CASE AI Coffee Chat: Practical Uses of AI, from Due Diligence to Automated Reporting-Ulster Presentation

Ulster Presentation

Pdf Summary

This presentation explains how Ulster University used AI to automate donor due diligence reports, turning a repetitive, labour-intensive process into a faster and more consistent workflow. Higher education faces increasing complexity, financial pressure, and limited resources, so automation and AI can help reduce administrative burden, improve reliability, and support better decisions.<br /><br />The due diligence process was a strong candidate for automation because it was low volume, rules-based, and based entirely on public information such as Companies House, sanctions lists, Wikipedia, and web sources. It also carried no internal data or GDPR risks. The goal was not to automate the final decision, but to automate evidence gathering and preliminary assessment so staff could focus on judgement and oversight.<br /><br />Ulster University introduced “Atlas,” a digital co-worker that handles email-in, report-back due diligence requests. The system was developed iteratively with Doozer AI, built around the desired outcome, and required no technical expertise, internal hosting, or changes to university IT systems. A human remains in the loop to review outputs.<br /><br />The results were significant: effort per request dropped from 3.5 hours to about 5 minutes, representing a 97.6% reduction in effort. The proof of concept has already completed dozens of checks and is being expanded to refreshed donor reviews, honorary graduate checks, and potentially scholarship administration.<br /><br />Overall, the project demonstrates that a simple, low-risk process can prove the value of AI and create confidence to scale automation to more complex areas across the university.

Keywords

Ulster University

AI automation

donor due diligence

higher education

workflow efficiency

evidence gathering

human oversight

public information

Doozer AI

process automation