How To Achieve Digital business survival in the new world order

Business owners of two small and growing companies share their perspectives on riding out the COVID-19 storm to achieve digital business survival with Billy Linehan

Derya Sousa and her husband Osvaldo set up the company Kianda Technologies 4 years ago. Last month they won a prestigious business award “Fingal Business of the Year” from the Fingal local authority. This looked like the best year yet for this Dublin based Enterprise Process Automation start-up. A growing client base, VCs beckoning and a healthy pipeline.

Extraordinary times

Now they and many other business owners are facing extraordinary times. All new contracts are on hold, so Kianda are focusing on serving existing customers.

Events and gatherings have been cancelled across the world to contain the spread of the virus. As a result, many organisations are facing huge pressures returning tickets to clients. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon was one of them. To combat the process of delivering thousands of ticket returns, they built an app in under 24 hours with Kianda.

The rapid response has reduced the impact on business by gaining better control of cancellations and returns. “This is a great example of agility in digital transformation” explains Derya and continues “the plan now is to retain staff, all seven of us are working from home.”

“The largest challenges so far in growing the business have been finding the right networks and contacts to develop our business and scaling up the team. Much of our business development and contact making happens at events – and there are no conferences or exhibitions planned.”

Derya plans to access all government supports that are available, and is determined to “ride out the current storm.”

Early childhood learning platform

Ciaran Flynn founded an early childhood learning company, Child Paths in 2014. Child Paths, a Finalist in the Small Firm Association’s National Business Awards, is located on the campus of Dublin City University.
“We created a platform for early years’ services and primary schools that transforms how teachers transfer, store and communicate with parents. I’m a Father, trying to be a better parent and this is why I created Child Paths as I didn’t know how or what to do.”
Like the founders of Kianda the business outlook for this year was good, external investors were showing an interest and sales were growing in overseas markets.

Let’s do what we can to help our customers in this challenging time

We’ve had to let some staff go temporarily in order to be in a position to reopen in a few months and take back on our staff. This is a difficult time for everybody and for us it’s about trying to do what we can to help our customers in this challenging time.

We’re working on the site and very shortly crèches will be able to try our software for free by going onto our website childpaths.ie to see how beneficial and easy it is to use. This will not just be for crèches and primary schools in Ireland, it will be available for any crèche or primary school around the world.

My colleague Robbie came up with the idea of offering a curriculum plan free to every parent who wants to sign up that currently does not use Child Paths. It will list all different types of activities daily with descriptions and resources so parents will have more choice and have fun with their children at home. Parents will even be able to use our Milestones tool for free, see here about the Child Paths Milestone Tool .
“You need to plan for the future and be ready for when this pandemic is over and find the best ways of becoming more sustainable, “explains Ciaran.

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