Ed Butcher

Product Director, Arbor

Ed is a Product Director at Arbor and Co-Founder at Habitude - now part of Arbor - a workflow automation platform for schools that performs everyday work on behalf of your teams so that they can get back to the highest impact work. Before setting up Habitude, Ed was the CEO of a London based school trust, having spent the previous ten years working across the Teach First and Teach for All networks, latterly as European Director. He started his career as a secondary school teacher in South London.

Laying strong foundations

1 Workshop series three

From manual to managed: Designing and sustaining workflows at scale

Room: Mercian

As trusts grow, operational processes often become fragmented and harder to manage consistently. Many are beginning to automate workflows, but moving from isolated efficiencies to trust-wide coherence brings new challenges around ownership, governance and system design. This session explores how trusts are approaching workflow automation in practice - where they begin, which processes they prioritise, and how they maintain clarity as adoption scales. Leaders will share practical examples of what has worked, where challenges emerge, and how they are creating clearer, more connected operational workflows across their organisations.

Hall 8b

1 Breakout sessions: Series three

From centralisation to automation: Putting agentic AI to work

This practical case-study session explores how agentic AI could help trusts realise more of the promised benefits of centralisation. We will examine how AI agents can manage manual administrative processes from end to end, while following trust policies and maintaining a clear audit trail. Drawing on trust case studies, Arbor's Ed Butcher will share examples involving school trips, risk assessments and Subject Access Requests. You will gain practical insight into where agentic AI could reduce workload, improve consistency and release staff capacity, alongside the strategic, operational and governance decisions involved. Ideal for trust leaders responsible for operations, technology and transformation.