Irish businesspeople are optimistic about the future, investing more in technology, making greater use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in their businesses, and are moving to the cloud in greater numbers than ever before.
These are among the key findings of Three Ireland's 2018 Irish Business Mindset survey; the company's annual snapshot of how Irish business people feel about business in Ireland. Among the key findings is that Irish businesses believe the business climate is changing, for the better.
There has been a 13 per cent increase to almost 90 per cent since the 2017 survey in the number of respondents feeling “optimistic” or “cautiously optimistic” about Ireland’s business climate. Not only has optimism increased, but the percentage of those surveyed saying they are “concerned” has also fallen from 8 per cent to 4 per cent.
“The results are certainly very positive,” says Three Ireland’s head of connected solutions and business ICT Karl McDermott. “Optimism is rising quite a bit and concern has dipped to practically zero.”
Another shift which he believes is highly significant is in attitudes to IT investment. “Businesses are saying they are less concerned about cost savings and more focused on using technology for productivity and growth,” he says. “It is clear that technology is now seen as an enabler for success with the number of respondents seeing technology as just a cost dropping to below 3 per cent in this year’s survey.”
Growth strategy
This is a marked change in attitude with 70 per cent now seeing technology as playing a central role in business priorities and growth strategy; a 13 per cent increase on 2017.
Another highly significant finding relates to the cloud, which is no longer the preserve of the early adopters. Just 5 per cent of survey respondents said they are not making any use of cloud services, down from 15 per cent in 2017.
“The cloud is now almost ubiquitous,” says McDermott. “Businesses are moving from on-premise to cloud-based messaging and telephony. Those using the cloud to facilitate calls and messaging using applications such as Skype and WhatsApp saw a 50 per cent increase from 2017. It’s also interesting to look at what cloud services SMEs are using. They are moving on from file storage and sharing to productivity tools like Office 365 and accounting software. There was a 50 per cent increase in the use of cloud-based productivity tools and apps during the year.”
McDermott believes this is at least in part due to increased trust in the cloud and appreciation of its benefits. “Companies are now much more open to putting everything in the cloud,” he notes. “This for a couple of reasons. The cloud will always be there whenever you need it. If you build your own IT system you have to invest in the hardware and the software and the back-up locations. You need to protect your data, invest in security systems, keep them up to date and so on. When you move applications to the cloud, they are more secure, more accessible, more available, and more reliable. The cloud is now more trusted.”
Stock levels
The cost issue is also significant. “The cloud involves operation expenditure rather than upfront capital expenditure. We are seeing many customers moving entire systems to the cloud and new customers are starting up in the cloud without any on-premise solutions.”
He also notes a growing level of sophistication among SMEs when it comes to IT usage. “The use of IoT in SMEs is on the rise. Small companies are using IoT to monitor stock levels, for example, and they are using smart tagging systems to track deliveries. They are quite open to deploying IoT technology and that’s quite new. They are using it for simple things like energy monitoring and lighting control. Retailers can also use it to measure footfall activity in their stores.”
This shouldn’t really come as any surprise, he adds. “Many people don’t realise it but lots of technologies we use in our homes can be very useful in the SME context. We use things like Alexa, Nest and Hive in our homes to control lights, heating, alarms and so on. They can also be used in a business. A restaurateur could use one of them to be notified of a power outage on a fridge, for example. They can be used by SMEs to deliver significant cost savings and competitive advantage.
“AI is definitely coming as well,” he adds. “It is already being used for energy management and to predict when stocks will need to be replenished. Irish SMEs are quite sophisticated when it comes to IT. Seventy per cent of respondents to this year’s survey consider themselves more proactive than their competitors regarding their technology. They also feel they lead the way in their industry with many of their technology investment decisions. This forward-looking approach by the majority of Irish SMEs towards investment in technology can only help to drive higher levels of investment, more technology adoption and greater overall competitiveness as a result.”