Starting with 13 team members in early 2025, they’ve since expanded enrolment as AI proved critical for improving daily operations, customer service, and growth. What began as an experiment has become business-critical: their Managing Director uses AI 15+ times a day, and the teams from accounts to marketing have embedded AI into their workflows, and they’re building custom AI agents and power apps in-house.

This is how they did it.

Laying the groundwork: shared learning and senior support

From the outset, Regal’s leadership invested in Copilot licences and encouraged everyone with access to the AI Academy to experiment. This top-down backing made it easier for team members to spend time learning, testing, and sharing what worked. As Peter Bickerton, IT Manager stated: “We’re working as a team to get AI in place for everyone.”

Leadership also recognised that introducing AI wouldn’t just be a technical shift, it would require cultural change. AI Champions were nominated from within the team to lead by example and help others get started. The company set up a shared Teams channel and centralised folder for prompt libraries, examples, and work-in-progress ideas. Regular “lunch & learns” gave people the space to ask questions, showcase progress, and encourage exploration.

Most notably, Managing Director Chris set the tone by using AI himself 15+ times a day. He described AI as a companion that provides inspiration, supports decision-making, and helps move work forward. His little and often approach helped build a culture of curiosity rather than fear.

Practical wins across the business

The team started with quick, low-risk use cases that brought immediate benefits:

• Admin & Commercial: used AI to simplify email responses and write personalised job descriptions.

• Marketing: used image tools to enhance pack shots and create mock-ups.

• Accounts & Compliance: ran due diligence checks on prospective customers using ChatGPT.

• HR: used Copilot to review policy documents and summarise updates.

These small wins reduced admin, improved data visibility, and helped the business act faster and with more confidence. They also sparked ideas across teams about how AI could support other workflows. Chris encouraged the team not to rely too heavily on pre-built prompts. “If I just give people a prompt, they’re not learning,” he said. Instead, the team was encouraged to explore AI actively and ask better questions.

Building custom tools: from confidence to capability

After mastering the basics, Regal was ready for something more ambitious: building their own AI agents tailored to their specific business needs. During a hands-on working session with PAIR, the team identified some of their biggest operational pain points and designed two focused tools with clear ROI: a pricing assistant to reduce response times and a customer service tracker to ensure no query falls through the cracks.

Example 1: Pricing assistant

Joe Dunn, Trading Manager, began by tackling a common pain point: price requests. Customers would ask for pricing on a product, and the team would have to search across inboxes, spreadsheets and supplier lists. The AI agent aimed to simplify this.

But there were hurdles along the way. Regal discovered that their CRM system was automatically removing leading zeros from product barcodes, leading to mismatches with supplier data. Office Manager Theresa quickly identified the issue and implemented a simple yet effective workaround: prompt the agent to add two leading zeros whenever the data originated from the CRM. It was a useful reminder that AI doesn’t replace human judgment, it complements it.

The best results still come when people are actively in the loop, shaping how AI is used and refined. The team continues working on getting this agent live, working through the challenges to ensure that once live the agent provides useful information and contributes to reducing the team workload while improving their customer response time.

Example 2: Customer service tracker

Theresa Brock explored building an agent to manage customer queries, and after several iterations, she opted for Power Apps as the more robust solution. She is currently refining an app that logs internal tickets, from IT issues and maintenance tasks to customer complaints, assigns them to the appropriate person, and ensures resolution before closure. The system will bring much-needed visibility and accountability, directly supporting Regal’s ISO 9000 quality processes.

As a customer-centric organisation, this app reflects Regal’s commitment to improving service delivery and ensuring every query is tracked, resolved, and learned from. It’s a practical example of how AI and automation can quietly strengthen the foundations of great customer experience. These agent prototypes are still evolving, but the team is focused on getting the structure right, defining input and output clearly, so the tools can grow in usefulness over time.

A platform for change

More than any single app or use case, the AI Academy has helped Regal think differently. It showed them what was possible, helped them up-skill, and gave them a structure to build on. It has sparked curiosity and it’s forging the future of Regal Wholesale as a business. The bite-sized masterclasses helped staff build confidence without being overwhelmed. Internal workshops shared tips and templates. Prompt galleries helped spread ideas.

Meeting other companies in the Academy made it clear: Regal is making outstanding progress in their AI adoption journey. As Jon Hunt, Commercial Director, put it: “[the masterclasses] provide that structure throughout” giving them as a company a framework for continuous improvement.

Lessons learned

1. Customer-centric AI: AI is used to enhance, not replace, Regal’s relationship-driven approach. Freeing up admin time means more time for customers.

2. Human expertise is essential: AI doesn’t know your business — your people do. That partnership is where the value lies.

3. Gradual adoption builds momentum: Starting small allowed the team to learn and iterate together.

4. Continuous sharing matters: From lunch & learns to shared folders, making progress visible helps everyone stay involved.

Looking ahead

Regal’s AI journey is accelerating. They’re expanding their prompt library, building more custom agents, exploring warehouse automation, and enrolling more staff in the AI Academy each month.

But perhaps the most important lesson from Regal’s experience is this: successful AI adoption isn’t about the technology; it’s about giving people the confidence and structure to experiment. When a wholesale distributor can go from zero to building custom AI agents and PowerApps in six months, it proves that any organisation can transform with the right approach.

Ready to start your AI transformation? Learn how the Wirral AI Academy can work for your organisation or contact us to discuss your needs.