Spreading the word about Irish companies

SMEs are benefiting from Accenture Ireland making the formal introductions to potential new customers

One of the biggest challenges facing small companies with international business aspirations is getting on the radar of prospective customers. A great product is not always enough to open doors, especially overseas.

Sometimes it takes the right word in the right place from a bigger company the customer already knows and trusts. Now Irish SMEs are benefiting from Accenture Ireland taking them under its wing and making the formal introductions to potential new customers.

“We feel a sense of corporate responsibility to Ireland Inc,” Accenture Ireland’s managing director, Mark Ryan, says. “When things got out of shape here we began looking at how we could leverage the Accenture global network to create business opportunities for Irish companies,” he says.

Accenture worked closely with IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland to identify suitable companies for the initiative, which also involves mentoring and peer-to-peer learning.

“With Accenture we evaluated the suitability of 17 Irish companies and along with IDA Ireland have identified 65 other multinationals based in Ireland across a wide range of sectors to carry out a similar exercise,” says Frank Ryan, CEO, Enterprise Ireland.

“We would encourage more multinational companies to engage with world- class Irish companies and get a sense of the fantastic products and services that can add significant value to their operations both here and globally.”

Mark Ryan says Accenture is always interested in new ideas and technologies that can give it the edge. One of the companies it has worked with successfully in recent years is Daon, which Ryan says “is a good example of an excellent Irish company offering a unique proposition in its space”.

Daon provides identity assurance and identification and verification software and services worldwide. Its customers include the Japanese Ministry of Justice Immigration Bureau, the European Union and the US Departments of Homeland Security and Defence. Daon’s history with Accenture pre-dates this current initiative as the two have worked together for five years.

Global practice

“We are a good example of a local SME jointly pursuing and winning international business with Accenture,” says Seamus MacKenna, vice president, global engineering and professional services.

“Some of Daon’s products are targeted at the security, border management and public safety markets. Accenture has a global practice in this area and so it was inevitable that we would ‘bump’ into each other pursuing the same opportunities.

“Large government identity programmes require a full range of services and capabilities and typically governments like to award such contracts to large, multi-national system integrators such as Accenture.

“Both Daon and Accenture recognised that we each had something differentiated and unique that when paired together offered a real business value to our customers. When this combination was initially successful in one country it was natural for us to partner again for other similar large projects in other countries.”