, no pitch, no obligation. If it makes sense we move to Discover at £1,500 fixed, covering Discover and Design. That fee is credited back in full once follow-on spend passes £3,500 before VAT within 90 days of the roadmap. If your people also need end user Copilot adoption training, that is arranged through our training partner.
Where to go next
Copilot Studio agents
How we design, build and ground agents inside your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Agent workshops
Hands-on sessions where your builder group ships its first working agent.
The FiveForward Framework
The five-stage method behind every agent programme we run.
What Copilot agents are
A plain-English guide to Copilot agents and the jobs they suit.
Next step
Talk through the rollout you are planning.
A short, free consultation is enough to work out whether Discover, a fixed £1,500 covering Discover and Design, is the right next step, and whether the roadmap is likely to point at us building your agents or training your team to build them.