'With the correct digital workplace approach the returns are enormous in terms of direct cost savings'

Niall McConnell, Commercial Director at Convergent, on the benefits and future of digital workplaces

Niall McConnell, Convergent IT, commercial director. Pic: Fergal Phillips

What's your name?

Niall McConnell

What position do you hold?

Commercial Director at Convergent

How long have you held the position?

10 years

What are your day to day responsibilities?

I am responsible for devising and implementing the commercial strategies for Convergent that includes sales, marketing and after sales support. My goal is to ensure every organisation in Ireland knows about Convergent and our services in terms of digital transformation.

What is your professional background?

I have a degree in Business & Legal and port graduate qualification in Computer Science both from UCD. Previously I worked as a business analyst and project manager for a first generation and well known Fintech company before going on to head up Convergent’s commercial operations.

Tell me about yourself away from work?

I am married to Sharon and we have two amazing daughters. My weekends are busy with kids activities like hockey and swimming but when I get a few spare hours I like to get out cycling up the mountains as well as socialising with friends at Leinster rugby games – hopefully when they’re winning of course!

Tell us something very few people know about you?

I once scored a point in Croke Park for my old secondary school Oatlands College! We lost that final though!!!

You are organising and speaking at three separate Digital Workplace Ireland Conferences on November 13th, 20th and 21st. What are you speaking about?

The official title of my presentation is – “Procure to Pay” Finance Automation A Starting point in your organisations digital transformation journey. So what it entails is both showing and explaining to the audience the practical ways that finance processes can remove paper and automate processes but also using this solution as a starting point to be expanded out into solving other areas of the organisation that are paper dependent and subject to manual processes.

How do traditional financial and accounts payable processes still in place for the majority of businesses across Ireland hold them back?

Its quite simple and it boils down to information moving, or not moving more to the point. The finance department manages finance but also risk and to effectively do this, they need to have access to all the financial information no matter where it is in a process or the organisation. We create the solution that allows financial information to be accessed no matter where it is in the process but also to flow digitally and automatically. It simply too late to know how well the business performed 2 or 3 weeks after each month.

What else can businesses and organisations discover at the conferences in Cork and Dublin?

Apart from finance, there are some very interesting presentations on the day. One speaker, Chris Holly is coming in from the UK and he has a fascinating story to tell about how he bucked the trend of implementing multiple systems and instead implemented and “less systems where possible” strategy and went from 17 core business systems to 3 in less than 3 years. The benefits for the organisation was huge in terms of direct cost savings but most importantly the strategy got information moving digitally and automatically that dramatically reduced paper usage and made their business considerably more efficient. Chris’ presentation is great because he is coming from the end users perspective.

How easy is it for businesses to adopt a digital workplace perspective?

I have a saying that the journey to your digital workplace starts with agility and customer focus. You should think big but start small. So what does that mean – well start with one problem or process or function or department at a time. Agree what your goal is and solve it but always in the context of using a flexible platform that can also be used to solve the other problems or processes.

Is it costly to adopt a digital workplace and is this offset by the savings long term?

Our “less systems where possible” strategy means that the investment required is vastly reduced as you are sweating out less systems to do more so you are enjoying a return on investment that is ongoing and increasing. With the correct digital workplace approach the returns are enormous in terms of direct cost savings but more importantly the value adds of a more productive, more efficient workforce doing things that actually help the bottom line.

How do you see digital workplaces in say 10 or 20 years? Will the processes you set out be common across the business landscape?

There will always be information and there will always be processes but the question really is how many people will there be doing some of the tasks they are doing now. I think that tasks like data entry, analysis and administrative tasks will become obsolete and the workforce that will be in place will only be there to contribute to the bottom line and not take from it. Never mind 10 or 20 years - things are going to get really competitive over the next couple of years and the organisations that make innovative decisions in terms of some of the solutions we are rolling out are laying the foundations for the real revolution that is coming down the line with AI and robotics. That’s not even mentioning Blockchain!

What challenges do you see ahead for businesses that could be overcome by utilising technology and automated processes?

The fundamentals of business will always be the same. Buy for X, sell for Y and hope you make enough profit to fund your overhead and shareholders. The obvious way to reduce costs is take as much of the manual intervention and friction out of business processes and to be as lean as you can be. Those that do that will maintain and increase profitability. Those that don’t will struggle to survive – it’s as simple as that!

Niall McConnell is speaking at three separate Digital Workplace Ireland Conferences on November 13th, 20th and 21st. Top find out more, visitdigitalworkplace.ie