Kitman Labs wins with Leinster Rugby, Everton FC, and now Japan

Kitman Labs wins in Europe, US and now Japan

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Supporting the Irish team driving some of Japan’s biggest sports teams.

Kitman Labs is the leading performance and health analytics provider to the global sports industry.

The Irish sportstech company was established in 2012 by Stephen Smith, former injury rehabilitation and conditioning coach for Leinster Rugby. Its software has fundamentally changed how the industry uses data to increase its chances of sporting success.

When Smith began working with Leinster Rugby, he inherited a system in which training information, game information and medical information were all managed separately.

Developments in data science inspired Smith to build a performance and data analytics system that combined all three, with a view to increasing athlete availability and boosting team performance.

 

Focus on innovation enabled Kitman Labs to scale around the world

Until Kitman Labs launched in 2014, no other system merged performance data with medical information, in order to unlock fresh insights. “We’re very focused on innovation,” he explains.

The system’s success has enabled the company to grow and scale internationally. In 2014, it signed its first customer, UK football club Everton.

Success there saw Smith move to the US to raise investment to fund further growth. It signed its first US contract the following year. “Today we have 250 teams across all sports, from Mixed Martial Arts to soccer, rugby and baseball,” says Smith.

Kitman Labs’ product is translated into 29 languages and sells across all five continents. “Our marketplace is still fragmented, insofar as a number of companies collect athletes’ data, and some provide either performance analytics or medical information, but no one combines all three. We see huge opportunities in front of us across the insurance, corporate health and digital health sectors too,” says Smith.

The company has offices in Dublin, Silicon Valley and Sydney and is active in 41 global sporting leagues. These include the English Premier League, the Bundesliga, Premiership Rugby and National Football League.

 

How Kitman Labs got big in Japan

It also has a presence in Japanese rugby’s Top League. One of its newest client acquisitions on this front is elite Japanese rugby team NTT DoCoMo Red Hurricanes, based in Osaka. It selected the Kitman Labs Athlete Optimisation System to enhance its performance and medical programmes.

Kitman has a number of clients in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, New Zealand and China.

“We entered Japan via initial interest from Toyota Verblitz, a professional rugby team in Japan’s Top League, who had seen Kitman Labs coverage in the media and made contact with us.”

In 2018, Smith travelled to Japan to speak at the Sports Tech Tokyo conference. “We used it as a test bed for the market and began an outreach programme on the back of it, to get some initial conversations started. Out of that we got two new deals, with NTT DoCoMo, and the Yokohama BayStars, a professional baseball team.”

 

Learning to do business in Japan

The business culture in Japan is different to that in other markets. “There are a lot of formalities and structure to meetings, for example, and the hierarchy in organisations is very different,” says Smith.

Enterprise Ireland’s Japan team is on hand to support Irish companies interested in stepping into the market and emulating Kitman Labs’ success.

Smith describes his experience: “Enterprise Ireland has been of even more help to us because Japan is so different. Their team has helped us with translation services and organised for us to have translators present at meetings. They have helped us by, not just setting up events, but getting the right people in the room.”

Support also helped Kitman Labs to gain a deep understanding of the business culture. “We could probably have set up meetings ourselves but if you don’t understand the nuances, you could burn those opportunities just as quickly as you make them,” he says.

“They also helped us to understand what kind of follow-up is required after a meeting, by explaining what level of detail is required in that follow up. That has been a game changer for us and one of the reasons we have managed to grow quite quickly there.”

Japan will be an extremely significant market for Kitman Labs in the future, Smith says.

“For a start, it has some of the largest corporate names in the world, and corporate health is a growing area of opportunity for us. Japan is unique, in that all its major teams are owned by corporates, so no other country offers that same level of opportunity in terms of corporate health for us.”

 

Using edtech to prepare businesses and students for impacts of AI and more

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Jason Dineen, educational technologist at the UCD Innovation Academy, shared his insights at Enterprise Ireland and The Learning Forum’s conference: Impacts and Future Trends in the EdTech and Corporate Learning Landscapes.

Due to the increasing pace of technological change, a sense of what the work environment will look like in five years is mostly unclear to students now entering higher education. To help build that picture, educators from the UCD Innovation Academy collaborate with businesses to explore evolving trends and to use leading edge technologies to ensure students are as prepared as possible.

 

Role of AI and automation

The impact of trends such as AI, automation and other new technologies, means that workplaces and roles around the world are changing quickly, creating challenges for students, educators, employees, and employers.

Jason described how The Innovation Academy helps businesses to adapt within this environment: “We mostly meet small and medium enterprises – companies that aren’t sure how to define a role that they will need in two years’ time. It’s difficult to create a job description when you don’t know what you will need. Our students and staff at the Innovation Academy consult businesses on what they should be looking for and to understand their concerns and views about the future.”

He highlighted that graduates must develop a range of soft skills, such as complex problem solving, critical thinking, and team work. Having one core skill that you are highly competent at is no longer enough.

Among students, Jason indicated there can be a fear of AI. The task for businesses and educators is to demonstrate how AI will improve the workplace of the future: “That’s why we show students the technology as they study with us, allowing them to see how it helps to minimise repetitive tasks we don’t need to do anymore.”

The Innovation Academy’s social humanoid robot, Pepper (by SoftBank Robotics), was on display at the conference. Students are given the opportunity to programme Pepper “to give them the chance to see how they can use AI to undertake tasks”, Jason explained.

 

How businesses can attract and retain talent in the new world of work

In order to attract and retain talent, businesses will be required to become more flexible with practices such as remote working, Jason predicted. What attracts candidates to jobs is no longer just a salary. With many applicants prioritising their ability to enjoy their job, companies should allow work to complement employee interests: “If your employees have a genuine interest in something, they will do very good things for your business, and they will be loyal to you.”

The task for employees in this new landscape is to ensure they are upskilling to adopt technologies with confidence.

Jason advised that career-long learning is vital to employee fulfilment: “Employees are not going to come into a job after doing a four-year college degree and think that’s it for the next 40 years. They now want to upskill constantly – to learn new skills and see how they can adapt for what’s coming down the tracks in terms of technology.”

Agile support allows LaserTec KnightOwl to take flight

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Basil Cooney, Lasertec

“We made the application for the Agile fund in early December of 2017, we got approved by early January and we were up and running in February.”

Basil Cooney, Managing Director and Founder, LaserTec.

Key Takeouts:

  • Developing 3D technology meant breaking new ground for LaserTec and required a considerable amount of R&D. LaserTec contacted Enterprise Ireland about support for an R&D project around their plans and were advised to apply for the Agile Innovation Fund.
  • The Agile Innovation Fund application process made it much easier and quicker to configure what LaserTec needed and to get approval in a short time frame.
  • The new product has given LaserTec the ability to scale and solve multiple problems across multiple industries.

Case Study: LaserTec

LaserTec has always fostered a culture of innovation. Over 25 years in business, the Dublin engineering company has built an impressive reputation for excellence in electronic assembly tooling and process development. In particular, LaserTec has enjoyed outstanding success designing and manufacturing innovative test and automation solutions in the medical device and automotive industries.

Sometimes, however, it takes that little bit of extra support for a company to take the next big step. For LaserTec, that moment came when they decided to look into adding 3D capability to their services.

 

Focus on 3D gave LaserTec the power to scale

Basil Cooney, Managing Director and Founder of LaserTec, explains: “We use 2D vision in our applications for testing and quality checking components and parts on the production lines of our customers, but we wanted to start looking at adding that extra dimension of 3D capability.

“With 2D systems, you’re restricted in what you can measure – there’s X and Y but there’s no depth, so checking that certain components are in the right location, have the correct orientation, correct height is difficult to do. Also, our solutions are application-specific, so if you want to look at a different product or solve a different problem, you’re almost starting from scratch nearly every time because of the limitations of 2D.

“Scanning in 3D, having that extra dimension of depth, might not sound like that big a difference but it’s huge. It can measure depth and do different applications for you without having to devise a new solution for each process.”

 

Agile Innovation Fund helped LaserTec to break new ground

LaserTecHowever, developing 3D technology would mean breaking new ground for LaserTec and would require a considerable amount of R&D.

“We spent a year and a half just researching and looking at the different applications and the types of technology involved before we were able to say it’s possible for us to bring these applications across to our processes,” Basil says.

LaserTec decided that they would need to develop both hardware and software: a 3D sensor that could be incorporated into manufacturing production lines, and an app for mobile devices that could process and relay the information from the sensor.

This would mean a considerable investment, so LaserTec contacted Enterprise Ireland about support for an R&D project around their plans and were advised to apply for the Agile Innovation Fund.

The Agile Innovation Fund offers up to 50% funding to a maximum of €150,000 in grant aid for projects with a total cost of up to €300,000. Designed to make it easier and quicker for smaller companies to access R&D funding, Agile has a fast turnaround time for applications that results in decisions being made in weeks rather than months.

 

From application to project launch in two months

“We made the application for the Agile Fund in early December of 2017, we got approved by early January and we were up and running in February. The application process made it much easier and quicker to configure what we wanted to get done and get approval in a short time frame.” Basil says.

 

“We received €90,000 – 45% funding for our project. It allowed us to go and hire resources, additional staff, to develop the product. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without Agile”

Basil Cooney, Managing Director and Founder, LaserTec

 

Developing the power to scale

John Traynor, R&D Director at LaserTec, says that the goal for LaserTec is for the company to develop a product which, for the first time, can be scaled.

“Technically, we’re very good at LaserTec but our problem was that we were doing a lot of custom solutions that couldn’t be scaled easily. There was a lot of commonality but not enough that you could really scale them.

“Now we’re designing a product for a wider audience, one that can be used for many applications across a number of industries. Instead of developing a product to solve a specific problem for a customer, we will be putting intelligence into their machines and production processes with this technology, so that it can solve multiple problems across multiple industries.”

“You’ll have the 3D sensor and you’ll use the app to tell it what to look for, and it will do just that. But that same sensor and same software algorithm can then be used very differently to scan, measure and provide guidance on a variety of other parts.

The next step for LaserTec is to start testing their new technology, named KnightOwl 3D, with customers.

John adds: “We’ve identified the market, done the research and have been developing the technology. The next stage will be to prove the technology, to engage with customers and get good insight into what their problems are and how we can solve those problems.

“You can sit in an R&D lab until the cows come home but unless you’re out there talking with customers, you’re not really getting real insight into the problems they’re facing.”

After 25 years, the desire to innovate and solve problems still burns brightly at LaserTec.

 

Learn how the Agile Innovation Fund can support your R&D ambitions.

Firefly puts best foot forward with Agile R&D funding

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“Without the Agile Innovation Fund, we just wouldn’t have had the capital to get the ball rolling on our R&D project. The funding has been central to streamlining our in-house processes and developing the app.”

Conor Lynch, Marketing and Sales Lead, Firefly Orthoses

Key Takeouts:

  • Firefly needed to streamline in-house processes and systems and invest in the development of new technology that would increase the speed and range of products they could supply.
  • Firefly recognised that support could help improve efficiencies and turnaround times by digitizing processes with the development of a bespoke solution.
  • Support from Enterprise Ireland’s Agile Innovation Fund is helping Firefly to reduce its reliance on third-party contract manufacturers, allowing the company to grow their margins while delivering faster turnaround times to customers.

Case Study: Firefly Orthoses

While success is what all companies strive for, it can also present challenges for a growing business. That was the case for Sligo company Firefly Orthoses, who, after 16 years had grown to employ over 20 people, designing, manufacturing and supplying custom-made foot orthoses. Its range of mostly UK customers included podiatrists, the NHS, sports clubs such as Liverpool FC and Chelsea FC, and British military Regional Rehabilitation Units.

Firefly was founded by podiatrist Martin McGeough in 2003. Martin has close to 30 years’ experience in clinical biomechanics and orthotic therapy. During his career, he has provided podiatric advice to a number of Premier League football teams, in addition to lecturing in podiatry at Trinity College Dublin and mentoring podiatrists internationally.

Firefly needed to invest time and resources to improve their internal ordering processes. The company also wanted to develop new technology that would increase the speed and range of products they could supply.

 

Agile innovation allowed Firefly Orthoses to leverage the potential of 3D printing technology

Conor Lynch, Marketing and Sales Lead at Firefly Orthoses, explains: “The company had grown since it was founded around 2007 and we were solving in-house problems as they came along. We had a lot of short-term fixes building on top of one another. Our in-house order processing system was becoming quite complicated and we were working off multiple spreadsheets to record and document all our order processes. As staff numbers increased, these systems became almost unmanageable, so we needed a software solution to streamline all our in-house processes and systems.

“We also wanted to harness the development of 3D printing technology for our customers, including creating an iPad app for our podiatrist customers to make it easier for them to scan and submit measurements and order products.

“Currently, our customers capture their patient’s data, the shape of the foot, by creating a plaster of Paris cast or using a foam box. The podiatrist would then send the cast of the patient’s foot or the foam box with the impression of the foot and we would manufacture the products from that model.

“Our products are already an exact match for the anatomy of each client, but there is tremendous scope for improving efficiencies and turnaround times by digitizing the whole process. We knew there were solutions out there and we also knew that we needed to research and develop a bespoke solution for our own needs.”

 

Support from Enterprise Ireland’s Agile Innovation Fund

Firefly looked at various grant schemes from different organisations before deciding to apply to Enterprise Ireland’s Agile Innovation Fund for support for their R&D programme in January 2018.

The Agile Innovation Fund offers up to 50% funding to a maximum of €150,000 in grant aid for projects with a total cost of up to €300,000. Firefly was approved for 45% funding shortly after applying in January 2018. However, the quick turnaround of their application wasn’t they only advantage of Agile.

“Enterprise Ireland was able to tell us what was and wasn’t going to work in terms of the criteria for funding the project,” Conor explains. “We knew what we wanted to achieve, we knew what goals we wanted to arrive at, but we weren’t quite sure of the steps that we needed to take to get there, so having that support during the application process was really helpful.

“Agile gave us a huge amount of control over how we wanted to spend the grant. We were able to hire a software developer and a research and development manager to lead the project. It made the pathway towards achieving our goals much clearer.

Firefly is now beta testing their app and 3D printing prototypes. The final step will be bringing their products to full 3D printer manufacturing and the company is in discussions with large industrial 3D printing operations throughout Europe to find the most suitable partner.

Firefly’s customer base is 90% in the UK and 7% in Ireland, with the remainder being occasional orders from places like Sweden or Spain. However, many of Firefly’s products have an extended turnaround time because they come from third-party contract manufacturers in Canada and the US. Conor says that this will change by moving to 3D printing, with significant benefits for both Firefly and its customers.

He comments: “Agile funding is helping us achieve the goal of producing our own products and reducing our reliance on third-party contract manufacturers. This will allow us to grow our margins, while our customers will benefit from faster turnaround times. Before the end of the year we would hope to be printing products for customers

“Over time, we also intend to develop novel design features within our product range that are not currently achievable using traditional manufacturing processes.

“Without the Agile Innovation Fund, we just wouldn’t have had the capital to get the ball rolling on our R&D project. The funding has been central to streamlining our in-house processes and developing the app.”

 

Learn how the Agile Innovation Fund can support your R&D ambitions.

Webio puts IP at the heart of the design process

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“Every day as a start-up, there is something out there that can kill you.” Paul Sweeney, EVP Product at Webio.

It’s clear that Sweeney does not take the success of his firm Webio for granted. He’s under no illusion that every day is a competition – and every day to come will be a competition. It’s pretty much the life of the start-up.

In the fast-paced world of software development, where product cycles are increasingly shorter and market disruption is a given, a business with a bright idea needs all the support it can get to future-proof growth.

 

How Webio protects its big ideas

The Irish software firm Webio, which specialises in automating messaging, chatbot and voice interactions between companies and their customers, relies on very smart AI and machine learning at the heart of its product. Organisations use its ‘conversational middleware’ solution to process the host of customer enquiries that have migrated to messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Messenger. Companies that have adopted it have seen costly contact centre phone calls decrease and payment and collection rates increase, so it’s no surprise that Webio’s code is in demand.

It’s a big idea – and one that’s worth protecting. The automated SMS market alone is worth €60 billion annually and the market for chatbots and automated voice command CRM such as Alexa is “silly numbers”, says Sweeney. As a result, the firm placed the utmost value on the protection of its code – its intellectual property – at the heart of its design and business process.

Sweeney, Webio’s EVP Product, said the company started early with protecting its intangible assets starting early on with its branding, the first and most visible part of a company’s intangible value.

“As part of your Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategy, having a really tight brand strategy is underrated. And when you’ve got a tight brand you can push through some of the noise,” he said.

It helped the company to frame what to trademark and copyright. To further push their visibility and brand strategy they started their sector-specific ConverCon – the Conversational Interface Conference strand, even though the company was in its infancy.

But with one of the core goals to make their software ‘white label’ for use at scale, they had to carefully think about protecting the core part of their IPR.

Webio turned to Enterprise Ireland which has several supports in place to encourage SMEs to address IPR culture within their organisation such as the IP Start Grant and IP Plus Grant.

“When you look at many of the technologies today getting to market you can build on many other different softwares. What the IP Start programme helped us do was focus very specifically on the key aspects of our software that were going to make a difference in the long run and that were going to be IPR defensible positions,” said Sweeney.

“So we used that programme to identify one core thing that we did that was important and once we had that focus, we concentrated on how that bit impacted the rest of our platform and concentrated on being really good at that bit.”

This would allow the firm to make the right call on whether to move from retaining the piece of IP as a trade secret or moving into registration of a patent, he added.

 

IP underpins company growth

It’s a move which, according to new research, is likely to aid the firm’s growth. A new joint study from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), found that SMEs that applied for patents, trademarks or designs early on were more likely to experience high growth compared to those that did not.

The study showed that SMEs with at least one IP right are 21% more likely to experience a growth period and 10% more likely to become a high-growth firm (HGF), compared to those without IP rights. Furthermore, firms with EU-level IP rights, as opposed to national level, are even more likely (17%) to become an HGF.

Sweeney added ‘‘What this programme has helped us to do is focus in on one particular area and understand that on that vector lies IPR potential. And if you concentrate on it, it could turn into either a trade secret – which you’re happy to keep under the hood – or be something that you’re willing to describe and put into a patent.

“As a result, we’ve identified that we can go down either path – and we know now how to cascade that to other parts of the software to make our company more valuable.”

It’s a path that has required management team buy-in from the get-go.

“Make no mistake. Management time is the most expensive time to spend. This is a non-trivial process that requires a lot of knowledge. But at the end of it, we, as a company, had a very clear understanding of our IPR.

“And its value”, added Sweeney.

 

Learn more about the innovation supports available from Enterprise Ireland.

p3 hotels CEO

Agile Innovation funding helped p3 Hotels to develop a core product that is scalable

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Phelim Pekaar

“We found it simpler than the R&D to apply, and the approval came faster as well.”

Phelim Pekaar, CEO, p3 Hotels

Key Takeouts:

  • Support from Enterprise Ireland’s Agile Innovation Fund enabled p3 Hotels to develop a scalable product that could be rolled out to multiple customers.
  • Approval allowed them to allocate the full €100,000 project cost, with €50,000 provided by the Agile Innovation Fund and €50,000 by p3 Hotels.
  • Investment in innovation has helped p3 Hotels to grow revenues from €700,000 between 2008-2016 to a projected €1.2m this year.

Case Study: P3 Hotels

 

Securing a contract to develop innovative booking engine integrated with the property management software for Ireland’s largest hotel group was just the opportunity p3 Hotels CEO Phelim Pekaar had been looking for.

After years of successfully supplying hotel groups with custom-designed ecommerce software solutions, Phelim wanted to develop a scalable product that p3 Hotels could roll out to multiple customers. However, it would take significant resources to research, develop and test such a product.

Phelim explains: “We came to Dalata [Hotel Group] with a design of how we thought the booking engine should really look. It was a fresh design for the user interface and we also pitched the idea of online check-in. The response was really positive – they loved the online check-in and we won the contract.”

p3 Hotels decided to build the software solution and sell it to Dalata on a license fee basis, as opposed to being paid a project fee, which also meant that p3 Hotels would have to fund the development costs.

 

Simpler and faster Agile Innovation application process

Phelim spoke to Enterprise Ireland about research and development support. “We had done an R&D grant and a business improvement grant with Enterprise Ireland before and this time I was advised to do the Agile Innovation Grant,” he says. “We found it simpler than the R&D to apply, and the approval came faster as well.

“It meant that we were able to allocate the full €100,000 that this was going to cost us to build – €50,000 from p3 Hotels and €50,000 from the Agile Innovation Fund.

Apply for the Agile Innovation Fund now.

“We were able to do the project properly; we didn’t have to cut corners. We had six people involved in the project, we did user testing, we designed the screens, we talked to four hotels about how they did the check-in process.

“Our ecommerce solutions for hotel groups have to communicate with a central reservation system called Opera, which is owned by Oracle. We got the engineer from Opera over to our office for two days and we went through all the APIs of how this works.

“The product went live in two Dalata properties last July and has since been rolled out to another 24 hotels.”

The Agile Innovation Fund offers up to 50% funding to a maximum of €150,000 in grant aid for projects with a total cost of up to €300,000. It is designed to make it easier and quicker for smaller companies to access research, development and innovation funding. Agile’s main feature is its fast turnaround time, with an application process that results in decisions in a few weeks rather than several months.

The innovative approach p3 Hotels took carried an element of uncertainty. However, it wasn’t the first time that the company had shown the courage to do things differently. Since 2009, p3 Hotels hadn’t gone after any new business that was not a hotel but had maintained existing contracts with customers in other sectors. By 2016, these contracts still accounted for almost 30% of their revenue but Phelim took the tough decision to end all non-hotel contracts in order to focus exclusively on winning customers in that sector.

He says: “That was really hard – it was a big risk – but it was absolutely the right decision because before the money stopped coming in from our last non-hotel contract, we had already replaced it with a new large hotel group, Britannia Hotels.

“It’s serendipitous, isn’t it? The minute you let something go, your focus is different, and you allow new opportunities to come along. In the next two years we won five new hotel groups, doubling the number that we had.” says Pekaar.

The approach p3 Hotels has taken to achieving growth through innovation is paying off. The company’s revenue, which flatlined at €600,000 to €700,000 from 2008-2016, is projected to reach €1.2m this year.

The support of the Agile Innovation Fund has been instrumental in this growth. Phelim says: “Agile helped us turn our whole development process on its head. It provided the resources that meant we could develop a core software product that is scalable – one that can be rolled out to new customers. Previously, our work was all custom-built for individual customers.”

“We now have a very aggressive growth plan to target hotel groups in the UK, Europe, and the US. Oracle is now recommending us because of the value we bring to their Opera system. I would say that we were instrumental in Dalata rolling out Opera throughout all their hotels. We’ve also been instrumental in a number of other hotels staying with Opera when they go to a retainer process. Our hotel clients know that if they move away from Opera, they lose us – and we add so much value to the rest of their business.”

Apply for the Agile Innovation Fund now.

Hong Kong

How Irish companies can leverage fintech disruption in Asia Pacific

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Digital disruption in Asia Pacific offers opportunity for Irish fintechs. The Asia Pacific region is leading the way when it comes to the use of financial technology innovations. For Irish fintechs, opportunities abound, suggested Felimy Greene, former digital officer Asia and EMEA at Citi.

Social platforms are disrupting banking in Asia Pacific

Speaking about digital disruption in the world’s most dynamic region for Ambition Asia Pacific, a major conference organised by Enterprise Ireland, Greene described how social networking platforms are leading the charge when it comes to disrupting the banking sector in Asia.

Korean messaging application Kakao, which the average Korean person is using for 14 hours a month for daily communication, is a primary case in point, he said. In 2017, it launched a highly anticipated digital-only bank, which provided a “real shock to the banks in the country and an eye opener for the banks around the region,” he said. Within 24 hours of the launch of Kakaobank, a quarter of a million people had opened an account.  By the end of the first month, that number was three million. “All of it digitally without a single branch, and with a very novel and fun approach to the user experience,” said Green.

The trend in Asia is clear.

“Consumers love the super apps” such as WeChat, Grab, GoJek and Line, all of which started variously as social media messaging or ride sharing apps in the region but segued into payments, “and so do the investors that are financing them,” he said.

“These apps are going to have a huge impact on many industries, not just banking, across Asia and this model is something you can start to see being replicated in Europe and in the rest of the world.”

 

Paytech innovations in China

China is already home to what is “probably the scariest vision of the future possible for a banker,” he said, given how success platforms such as Alipay and WeChat are achieving in China, where they are already moving beyond payments into areas such as investments and insurance.

“It’s staggering to see what they’re doing, the ease with which they’re doing it and the efficiency – using custom-built cloud-based technology.”

Massive disruption around payments has already taken place across the region. Among the most prominent features to emerge is the use of QR codes and phone camera for payments, which allows many Asians to go through their entire day without ever needing cash, or indeed cards.

“This is turning some of the fundamentals of banking upside down,” he said, not least for bank branches that have become redundant right across Asia Pacific.

“The incumbent banks have a lot to do to optimise their footprint and get out of the business of physical business. In many cases, branches are only necessary for face-to-face meetings to open an account but regulators are now starting to move quite quickly to recognise the opportunity for financial inclusion (which these new platforms offer) and so are changing the laws, changing the rules.” The result is that, increasingly, face-to-face meetings are no longer required at all.

“The advantage is going to the digital disruptors and the banks are really scrambling to catch up,” said Green.

 

Regulators helping to drive change in Singapore and Hong Kong

Locations such as Singapore and Hong Kong are leading the trend, where regulators are helping to drive change. The monetary authorities of both have launched significant initiatives and compete with one another on this front, driving change, he said.

“Singapore went very big early on and introduced legislation around sandboxing to enable banks to experiment, and to use cloud, for example, which was forbidden in most countries as little as three four years ago.”

Its fintech festival now draws 45,000 people from around the world every year and is recognised as the largest and one of the most influential of its kind.

Hong Kong’s fintech event is starting to get similar scale, with about 15,000 people attending last year.

“Everyone in Asia is coming to these events. It’s a fantastic opportunity to network, to recruit talent and just to feel out the market, I’d highly recommended it,” said Greene, who lives in Singapore.

 

Financial inclusion driving fintech in Asia Pacific

Financial inclusion is one of the biggest drivers of fintech in the region and demand for it includes not just major centres such as Singapore and Hong Kong but places such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

It represents a huge opportunity for Irish fintechs.

“Banks are so focused on the transformation that they’ve got to go through that there has never been easier to get through the door with a new solution or a new idea. Most of the banks have dedicated innovation teams that are looking for solutions. Regulators even have such groups. And inward investment authorities are offering significant incentives to companies that want to establish in Asia,” he said.

Fintechs looking to establish a base in Asia Pacific will find Hong Kong and Singapore “for starters” vying with each other to get you to establish a base in their country. “They are going to give you subsidies on payroll, grants, and may even give you free office space. It’s extraordinary what the possibilities are for those who are willing to venture out,” said Greene.

“This is a huge opportunity for Irish companies because all this change requires massive amounts of technology that banks cannot possibly build themselves as they would have done in the past.”

 

Learn more about opportunities in the fintech sector and how Enteprise Ireland can support your ambition.

edtech

Edtech for the workplace: opportunity or obligation?

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As AI and automation change the nature of work and jobs rapidly over the coming years, edtech innovations must be ready to help people and organisations keep pace.

Jean Hammond of LearnLaunch, an edtech accelerator and innovation hub based in Boston, was keynote speaker at a conference organised by Enterprise Ireland and The Learning Forum in Dublin in June. At Impacts and Future Trends in the EdTech and Corporate Learning Landscapes, Enterprise Ireland-backed companies met industry experts and investors, to hear how education is changing, and the opportunities that change presents.

As automation becomes more widespread, the importance of soft skills – including complex problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork – will persist. In her keynote presentation, Jean asked: “Why do we call them soft skills? Because they’re really, really hard.”

 

Edtech is an unstoppable force

Edtech innovation is accelerating, as the ways people learn in school, university and the workplace undergo a major transformation. Workforce education is about to become intricately entwined with people’s careers, Jean explained: “We’ve had a history of thinking that there was a period of time, four years in college, and then you worked for ten years and then maybe went away for two weeks, or went back to education for a year, but that’s not what the world looks like now.”

This is a challenge facing society as a whole, Jean noted. She advised delegates not to solely focus on the next great start-up or innovation: “Don’t spend all your time thinking about the innovators. Think carefully about the innovation adopters. What does it take to adopt change?”

Industries must interact with edtech entrepreneurs and signal what they need, in order for start-ups to create the solutions required. If the market fails to tell innovators what it wants, it’s extremely unlikely that innovators will be able to develop the right solutions.

Jean described her role linking companies with start-ups: “I have probably seen over a thousand different edtech start-up business plans over the last ten years. We know what people are out there trying to work on.”

 

Impact of big data and machine learning

Technology has moved at an amazing pace over the past few decades. Jean advised that big data and machine learning will drive change even faster: “Machine learning can analyse any system and find out where there are problems, where there are issues, and then go and provide a way to address these.”

The challenge for edtech is to react to change in time, so that people can transition into new roles before their old tasks become automated or obsolete. Jean commented, “We need to make the systems and processes of learning and deliver them where we need them.”

 

Today’s edtech market

She explained that only about 2.7% of the global education market is currently digitised: “Probably it will max out at around 12% because we’ll always have teachers, we’ll always have humans as a part of the system, but across the next few years, there will be a lot of change.”

The market globally is worth around US $5.75 trillion, with that value projected to rise to US $10 trillion by 2030. Jean explained that education is the biggest sector to ever undergo digital transformation.

Delegate John O’Donnell of Irish curriculum management company Akari Software asked Jean about lifetime learning and how it may disrupt universities. Jean noted that a level of transformation is inevitable but that universities provide quality credentials and should start offering “bites of learning that can be delivered over and over again into a set of stackable credentials.”

After reaching a high in 2015, venture capital investment in edtech fell but is now rising again. A LearnLaunch study looked at where funding for edtech resides: “Clearly there are some things happening in formal education to bring an increased amount of skill training into the higher education and community college, or sometimes even high school. Then the workplace is delivering both functional skills and soft skills, with a high rate of company formation in technology.”

Jean said that some of the most intriguing innovations were the next generation of learning management systems (LMSs), new e-learning tools, advanced ways of looking at assessment and analytics, and credential management.

Companies who have never invested in edtech previously are entering the market (such as Walmart) and long-time funders are entering the process earlier. Jean explained that earlier engagement is intended to “push those start-ups in the direction that they need because start-ups will listen if you tell them what to do. They care about your opinion so they will be steering themselves to try and meet your needs.”

This is advanced strategic thinking, which will help ensure companies have the tools they need to upskill their workforce: “I don’t just think edtech is the opportunity of the decade, I think that we have to do this.”

Learn how Enterprise Ireland invests in new technologies with our range of innovation supports.

Business opportunities are heating up in Iberia

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Irish travellers visit Iberia in their droves – at least two million last year alone. But while we have long since exported our tourism to Spain and Portugal, the same cannot be said for Irish firms.

Given the proximity of Iberia’s Eurozone neighbours, with a GDP five times that of Ireland and offering gateways to growing domestic markets, as well as to Latin America and Africa, Irish exporters should take a closer look.

While Spain and Portugal joined Ireland, Italy and Greece as the hardest-hit economies during the crash, they have emerged, like Ireland, as reformed models showing above-average Eurozone growth.

 

New opportunities in Spain

Spain is the powerhouse of the peninsula with the country’s real GDP and job growth set to exceed that of the euro area for the fourth year in a row.

With 10 times the population of Ireland, Spain is the much larger market opportunity with a GDP of €1.2 trillion and a 2019 growth rate forecast at 2.1% by the IMF. While unemployment remains high at 14.7%, in key sectors such as telecoms, banking, travel tech and services, it has a wealth of expertise, as would be expected from a country home to telecoms and banking giants Telefónica and Banco Santander.

Spain’s logistics infrastructure is excellent, hosting two of Europe’s biggest airports in Madrid and Barcelona, while its 46 ports serve the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and its internal rail network is one of the most advanced in Europe. It has the digital infrastructure to match and ranks fourth in the world for e-government services.

 

Spain’s business renaissance

While the market has been perceived as more difficult to enter for exporters, this is changing as Spain continues to experience a post-crisis renaissance. Language remains a traditional barrier for entry, as does the country’s regional devolution, which poses challenges to marketing and product fits between areas.

At Enterprise Ireland’s Ambition Spain and Portugal event in Dublin, delegates heard how exports of companies supported by the agency totalled €338 million last year. Spain is a knowledge-based economy, where services account for around three-quarters of economic activity, the conference heard.

Irish firms may look to some of the strongest growing sectors, such as telecommunications, life sciences and agriculture. Telecoms is expected to grow to around €21 billion by 2022, with agriculture growing to some €27.4 billion.

Opportunities are there for Irish firms with innovative solutions willing to put in the market research, Gedeth Network founder Juan Millan told attendees.

“Irish companies are very well known for their innovation and their technology,” said Millan. “Consequently, we are very interested in Irish offerings in medtech, life sciences and fintech.”

Exporters should be aware that Spain acts as a bridge beyond the Eurozone, thanks to longstanding trade links from its colonial past to Latin America.

“It’s a good place to access decision-makers for firms in Latin America, as they have headquarters in Madrid and Barcelona,” he said. “And remember, Irish firms have great access to North America, the UK and Australia, which is equally of interest to Spanish firms. There is a natural synergy to be had and you should use this if you have activity in these markets as part of your negotiating position.”

Tourism remains huge at more than €180 billion per year – half the GDP of Ireland – and offers opportunities to Irish firms in travel tech. “Think not only about the sun and sangria,” Millan said. “But all the solutions you can offer to that market.”

 

Economic growth in Portugal

Being the smaller neighbour has not stopped Portugal transforming into a high-income advanced economy with a high living standard. Its growth forecast at 2.2% for 2019 is ahead of the likes of Germany, with unemployment steady at 6.8%.

The country’s major cities, Lisbon and Oporto, are the country’s major industrial hubs, with Lisbon accounting for banking and financial services, oil and gas and ICT hubs – and is now home to the world-class Web Summit founded in Dublin – while to the north there is a focus on manufacturing. Tourism is a valuable sector looking for travel tech solutions in a market centred mainly in the Algarve and expected to grow from around €22 billion last year to €27 billion by 2023.

Like its bigger neighbour, Portugal’s colonial legacy sees strong trade links remain, offering gateway trade opportunities to not only Brazil but African markets such as Angola.

According to Professor Jorge Sa, from the Swiss Business School, Portugal presents an untapped export opportunity to Irish firms worth around €3 billion. “There are great chances for firms working in pharma, organic chemicals, electronic equipment, essential oils, machinery and plastics,” he said.

 

Enterprise Ireland supports for expanding to Iberia

Accessing either market requires thorough research, and there are, of course, traditional barriers to entry such as mature supply chains and language issues, but there are a range of Enterprise Ireland supports to aid firms looking to future-proof their export sales including the Market Discovery Fund and GradStart, which provides up to 70 per cent of two-year salaries for graduates with relevant market language skills.

In the meantime, Enterprise Ireland’s office in Madrid is ready to assist Irish companies with ambitions to be more than just tourists to Iberia.

Man with lightbulb representing Innovation

Agile Innovation Fund: Easier than ever for companies of all sizes to access R&D funding

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It is now easier than ever for Irish companies to access R&D funding to improve their products and services and compete internationally.

That was the message from Enterprise Ireland and the national network of Local Enterprise Offices to representatives from more than 60 companies who attended a research, development and innovation event recently in Dublin.

Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs pledged to use the Agile Innovation Fund to support companies of all sizes as they to seek to open new export markets and grow – promising a fast, flexible and simple application process.

 

Find more information about the Agile Innovation Fund here.

Speaking at the Agile Innovation Workshop, Eoghan Hanrahan, Enterprise Ireland Regional Director for the Dublin Region and Regional Development, said: “In doing R&D, companies have to challenge the norms, do something different, look at achieving some kind of technical innovation to try and future-proof their company.

 

Get support for Agile Innovation

“We recognise that R&D can be challenging but it is a very important step for any business to take and it’s also important that they are supported in doing so. Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs are here to assist people and companies who want to invest in R&D. The Agile Innovation Fund offers up to 50% funding to a maximum of €150,000 in grant aid.”

Irish companies are spending less on R&D than most European competitors. Latest Eurostat figures show that spending in 2017 equated to 1.05% of GDP, almost half the EU average of 2.07% and well behind R&D leaders Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Germany – all of whom spent more than 3% of GDP.

Of the €3bn that was invested in R&D in Ireland, €1bn was spent by indigenous companies. It is notable that in 2007, Ireland spent a higher percentage of GDP (1.23%) on R&D than it did in 2017.

Joe Madden, Manager of In-Company R&D Supports at Enterprise Ireland, told the workshop that the Agile Innovation Fund was designed to counter the belief among SMEs that funding R&D is too costly and that securing state support for projects is too complex and geared towards larger operations.

 

Flexible and fast access to Agile Innovation funding

“The Agile innovation fund was introduced at the beginning of 2018 as a response to a very steep fall off in applications for R&D support,” Mr Madden said. “Companies were telling us that the standard R&D application process was too complicated and very often they would have a project finished before they even knew whether they were going to get approval to do it.

“We needed to introduce something much more flexible, much faster and where the funding wasn’t as high so that we could apply a less onerous process for evaluating and approving applications.”

The main feature of the Agile Innovation Fund is its fast turnaround time, with an application process that results in decisions in a few weeks rather than several months. More than 90 companies have drawn down around €20m in funding since it was launched last year, with 90% of them rating the application process as relatively simple in a survey.

Madden added: “There are only two documents required to apply for the Agile Innovation Fund, an online application form and a project plan. The project plan is what the technical assessment of the application is based on. The technical assessors are looking for two things: is this eligible R&D and are the costs reasonable. To be eligible R&D, there has to be technical uncertainty – this means the project must demonstrate some kind of product or process development technical challenge.

“Total expenditure on any single application is limited to €300,000, so if your project spend goes to €300,001, it is not eligible for funding. Typically for a smaller company, the funding would be 45% of the total cost, which equates to a maximum grant of €135,000. If a small company collaborates with a partner, this funding can rise to 50% and therefore the limit increases to €150,000.”

The goal of the Agile Innovation Fund is to increase the amount of spending by indigenous companies of all sizes on R&D across the economy.

 

Local Enterprise Office support

Oisin Geoghegan, Head of Enterprise at LEO Fingal, advised companies that are not Enterprise Ireland clients to get in touch with their Local Enterprise Office.

He said: “Providing assistance and funding for R&D projects or innovation is one of the core reasons why the Local Enterprise Offices are here. R&D is not just about wearing white coats and having a lab. Most of the businesses we are dealing with could potentially apply for and receive R&D grants

“We want to see more applications from SMEs and the LEOs will work with you to give you advice and guidance on the application process. It’s called Agile for a reason, the application process is straightforward, it’s online and we want to see applications processed and approved quickly.”

Apply for the Agile Innovation Fund now.

John Ferguson Ambition Asia Pacific 2

‘Phenomenal’ middle class growth in Asia Pacific an opportunity for Irish companies

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The growth of the middle class throughout Asia Pacific presents ambitious Irish companies with unprecedented opportunities, delegates at the recent Ambition Asia Pacific conference in Dublin heard.

Some 23 million new ASEAN households are on track to earn more than US $35,000 a year by 2030 in what is “the fastest-growing, most dynamic region in the world,” said John Ferguson, Director of Country Analysis at the Economist Intelligence Unit, who provided an overview of growth trends and opportunities in the region.

 

Growth rates in Asia Pacific countries

In China, major strategic programmes such as Made in China 2025 and the long term Belt and Road construction initiative “are not going away”, he said.

“Chinese growth is still just very modestly slowing down to around 6%,” he said. The government there is using monetary goals and fiscal policy to maintain that growth.

Even allowing for the challenges facing China, “it’s still going to grow pretty reasonably well over the next couple of years,” he said.

Growth prospects in Japan, at 1%, are much smaller, however. As a huge, developed and rich economy, it’s one in which there are still “a lot of opportunities” for Irish companies, he suggested.

Much of that opportunity relates to Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative, the Japanese government’s focus on artificial intelligence, sensor technology and automation.

“This is a huge initiative for the Japanese. That’s where some of the growth opportunities will present themselves in Japan, already a highly developed economy but really trying to push themselves with this fourth industrial revolution.”

India represents a particularly “bright spot” in the global economy, said Ferguson, who predicted growth of around 7% on average likely over the next five years.John Ferguson Ambition Asia Pacific

This compares with global growth of around 2% and Asian growth of between 4% and 5%. India’s growth outlook is “extraordinary”, he said.

The primary opportunity in India, as in Asia Pacific countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, is one of population development and subsequent growth in demand for consumer goods and services.

With predicted growth levels of 5% and a large population, Indonesia is another really strong performer, again driven by the fast growth of its middle, or consuming, class, he said.

Indonesia’s five-year growth rate forecast is almost double that of Singapore’s, at 2.9%. However, the additional opportunity in Singapore comes from its ease of doing business and its popular status as a launchpad from which to do business elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region, he said.

So, while Singapore is growing a more slowly than some of the less well developed countries in the region, it’s still growing at “a pretty impressive rate of growth for economy at its stage of development.”

South Korea is another mature market but still likely to show average growth of 2.7% over the next five years. “In our view, that’s a pretty reasonable growth for a country at that stage of development.”

“The rising middle class in the Asia Pacific region is phenomenal. The world is moving east.” Kevin Sherry, executive director Global Business Development, Enterprise Ireland

Australia – another frequent launchpad into the wider region for Irish companies – and New Zealand are both stable economies but, cautioned Ferguson, both are seeing climate change and immigration becoming significant political issues.

Kevin Sherry at Ambition Asia Pacific Conf.For Irish businesses looking at these markets, either as part of their supply chain or as end markets, it’s worth keeping an eye on regulatory initiatives in relation to either, he said.

Enterprise Ireland is working with more than 600 companies who are doing business in the Asia Pacific region.  “Irish companies are used to winning in the Asia Pacific markets,” said Kevin Sherry, executive director Global Business Development at Enterprise Ireland.  “The rising middle class in the Asia Pacific region is phenomenal. The world is moving east.”

Depending on what happens in October in relation to Brexit, Ireland may be the only English speaking country in the EU, a fact that presents challenges but opportunities too, he pointed out.

Enterprise Ireland is expanding its footprint in the Asia Pacific region to help support Irish companies looking to capitalise on the growing level of opportunities there, opening new offices in Auckland, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in Melbourne, Australia and in Shenzhen, China, he said.

 

Read more Global Ambition articles on the opportunities for Irish companies in Asia.

Discussing business opportunities

Scaling into Europe for business success

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A growing number of Irish companies are blazing a trail into Europe. Here’s why.

If ever there was a time to diversify and seek opportunities in new markets, for Irish businesses the time is now.

As a member of the Eurozone, Irish firms are well positioned for market diversification. Although launching into a new market carries risks, the Eurozone offers several advantages.

First, there is easy access to 340 million people in 19 states that share the single currency. There is the Eurozone’s stable economy that, as a bloc, will continue to grow a further 1.3% through 2019. The benefits of single currency should not be underestimated, offering zero currency risk without fluctuating exchange rates or conversion costs.

Trade in the Eurozone also benefits from the absence of tariffs and customs, while a common regulatory environment means that Irish goods and services comply with EU legislation.

 

Irish companies in Europe

Irish companies have blazed a trail into Europe before, for these reasons and more. At Enterprise Ireland’s Eurozone Summit earlier this year, Irish firms described how diversification has proven to be the key to growth. Among them was Irish workwear company Portwest, who warned that when a single client went under, they lost 35% of their business.

“It taught us a hard lesson about diversification,” said Orla Hughes, the firm’s European Commercial Manager. “If we didn’t expand to Europe, we would have 50% of our business now.”

That move 15 years ago, has seen the firm build out its sales model through distributors, and Hughes believes the Eurozone offers huge potential. “In our top 10 Eurozone countries, we have 4,500 customers or distributors of our products. When it comes to the Eurozone, even though we have been there 15 years, we feel we have only scratched the surface. Of the 60 trade shows we did worldwide last year, 35 of them were in the Eurozone. It’s got enormous potential for us.”

There were key learnings for Portwest as it hit new markets with its workwear range. For instance, in Germany, orange hi-visibility workwear vests are typically the preserve of refuse collectors, so local differences can affect sales, said Hughes.

 

Some Irish start-ups have seen success by taking their first steps in Europe.

When ParkPnP, a parking marketplace, conducted market research, it found strong competitors already in its target market – the UK – so opted instead to move directly into the European space, with the densely populated Benelux region firmly in its sights. By acquiring a local Belgian firm in the same space, it quickly acquired market share and, importantly, local market knowledge.

CEO Garret Flower described the critical importance of doing market research ahead of launching into a new territory: “You are immediately drawn to Germany because of the scale. It sounds huge.

“But dig a little deeper and you find that Germans don’t pay for their parking via apps; 90% of them still prefer to pay by coin.

“When we looked at Europe, we saw it was very much a greenfield, so we believed that if we could get to market first, we could grow quickly to maximise unused parking space with our solution.” ParkPnP CEO, Garret Flower 

The decision to locate in Belgium paid off, and the firm has adopted a franchising model to branch into the Netherlands.

“Having done it this way, we feel we have a solid foundation to roll out across Europe and can now go into France and Germany. Franchising with local players, for us, we felt was, and is, the best way to roll out. It gives us speed and speed helps us to scale.”

In order to successfully tap into Eurozone markets all elements of new market entry preparations are required: market research to select the market with the best opportunities, a value proposition that matches the new market and highlights your competitive advantage, the right route to market, and the resourcing of people, skills and funding to make it happen.

Enterprise Ireland’s world-class Market Research Centre has extensive resources to aid your research, while our Excel at Market Intelligence programme will advise how best to conduct market research.

Our Market Discovery fund is a key financial support for new market entry, ensuring you have funding to research, get expert advice and conduct market study visits. GradStart provides up to 70% of two-year salaries for graduates with relevant market language skills.

Companies we support benefit from our market advisers’ near-unmatched knowledge of market dynamics, target buyers, networks and ecosystems across six Eurozone locations. When you’re ready to enter the market, we offer a key manager grant to help co-fund the salary of personnel with the right skills to work with market advisers and drive your diversification plans.