The 'feed the cats' irreducible core

The point isn't full automation.
It's knowing exactly where a human must stay.

A system that automates everything and is accountable for nothing is a liability — especially in regulated energy retail. This design is built around its hand-offs. Here is every control point, and the reason it's a person's job.


Three reasons a human stays in the loop

Governance · Accountability · Edge cases.

Governance

Someone must own the canonical metric definitions and sign off what becomes org-wide truth. The AI proposes and enforces consistency; a person is accountable for the standard.

Accountability

When a bill is corrected, a refund issued, or an account chased, ENSEK answers to the customer and to Ofgem. A named human makes that call — the AI only detects and quantifies.

Edge cases

Vulnerability, affordability, ambiguous exec asks, experimental validity — the long tail where context and judgement beat pattern-matching. Routed to a person by design.


Every control point in the system

Where the AI stops and a person owns it.

AI does→ Hands to a human forBecause
Computes the canonical revenue / consumption seriesSign-off on the metric definitionOne org-wide source of truth needs a named owner.
Flags 100+ billing discrepancies with £ variance & probable causeApproving each customer-facing correction or refundRegulatory accuracy + customer accountability.
Builds the persistently-estimated-read cohortDeciding the customer treatmentVulnerability & affordability rules apply.
Reconstructs the debt book & early-arrears listAll collections / dunning actionsConsumer-protection & FCA-adjacent obligations — never automate the action.
Sets up & computes A/B testsThe validity judgement & ship/no-ship callExperimental rigour and commercial consequence.
Drafts the decision-ready reportThe interpretation that leaves the buildingThe analyst's name is on the recommendation.
(nothing)Framing ambiguous exec problems & coaching the teamOrg context, politics, mentorship — fully human.

On the live analyst, every result already carries its control point inline — the hand-off is a first-class part of the output, not an afterthought.


The residual org

What ENSEK would actually still hire.

The recurring-production work — write the SQL, refresh the dashboard, sample-audit bills — is absorbed by the agentic backend. What remains is accountability and judgement. Hire for that.

RoleHeadsMandate
Analytics lead / owner1Metric governance, sign-off, accountable for what ships. The human core.
Billing / assurance analyst1–2Adjudicates flagged discrepancies, owns corrections & regulator-facing accuracy.
Data engineer1Owns pipelines & tariff/reference data. Garbage in still means garbage out.
Senior / principal analyst1Problem framing, experiment validity, exec partnership, coaching.

The honest read: the open Senior Data Analyst seat is best filled by someone who runs this system and owns its hand-offs — not someone who races it on query throughput. That's the role we built for.


See the system do the work it's built to hand off.