Image: © Jacob Lund/Stock.adobe.com
Huawei Ireland CEO Calvin Lan calls for larger companies to play a ‘supporting role’ to boost digital adoption.
Employing less than 10 people, micro-firms are most cautious around business momentum, with a negative digital spending outlook for the upcoming quarter, Huawei’s first Digital Business Index has found.
The report, conducted by Amárach Research, surveyed 350 decision-makers from micro to large corporations, to track key digitalisation trends affecting businesses operating in Ireland.
It found that while a third of businesses expect a higher turnover by the end of the year, almost half of them expect costs to rise due to inflation.
With an average digital investment outlook score of 58.9 (higher than the base score of 50 that indicates no change), the report found that only micro-enterprises showed a negative score of 43.4 for digital spending in the upcoming quarter, while larger corporations scored 74.4, indicating a higher spend on digital investment.
“This is a concern because digital investment is crucial for the growth of small Irish businesses,” the report notes.
The index finds that limited budgets (43pc) and lack of knowledge (35pc) are primary obstacles to digital investment, especially for companies where employees might find it challenging to keep pace with technological change.
Overall, most respondents expect customer acquisition and retention to remain the same, about 25pc expect both to improve this quarter.
AI usage low among small businesses
“We are at a very early stage in Ireland’s AI journey, but already we can begin to see how it might evolve in the months and years ahead,” the report notes.
One in three of the companies surveyed don’t use generative AI and a similar proportion don’t expect to use it, and this rises to 52pc among micro-firms. While approximately 10pc of the surveyed business, primarily coming from the B2B sector, identified as advanced users of AI.
Of those that use AI, the primary application is data analysis and insights, followed by customer service. Larger corporations are once again ahead in this regard, with 57pc of them employing AI for these services, compared to 45pc among medium-sized enterprises.
“The role of digital infrastructure in ensuring economic resilience cannot be overstated and digitalisation remains a crucial growth point for indigenous Irish businesses,” said Calvin Lan, the CEO of Huawei Ireland.
Lan argued that larger companies need to support smaller and micro-firms to embrace digital transformation, through workshops, webinars or free cloud credits, “so that they are not left behind which will, in turn, lead to a strengthening of the broader economy”.
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