Powering a connected world with innovative technologies

Anne Sheehan, enterprise director of Vodafone Ireland, says a key lesson from the recent downturn is that businesses need to be more flexible and agile, and they need to keep their cost bases low.

“All businesses today are operating in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive environment,” Sheehan says. “But we all have one objective: profitability. The question is how to achieve this in challenging business conditions, and part of the answer is connectivity.”

According to Sheehan this connectivity can be broken down into three areas: connected people, connected things and connected customers.

“When we think about connected people, we need to also reflect on the cultural environment of the workplace.”

“Is your workplace attractive to new talent and graduates who have been immersed in technology, social media and the internet most of their lives? Are our organisations ready culturally and from a technological perspective to manage their significantly different way of viewing the world and how we do business?”

Sheehan says that developing technological trends, such as the use of smartphones and social media, have forced businesses to become more flexible, more adaptable and, most importantly, more connected across multiple levels.

“This has given many companies the scope to best serve the needs of both their employees and their customers.”

Research commissioned by Vodafone supports her view. Sixty per cent of senior business people across 80 countries believe that flexible working and enterprise mobility is cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and allows businesses to be profitable, but not at the expense of its workforce. In addition, 70 per cent of Irish businesses are embracing new technology where it can add value.

“There is a new understanding that doing long hours in the office is no longer the key to maximum productivity and profitability,” Sheehan says. “Efficiency depends on instant access to information, seamless communication with colleagues and customers.

“Businesses that connect their people effectively to the office, and to the resources that they need with smart mobile technologies, are profiting from approximately five additional hours of productive employee time per week. And they are creating a better quality of life for their employees.”

Leverage

Sheehan cites Sherry Fitzgerald and Dawn Meats as Irish companies that are leveraging innovative technology to enhance their own productivity and profitability.

“The nature of the real estate sector means that Sherry Fitzgerald’s employees spend a lot of time out of the office”, she say. “Previously, this would have meant that it took longer for important work to be done and that it was necessary for employees to travel back and forth to the office just to fill out paperwork or attend meetings. Their employees lost two hours in travel time which led to a loss in productivity. Simply by providing their people with the right technological tools, such as smartphones, tablets and the right software, updates can be completed on the run.

“Sherry Fitzgerald has transformed the way its business operates and, as a result, has increased productivity and made life better for its people.”

Similarly, Dawn Meats, one of Ireland’s largest indigenous food companies, now uses advanced telecommunications solutions to improve operations. Dawn’s staff can securely access all its core technology applications while on the move.

“They use video conferencing to connect their sites across Europe, for example,” Sheehan says. “This has been facilitated by Vodafone’s rollout of 4G in the southeast. This has enabled high speed connectivity between the company’s plants and employees working remotely.

“It sounds simple. It’s just connecting people, but having a mobility strategy for their business coupled with high-speed connectivity and the right technology has transformed both these organisations and the lives of their employees.”

Connections

Connecting things is almost as important as connecting people in this new world.

“The ‘internet of things’ is a phrase that is being increasingly used to describe how more and more businesses and corporations are embracing the idea of connecting devices,” Sheehan says. She adds that machine to machine (M2M) technology is an interesting innovation in this regard.

“A great example of it is Dublin Bus and the digital signs at the stops. The buses communicate over our mobile network using mobile phone SIM cards in real-time in order to display on the bus stop’s digital sign when it is due to arrive.”

She points to the scalability of the technology as one of its great advantages.

“Vodafone has been investing on a global scale through network development and world-wide acquisitions to enable this technology. This allows local Irish companies, regardless of size, to use this technology to export their products across the globe with built-in real-time connectivity.”

As an example, she describes Richard Keenan & Company in Borris, Co Carlow. Keenan supplies livestock feeding solutions to farmers around the world.

“The Keenan team identifies the appropriate diet for each herd and, by using Vodafone’s M2M platform to connect to each Keenan Feeder Wagon, communicates it in real time to their customers. This enhances Keenan’s relationship with their customer, and moves them from being a hardware provider to offering value- added services. “

Consumer connectivity is the other element, Sheehan says.

“Consumers now have higher expectations – they expect better service at a lower cost, but they also expect information and services instantly. Ireland is one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in Europe, and online sales here are forecast to reach €5.5 billion this year.

“Furthermore, a recent study that analysed 56 million visits to websites in the Irish retail and travel sectors found that smartphones and tablets currently account for 43 per cent of the traffic. Businesses that are not online will be unable to tap into this growing consumer base.”