Activate IAM has developed an AI-powered assistant for Microsoft Teams to handle identity and IT administration tasks. The tool won Software Combined's AI Take Flight Challenge, which drew entries from 13 portfolio companies.
The Auckland-founded company designed the assistant to let employees manage routine requests in natural language within Microsoft Teams, including access requests, approvals, distribution list creation, equipment orders, account information checks and service requests.
Activate, acquired by Software Combined in 2024, built the proof of concept with guidance from AWS architects in Auckland. Chief Technology Officer Robbie Burke led the project, which is expected to inform future product development for the company's identity automation platform.
The software sits within existing approval and audit processes rather than acting as an independent decision-maker. The approach comes as companies look to apply artificial intelligence to internal operations without weakening governance, oversight or compliance controls.
During development, the concept showed it could reduce common identity administration tasks from several minutes to seconds. The work formed part of a challenge programme that gave winning teams support to build working proof-of-concept systems.
Governed automation
The assistant was built around controlled automation, with human oversight and auditable workflows kept in place. Organisations would be able to set approval controls and operational boundaries around AI-assisted processes, and disable AI-driven actions where necessary without interrupting core identity services.
That framing is likely to matter to buyers in identity and access management, where software often touches staff accounts, permissions and internal systems that require detailed records of who approved what and when. By placing the assistant inside existing workflows, Activate is seeking to address concerns that AI tools can obscure decision-making or bypass established checks.
AWS Account Manager Megan Capriccio said Activate's solution stood out during the competition. “They brought a thoughtful, real-world use case that solves a genuine problem for enterprise customers. What impressed us most was how quickly they moved from concept to deployment-ready code, compressing weeks of work into days. It's exactly the kind of outcome the AI Take Flight Challenge was designed to create, and we're looking forward to supporting more of these builds across the Software Combined portfolio.”
Customer demand
The project also reflects a wider shift among software suppliers towards narrower internal uses of AI rather than broader autonomous systems. In areas such as identity management, companies have increasingly focused on applying AI to repetitive administrative work while preserving a clear chain of responsibility for approvals and access decisions.
Chief Executive Officer Ashley Thomas said customers want practical applications of AI inside familiar processes. “Customers are increasingly asking how AI can improve operational workflows without compromising security, visibility, or control. This concept was designed to explore how AI can support identity operations in a way that is practical for end users, secure, and manageable within real-world enterprise environments.”
Software Combined launched the AI Take Flight Challenge across its portfolio to encourage staff to create AI concepts with measurable business value. Entries came from 13 technology companies in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, with Activate selected as the overall winner.
Support from AWS specialists helped move the project from concept to a working demonstration over two days in Auckland. Supporters of the initiative cited that short development cycle as evidence that smaller software teams can rapidly test targeted AI tools when focused on a specific business problem.
Burke said the design centred on simplifying tasks inside tools employees already use. “The goal was to explore how AI could simplify common identity and access tasks within tools people already use every day. We deliberately designed the concept so AI remains inside governed and auditable workflows by sitting on top of structured, automated identity processes. Organisations can introduce approval controls, operational boundaries and, where needed, effectively switch AI-driven actions off without disrupting core identity services.”
Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder Stefan Jansen of Software Combined said the result showed the kind of practical use case the competition aimed to find. “Activate's win is a good example of how AI can make someone's day genuinely easier. They took a clunky enterprise process most people put up with, made it feel effortless, and kept the controls their customers rely on. That's the kind of thinking we love seeing across our portfolio.”