Ireland cannot afford to rest on its digital laurels

Ireland has been a digital kingpin for some years now, attracting massive inward investment from the world’s technology giants. That status has become a cornerstone of our success as a modern, thriving European nation. It is in danger, though, not because the multinational giants are about to pull out but because home-grown Irish digital industry – the smaller companies that incubate and inculcate the talent we need – will struggle.

Bobby Idogho knows this better than anyone. Nigerian-born but raised in Dundalk, Idogho left a career at Deloitte to set up Radically Digital, a smaller but far more agile company that has already become a big success. But he sees problems ahead for Ireland unless we knuckle down and address underlying issues which are driving talented people overseas.

“I would say, of the friends I went to Trinity with, around 85 per cent are now based in London,” Idogho tells Business Ireland. “That’s a huge percentage, considering it’s an Irish university. Very few friends that I have had in a professional capacity are still in Ireland right now.”

That’s an assertion that flies somewhat in the face of theories that the horror of Brexit would cause a brain-drain on the UK economy, especially the London-centric tech economy. If Idogho is right, then that drain is running the other way. So, what is causing it?

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“It’s down to the opportunities, the support and even, to an extent, the ease of doing business,” he says. “The rest of the UK suffers from similar challenges, really, but in London at least you have a huge client pool, a huge talent pool and high wages, and the cost of living is about the same as it is in Dublin now. Everything’s so expensive now that it’s hard for a young professional to have that nice quality of life in Dublin any more.”

Idogho’s view is that, although overseas companies will continue to invest and open headquarters in Ireland, fewer local businesses are likely to break through – “unless something drastically changes”.

“There have only been a handful of real success stories in the past few years and a lot of those founders have themselves moved to Dublin,” he says. “If Ireland really wants to compete on the world stage I feel like they’re going to have to think about how better to support the Irish businesses that are coming up.”

Based in London himself these days, Idogho is that rarity of someone who left a highly paid job with a big multinational to set up his own firm, frustrated by what he saw as the limitations of working in a larger organisation.

Local digital transformation

That company – Radically Digital – has grown rapidly and now counts the likes of OVO, Just Eat and The Restaurant Group among its clients. The secret to success, says Idogho, is to think of the move into the digital sphere as more than just a bolt-on to a company’s existing work.

“I think the challenge is that most companies generally approach this transformation in one of two ways. They either approach it from a ‘Let’s go to the lowest-cost way we can do this’ – bring in an offshore team, tell them to build something – a website, an app – and they go off and build it.”

That cost-cutting approach, says Idogho, is where companies can fall down. His business comes into contact with many of its clients “after they’ve had an offshore team that has wasted loads of money and then they need someone to come in and actually fix it and get it right”, he says.

A lot of firms have this “false-economy” mindset “because they might be spending €200 a day and a company like Radically Digital might be €700 a day”, he says. “But they’re getting better value for money because that €200 a day might take you eight to 12 months to get what you want delivered – and the wrong thing comes out the other end, where it’s not really future ready or future proofed.

“So even though we might cost €700 a day, we can get the job done in three months – and you’ve had no headaches, you’ve had better service and we’ve looked at your people and wider processes as part of that as well.”

The second way in which companies tend to approach the move to digital, in Idogho’s experience, is to focus predominantly on the new technology – a pitfall that is almost certain to lead to failure, he believes.

“The company just sees it as a shiny new piece of tech, which looks good for customers,” he says. “But if, say, your call centres aren’t prepared and able to back that up or if your management team doesn’t really understand the value of it, then probably the business itself operates in a very ‘legacy’ and archaic way where it’s not quite agile enough nor responsive to changing consumer requirements.”

We want to have a culture where you’re doing exciting work and it’s still fast paced but it’s not stuffy suits and ties. It’s not unnecessary meetings or compliance or process for the sake of process

—  Bobby Idogho

Idogho’s way is to look at the company as a whole, not just its digital requirements. “We try to focus on the end-to-end – people; process; tech. We offer strategic guidance and our people cannot just look at what you’re asking them to do but actually challenge you and what you think you want, and get you to where you actually need to be.”

Idogho is also at the forefront of trying to create a more holistic, friendly face for technology companies. Not for him the Elon Musk demands to work, eat and sleep at your desk. There’s hard work to be done, of course, but Idogho recognises the need for work-life balance and for making sure that those with different needs and abilities can be slotted into the corporate structure.

A modern work culture

“We want to have a culture where you’re doing exciting work and it’s still fast paced, and you have the variety – but it’s not stuffy suits and ties. It’s not unnecessary meetings or compliance or process for the sake of process. We didn’t set quotas for this many women to join the company or this number of LGBTQI staff. But it was about building a culture where people can bring their whole selves to work and their authentic selves to work, and not feel judged and not feel restricted from being able to deliver exceptional client service.

“So, we’ve kind of organically built this structure where diversity is encouraged. It’s welcomed and it’s seen as something exciting rather than something scary or different.”

That welcoming of diversity is reflected in Radically Digital’s staff numbers. BAME staff make up 50 per cent of the workforce, against an industry average of 14 per cent; women, 42 per cent, the industry average being 20 per cent.

It’s not just about ethnic or gender diversity either; neurodivergency figures too. “So we have people who are on the spectrum, people with dyslexia, and we don’t make people flag that up unless they’re comfortable to,” says Idogho. “But there is this wide spectrum of neurodivergence across the company and where someone does feel that they can flag that up, we’ll work with them to accommodate as much as possible. It’s never been something that actually impacts the way people work.”

Clearly, Radically Digital’s performance in hiring people from black and other minority backgrounds is a source of pride for Idogho. Growing up in the 1990s in Dundalk cannot have been easy for a family from Nigeria but Idogho seems to have turned any difficulty into a springboard for success.

“I think we arrived at a relatively early point when people were moving to Ireland. So there was a level of curiosity as well as a level of ignorance – and, indeed, a level of excitement at some levels” says Idogho.

“In the working environments then, there wasn’t much in the way of multiculturalism. I still remember this afternoon where my sister was on her way back from secondary school and someone had shouted something racist like, you know, ‘Go back home’ or the usual stuff. My mum sat me down – I was probably seven or eight at the time – and just explained that to be successful, as successful as your white friends, or to be recognised in the same way, you will always have to work twice as hard. I still remember the exact moment, thinking this: ‘Okay, I’ll work twice as hard.”

Having to work twice as hard as your peers is not necessarily fair, Idogho concedes, though he points out that “life isn’t fair”.

“Carry on and plough through regardless is a business mentality that I’ve kept throughout my career,” he says. “To the point now where I don’t see myself as a black entrepreneur; I see myself as an entrepreneur who happens to be black, which is a very subtle but important mindset shift.

“Because when I walk into a room, I’m not asking, ‘Do I belong in this room?’ Or ‘Is there room for me in this room?’ I’m just walking into the room and thinking ‘Is anyone here worth my time?’ Which is a very different way of viewing things. It’s like, okay, I’m here to do a job. I know what I’m talking about.”