Identifying a business's digital blind spot

John Savage of Action Point says less than one in three organisations have a digital training plan and budget in place

Chief Operating and Technology Officer at Action Point, John Savage, who is one of only three people in the University of Limerick's history to graduate with a perfect score of 4.0.

In its Digital Transformation Index Report, ActionPoint examines the current state of digital maturity in Ireland. The report aims to allow business leaders to benchmark their organisations to identify blind spots and potential opportunities to respond to the developments and shifting trends of technology. 

While the covid-19 pandemic moved into the rear-view mirror in 2022, it has had a lasting impact on how organisations work, and how they embrace technology to improve performance. The report highlights the risk that attitudes towards technology and digital capability regress to pre-pandemic levels. 

Based on data gathered from hundreds of Irish-based and international respondents — consisting of board members, director owners, VPs and senior managers from across 18 industries — the ActionPoint self-assessment focuses on six pre-defined pillars of an organisation’s overall digital maturity, giving an insight into where they are leading, lagging, and their overall position. 

Revealing that 85% of respondents are not digitally optimised or strategic, the report signposts a significant opportunity for businesses to better leverage digital technologies. “To become what is fully digitally strategic by this measure is a fairly advanced business, where you have artificial intelligence running part of the business in addition to robotic process automation — elements really very much at the cutting edge. To do that you need leaders with a very strong digital IQ, with a very clear vision of where they can leverage technology to be the best business they possibly can be. 

"It is very hard to find that killer combination of really strong digital leadership and the capital required to bring the business on that journey — and in a market in which that business operates in to get a return on that investment. It is tough to get to the very top of that pillar, but just reward to the companies that do get there.”

Almost three in four organisations cite productivity and efficiency as a key reason behind technology adoption; while competitive advantage ranks second in this list. While 70% of companies surveyed consider digital fundamental to their business strategy, less than one in three organisations have a digital training plan and budget in place, with over a quarter considering development of digital skills during performance reviews. 

Businesses are faced with different economic challenges — high levels of inflation, pandemic-impacted supply chains, increasing input prices, high levels of salary inflation along with the continued challenges of managing a distributed workforce. Putting digital at the core of business strategy involves introducing a continuous digital transformation mindset, leveraging better insights from data, optimising processes and improving resilience. 

If everybody was already fully optimised, life would be pretty boring. 

"If we’re going to improve as a country and as a nation, getting a better quality of life for people involves increasing GDP and efficiency. I view it as a big opportunity that 85% of businesses have at least some room to grow and become more efficient and stronger in the years to come. 

"The big challenge that business leaders face is ’how do I get started?’ In essence, that is what our digital transformation process is all about — looking at a business from an owner’s perspective, understanding how the business works, understanding where you have people processes and paper processes, and bringing digital to bear as appropriate at any step in the business that increases efficiency. 

"Those one, two and 5% improvements compound pretty quickly, whereas going for the 50% is much harder to make real.”

John Savage

John spearheads the software services division of ActionPoint and has led the charge on building custom business process automation, IoT, IIoT, smart manufacturing and A/R solutions for global and local clients alike. Along with leading the technical team, he is also a regular speaker at conferences such as Dell EMC World and MS Inspire, with a passion for bringing a focus on business value to the technology conversation. 

As the co-founder and CTO at ActionPoint, he has been working in the software industry for over 15 years, with a deep technical expertise on software architecture, development and management. Having graduated from the University of Limerick in 2001 with a First Class Honours BSc in Computer Systems, he is one of only three people in the university’s history to graduate with a perfect score of 4.0. 

A visionary strategist and technologist, John’s core competencies focus on helping companies transform their processes and systems via a deep dive of their business goals and strategy.

Action Point

In 2022, the Viatel Group announced the strategic acquisition of ActionPoint, combining an end-to-end offering of their respective strong roots in telecoms, communications and connectivity allied to capabilities in software development and digital transformation. 

“This marks a new chapter in the ActionPoint journey and enables us to continue growing our team across IT, software development and digital transformation, while bringing more services to our customers,” said David Jeffreys, CEO of ActionPoint.

“By joining forces, we are uniquely positioned to deliver the full stack of digital services from data centre and connectivity to cloud, productivity and true digital transformation.” 

Over the past 18 years, ActionPoint has delivered digital transformation to more than 500 organisations at all levels of digital capability; helping them to implement new processes, transform customer experiences and bolster their data security. 

The company joined the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 in 2014, winning further awards consecutively from 2015 to 2018. It has also been a four-time Deloitte Best Managed Company, 2018-2020. Within the Microsoft community, ActionPoint was awarded Partner of the Year for Cloud Native App Development and Modern Workplace for SMB 2021.

“We have been extremely fortunate with the team we have built at ActionPoint, and having the University of Limerick on our doorstep has enabled us to discover some incredible graduate talent,” concludes John Savage. “We have been very fortunate to have a number of UL alumni come through our doors.”

As graduates of UL’s Computer Science & Information Systems, John and co-founder David Jeffreys started the Action Point FYP prize for final year CSIS students. “As graduates of CSIS ourselves, both David and I felt it appropriate to help students showcase their technical skills and to reward them for their commercial endeavour.”