Siemens and IRDG: driving digital transformation

At ‘Driving your Digital Transformation’, a gathering of international and local experts gave their views on how Digitalisation is bringing Irish businesses new and exciting opportunities.

The general consensus was, that as our world becomes more connected, we are generating massive amounts of data from connected devices. The challenge is, to create real value from that data.

A number of experts outlined the roles of machine learning, sensors, cloud computing, apps, APIs, augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and of course, better cyber security.

Opening the conference, Siemens Ireland CEO Gary O'Callaghan outlined how there are three recurring barriers on the route to digitalisation: understanding the technologies that are available, addressing concerns about digital skills gap within an organisation, and how to build and evaluate the investment case around new business models.

“We are living in a VUCA world,” he said. “It is Volatile, Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous. Despite this the digitalisation of Ireland’s industrial landscape presents a window of opportunity for boosting competitiveness by increasing productivity”.

“Irish businesses must look at their hierarchies, their decision processes, their risk appetite and their speed and agility in decision making. They must also encourage innovation and adaptability,” he added.

Event co-host, IRDG managing director Denis Hayes said that digital technology is a key enabler of innovation across all society. "It is highly relevant and highly connected with innovation," he adds. He also noted that there had been a lot of hype around digital transformation. In this context, he offered a useful definition of what it actually means.

“The profound transformation of business and organisational activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society in a strategic and prioritised way, with present and future shifts in mind.”

"Digital is people" was the central message delivered by Alessandro Rimassa, co-founder of the Talent Garden Innovation School. Talent Garden is a coworking network for a selected community of digital innovators.

He stressed the people-centred nature of the solution, however. “Digital transformation is putting people at the core,” he said. “It is about using technology to create a better experience for people and doing it in a smarter way. It means a better experience for customers and more money for the company. But it has to be a human-centred solution. Digital transformation is not just about technology. It also changes values, in companies and society.”

During the Conference the 200 attendees had the opportunity to learn about state-of-the-art technologies to digitalise their operations, to discuss how the digital ecosystem needs to be connected at speed if benefits are to be maximised and to explore case studies and approaches to developing new business revenue generating models.