Firms fight harder for business

IRISH firms have to fight harder to win overseas business, a major conference was told yesterday.

Delegates attending the Excellence Ireland conference called Competing in More Difficult Times, and sponsored by the Irish Examiner, heard however that Irish firms were rising to the challenge.

They are doing this in a variety of ways not least by spending significantly more on the areas of research and development.

Dan Flinter, chief executive, Enterprise Ireland said between 1999 and 2001 the level of spending on R&D increased dramatically from €279m in 1999 to over €467m last year.

At the conference’s final session Mr Flinter said that the realities of the global market place were that firms have to fight much harder in order to survive.

“Conditions are tough, but they are not giving up”, he added.

The conference was told EI’s main focus at this stage is to get firms firmly focused on overseas markets and to ensure that though both internal and external research they continue to generate new products capable of competing on the global stage.

To help in that process EI has strengthened its links with universities and technology institutes and is funding projects that will lead to product development in the medium term.

“A significant amount of research is being carried out in key areas such as photonics.” Centres like the National Micro Electronics Centre in Cork as well as UCC are doing major work in this area, Mr Flinter said. Later at a dinner in Dublin after the conference Dulux Paints Ireland was named the Supreme Quality Award Winner 2002.

The accolade was presented to one of Cork’s oldest companies, Dulux Paints, as the most outstanding Q-Mark organisation and supreme quality award winner.

“Winning the national quality award means much more than just satisfying customers, it means that these companies are highly competitive, efficiently run organisations with rigorous management and a will to constantly improve their services and performance,” said Seán Conlan, chief executive, Excellence Ireland.

“The award and the conference enable Irish organisations to learn from each other, to find out what's working and to apply it themselves in their own business,” he said.