Runagood CEO Duncan Collins on how AI has taken over the role of business consultants - and how the role of the accountant will be critical.
How did you come to set up Runagood?
I left corporate life in 1988 to become a business consultant, and I was appointed by the Thatcher government to lead their work on small businesses. The first job was to set up the Training and Enterprise Councils, and the second job was to set up 110 Business Links, which worked out of the Training and Enterprise Councils. Throughout that period, we had quite a large team of consultants, and directly or indirectly we worked with a million businesses, and more than 2,000 consultants whom we had to train. By 2010, the international competitiveness of very small businesses in the UK had risen from 21st to 7th place.