Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI)

Overview

We deployed 26 AI tools for TUI's 26-person team: 12 standard assistants giving every user immediate productivity gains, plus 14 custom-built solutions targeting the union's most demanding document workflows. The executive committee process alone went from three weeks of work to a single day, repeated 14 times a year.

Combined, the standard toolkit and custom builds deliver 3,700+ hours of annual productivity gains. We onboarded the organisation in two phases, flexing around a concurrent digital transformation to avoid change fatigue.

High-stakes processes under pressure

TUI negotiates government circular letters that set policy for schools and colleges across Ireland. Each circular goes through multiple rounds of review involving senior officials. The collation process runs 109 times per year and carries legal weight. The union also manages formal governance processes including executive committee meetings 14 times a year and congress motions spanning two decades.

The challenges were concentrated in three areas. Circular letter feedback collation consumed 3-4 hours per circular, with 10-11 colleagues each returning separate Word documents with tracked changes. That single task totalled 327-436 hours annually. Executive committee transcripts exceeded 60 pages, and processing them took three weeks per cycle. Congress motions spanning 2005-2025 were stored across 20+ files, requiring manual policy verification for every query.

Standard tools first, custom builds next

We started with 12 standard assistants deployed across all staff, covering operations, marketing, customer support and AI guidance. These gave every user immediate productivity gains from day one: drafting emails, summarising documents, preparing meeting agendas and creating content. The standard toolkit built confidence before any custom work began.

We then developed 14 custom assistants through deep iteration. The executive committee minutes tool alone went through multiple versions as we refined section-by-section processing for 60-page transcripts. Early attempts at processing entire documents in one pass caused accuracy issues, so we pivoted to agenda-linked, section-level processing with privacy anonymisation and governance logging. The circular collation assistant processes tracked changes at the XML level with conflict detection, provenance tracking and audit trails. A congress motion policy tool indexes 20 years of decisions for instant verification.

We onboarded 50% of the organisation first, then held the second group while TUI managed a concurrent digital transformation. This flexibility meant AI adoption did not compete with other change initiatives. When the team was ready, we scheduled the second phase.

Three weeks compressed to one day

The executive committee transformation is the headline result. A process that consumed three weeks of work now takes one day. With 14 executive committee cycles per year, this single change freed up weeks of capacity annually. The meeting minuter handles agenda-transcript linking, privacy anonymisation, SMART actions and governance logging across 60-page documents.

The circular collation assistant handles 109 circulars per year, each reviewed by 10-11 colleagues with tracked changes. What took 3-4 hours per circular now runs through iterative AI merging with conflict detection and audit trails. Presentations that previously took 40 minutes are now produced in minutes. The congress motions knowledge base indexes 20 years of policy decisions for instant verification.

Combined, the standard toolkit and custom builds deliver 3,700+ hours of annual productivity gains across the organisation. Both custom solutions are in production. The first group of 13 staff are using all 26 tools daily.

From assistants to autonomous agents

We are building an AI agent for TUI's website that answers member queries directly. This moves TUI from the Assistants tier into the Agents tier of our SCALE framework, where AI operates autonomously rather than waiting for a human prompt.

The second half of the organisation is now scheduled for AI onboarding, having been held back while business priorities settled. With the digital transformation behind them, the full team of 26 will have access to all tools and the confidence training to use them effectively.

TUI's journey shows how a phased, flexible approach builds lasting adoption. Start with the highest-impact processes, prove the value, then expand when the organisation is ready.

What we learned

The section-by-section approach to 60-page committee transcripts was a turning point. Early versions processed entire documents in one pass, causing accuracy issues. The pivot to section-level processing solved this and became the template for all document-heavy assistants we build.

Staggered onboarding was the right call. Organisations running concurrent change programmes need space. Holding Group 2 until the digital transformation settled meant both initiatives got proper attention rather than competing for the same bandwidth.

TUI's circular collation workflow proved that AI can handle complex document processing at the XML level. This is not text generation. It is real tracked-change merging with conflict detection and provenance tracking.

*This engagement was delivered through the smartAI programme, our reseller partnership with smartimpact. Read the smartimpact case study to learn more.