Connecting Leadership, Innovation & New Technologies

Digitalisation offers businesses opportunities to become more efficient, improve quality, scale faster, gain competitive advantage, and win new customers. Yet, according to our recent survey only 35% of companies are taking action on digital technologies, with 16% in action/planning stage.

At a joint IRDG/Siemens Ireland event CEO, Gary O’Callaghan described our world as a VUCA world – Volatile, Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous. He described 3 recurring barriers on the route to digitalisation:

1. understanding the technologies that are available,
2. addressing concerns about digital skills gap within an organisation, and
3. considering how to build and evaluate the investment case around new business models.

We know that 80% of current business processes and practices will either be changed or eliminated by 2025. Technologies like data analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, augmented reality, and virtual reality are delivering new capabilities to analyse, personalise, predict, correct in real time, automate, and reduce risk that can transform business. In the Irish context, our survey highlights the biggest emphasis is on analytics, indicating the transformation to data-driven businesses.