• Irish businesses perform particularly well in social media and mobile customer experiences
• Retail banks and telecommunications companies rank as the most digitally mature companies in Ireland, including Bank of Ireland and Sky Ireland
• Although Irish businesses displayed an advanced level of maturity across various dimensions of digitalisation, there is a gap to be closed with their European peers
• BearingPoint Ireland Partner and Country Leader, Eric Conway: “Companies that actively implement strategies to increase the level of digitalisation across their operations and customer services are those that will successfully move up the ranks and achieve highest performance.”
Dublin, 6th June 2019 - Irish businesses must give greater consideration to digitalisation in order to compete at an international level, according to a new report released by a leading European management and technology consultancy BearingPoint.
The report, ‘Digital Leaders in Ireland 2019’, assessed companies’ “digital maturity” across six dimensions of digitalisation.
Industries including retail banks and telecommunications show the strongest levels digital maturity in Ireland. Banks including Bank of Ireland, KBC, AIB and Permanent TSB and telecom companies Sky Ireland, Virgin Media and Vodafone Ireland rank among the highest performers overall.
The report assessed 62 leading Irish companies with a total of 44,000 Irish data points. These companies were assessed against 600 European competitors across six dimensions including digital marketing, digital product experience, e-commerce, e-CRM, mobile and social media.
Of these assessment criteria, Irish businesses were found to perform particularly well in terms of social media and mobile. Businesses are creating on-demand, real-time content in response to the proliferation of smart devices among consumers.
This is particularly true of the manufacturing, media and food products industries.
Top performers across these industry groups include, Ardagh Group, Ingersoll-Rand and Transitions Optical (manufacturing), The Irish Times, INM and RTÉ (media) and Glanbia, Kerry Group and Total Produce (food products – which all scored well on a national level).
Other industries examined in the report include, energy (Energia, Electric Ireland and SSE Airtricity), transport (Aer Lingus, Irish Rail and Norwegian), insurance (Laya Healthcare, AIG and AXA) and retail (Boots, Marks and Spencer and SuperValu).
International comparison
Despite displaying a high level of digital maturity in certain areas on a national level, the Digital Leaders report found that there is a gap between Irish businesses’ overall performance and the average standard for their European peer group.
Despite strong digital efforts, the report suggests that all Irish companies could benefit from further digitalisation to help them to differentiate themselves with respect to existing and potential competitors, secure leadership positions in the market, and compete with international counterparts.
Insight
Eric Conway, Partner and Country Leader at BearingPoint Ireland, commented on the report:
Although Irish businesses have some work to do to match the digital maturity of their European peers, it’s promising to see that they are competing strongly against this group in terms of social media and mobile. These two areas are particularly subject to technology evolution and change, so strong performance in these areas is key to remaining relevant and showing sustainable progress.
Eric Conway, BearingPoint Ireland Managing Partner
The most important thing is that Irish businesses remain open to the adoption of new technologies and digitally-enabled processes. Irish businesses certainly have the potential to compete digitally at an international level, which we can see from the results in the retail bank and telecommunications industries. Companies that actively implement strategies to improve the level of digitalisation across their business are those that will successfully move up the ranks and achieve highest performance. However, the size of the Irish market relative to others may be putting off larger companies from investing in marketing, professional expertise and infrastructure. Irish decision-makers need to put forward a strong case for investment in digitalisation that embraces new ideas and technology to maintain their competitiveness both locally and in international markets.
Eric Conway, BearingPoint Ireland Managing Partner
Notes to Editor
Source: https://www.bearingpoint.com/en-ie/our-success/digital-leaders/
For Irish companies, BearingPoint’s Digital Leaders Study provides valuable insights from two perspectives:
1. Benchmarking of their overall level of digital maturity against both their peers and competitor organisations from different industry sectors, in Ireland and across Europe
2. Gaining an understanding of the variances and relative assessment across each of the six dimensions so as to inform decisions on where change and investment is required
About BearingPoint
BearingPoint is an independent management and technology consultancy with European roots and a global reach. The company operates in four units: Consulting, Solutions, Business Services, and Ventures. Consulting covers the advisory business; Solutions provides the tools for successful digital transformation, advanced analytics and regulatory requirements; Business Services provides managed services beyond SaaS; Ventures drives the financing and development of start-ups. BearingPoint’s clients include many of the world’s leading companies and organizations. The firm has a global consulting network with more than 10,000 people and supports clients in over 75 countries, engaging with them to achieve measurable and sustainable success.
For more information, please visit:
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Madison DuffyMarketing ManagerIreland
