Windsor Forest Colleges Group (WFCG) is celebrating a nomination for the Excellence in Innovation Award at the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2026, recognising the organisation’s pioneering use of artificial intelligence to transform education and customer service.
The award celebrates organisations that use innovation to improve business performance and demonstrate leadership through new products, technologies and processes. WFCG’s nomination reflects the remarkable evolution of ‘Winnie’, the college group’s groundbreaking AI assistant.
Winnie was originally developed in 2023 as the first private AI solution in UK Further Education, after WFCG secured explicit written permission from Microsoft to create a compliant privacy solution that could safely handle sensitive student information and college policies.
As AI technology evolved, the Winnie brand got a new job. Today, it has been reimagined as an intelligent communications assistant, harnessing cutting-edge workflow technologies to manage both telephone and email enquiries across the organisation. Winnie 2.0 is an intelligent triage service that provides instant, policy-aligned guidance and signposting to students, parents, employers and other stakeholders around the clock, with security and compliance at the centre of the design.
The impact of Winnie has been substantial. By handling thousands of routine administrative enquiries, the system has fundamentally changed how staff spend their time. In 2025 alone, WFCG estimates that more than 61,000 hours were saved across its workforce of 1,000 staff – the equivalent of approximately 30 full-time roles.
Rather than reducing capacity, those hours have been redirected towards higher-value activities, particularly face-to-face student support and engagement. At the same time, stakeholders benefit from a significantly enhanced customer experience, with access to support and information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2026 will take place on Thursday 2 July at Easthampstead Park. WFCG has been shortlisted alongside Fluff Software and Syngenta UK in the Excellence in Innovation category.
The nomination is a testament to WFCG’s commitment to embracing innovation responsibly, using technology not simply to automate processes, but to create more time for what matters most: supporting learners to succeed.
