The last two years have made digitalisation more important than ever, and Enterprise Ireland has been working on helping companies progress on their digital journey.

Digitalisation can help a business to scale up. It can involve introducing technology to help manage business processes, right up to embedding or leveraging AI/quantum computing in a product and service.

Some businesses mistakenly believe that digitalisation is just about expensive technology, but this is only part of the story. Other businesses are at the very early stage, which means they have only begun to look at ways to optimise their business – through moving to the cloud, for example, or implementing tech to improve how they engage and record customer data and interactions (customer relationship management – CRM).

Some companies are further along the journey, and are embedding automation to streamline manual repetitive tasks, while others are adopting data analytics and AI to predict trends and provide real-time customer or supplier information upon which they can make informed decisions.

Digital dexterity

‘Digital fluency’ is a very important part of digital transformation. Businesses that are more comfortable talking and using digital tend to scale faster and have higher sales.

Training and awareness is a key part of this. It is very important that senior management start to engage on upskilling and increasing awareness of digital in relation to their business and sector. This may be as simple as reviewing what competitors are doing – but, more broadly, building up knowledge is important.

This does not mean that all senior management need to become technology experts. Digital technologies should always be viewed as tools to help business. However, legal practices should start the move to a ‘digital-first’ approach: whenever a new service or process is developed, the question asked is ‘can digital help here?’

It is also important to talk to staff and see whether there are untapped digital skills within the existing workforce. These employees may be interested in new roles, and they have the advantage of knowing the business. Ideally, over time, companies would do a full skills audit of staff and then design training programmes and supports to help in their upskilling and development.

With regard to cyber-security, overall, it’s good to focus on non-technology areas, such as regular staff awareness training, reviewing finance procedures to try to mitigate impersonation attacks, and fostering a culture to report suspected issues quickly.

For companies using digital services, start thinking about ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) solutions. The business can benefit from not having to patch and update the systems and many of the SaaS products now have encryption at rest by default or available as an add-on. When looking at new products and services, look for companies that have security standards in place (such as ISO 27001 or similar). This can help indicate that they have good data processes in place in the business.

Digital calculator

There are certain key aspects to a successful digital strategy, all of which need to be carefully addressed.

Firstly, ask yourself why you need a digital strategy. It’s easy to read about a new platform or technology solution, but a good digital strategy must be aligned to your business strategy. For example, what business objective can be enabled by the digital plan? Is it about finding new customers or increasing sales with existing ones? Is it about improving production efficiencies, or about strategic decision-making that requires the availability of real-time accurate information drawing from several business units or locations? These are all important questions that must be answered before you start.

The second key factor is process. It is hugely important to review and optimise processes before layering on digital technologies. An inefficient process before digital will remain an inefficient process after digital. Talk to the Local Enterprise Offices for help on this: they have ‘LEAN’ programmes to support process optimisation.

A third key element is people. Digital strategies will only work if people at the senior levels, and across the organisation, understand digital possibilities, see the benefits to the business, and champion its adoption. It must be driven by multiple people across the organisation, and developing a digital culture and mindset across the business is key. There are multiple programmes to support this available from Skillnet, the IMI, and others.

Finally, we get to the technology bit. This can be daunting for companies with a limited budget, so it’s vital to take the time to really assess the technology required. It’s also important to ensure interoperability as new technology comes on-stream as part of a multi-year plan – so the technology ‘speaks to each other’. This will avoid expensive integration and data extraction issues at a future date.

Digital display

While all this might feel daunting – especially for practices at an early stage in their digital journey – there is plenty of help available. The new Digital Ready Scorecard is a short online self-assessment tool that enables businesses to assess their current digital readiness and identify any gaps. The scorecard also signposts supports from Enterprise Ireland, the Local Enterprise Offices, and across Government.

More information can be found on the Enterprise Ireland website: globalambition.ie/digital.

John Durcan is a senior digital transformation specialist in Enterprise Ireland and is responsible for developing and implementing new digital strategies for companies.

If you missed John talking about ‘Harnessing digital from a legal perspective', you can watch it here and see presentation materials here.

Justin Purcell is the Law Society’s practice support executive.