#364 Chief Innovation Officer Eoghan O’Donnell on Transforming Industries

Mehmet: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased joining me from Australia, Eoghan O'Donnell. Eoghan, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, tell us a little bit about their background, what they are up to currently, and then we can kick the conversation directly after that.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours.

Eoghan: Hey, thanks Mehmet, and thanks for having me on your show. I'm very excited to be here. Um, yeah, I look a little bit about myself. You know, I started off in the software industry Oh, 25 odd years ago, um, I'm originally from Ireland, uh, joined Symantec, worked with them for many years, originally localization, uh, in Dublin, Ireland, then I moved over to California where I worked in their shared technologies group.

Eoghan: Um, if you're not familiar with, uh, Symantec, we were the makers of the Norton antivirus. suite of products and consumer where I spent most of my time working some enterprise software to, um, primarily did [00:01:00] program management there and, uh, raised up through the, or, uh, rose up to the, the management, uh, levels there.

Eoghan: And then I moved on to, um, McAfee who were ultimately acquired by, um, Intel. And that was still in California. And then I moved to Amazon, uh, where I worked in the. Um, HR, FinTech technology group, and, uh, spent a few years at, uh, Amazon. And then I had an opportunity, uh, with my family to move, uh, back to Europe from the West coast of the U S and, uh, we lived in Ukraine for a little over a year.

Eoghan: And while I was there, I. I joined Innovecs, um, so that's how I've, uh, ended up at Innovecs and now I live in Australia, so I've come down here for family reasons and I continue to work for Innovecs. Um, I, I've had a couple of roles at Innovecs. I [00:02:00] originally joined, um, as, uh, head of delivery, head of engineering, right, to bring them, into the engineering world.

Eoghan: And now, as you know, I run innovation. Great.

Mehmet: And again, thank you very much for being on the show with me today. And what, you know, a very rich and fantastic experience that you have. Um, so I want to start from the innovation and, you know, recently we start to see more and more like, um, these titles, chief innovation officer now, uh, just, uh, Like past week at the time of the airing this episode will be like around one month or so So in dubai like the government they have appointed chief ai officers everywhere So from from your experience why these roles are becoming like more crucial in today's business landscape Eoghan

Eoghan: Yeah, look great question.

Eoghan: Um, you know, you're right. My my title is is Chief Innovation Officer, um, but of course that does bleed into the [00:03:00] AI world. Let me start with sort of the innovation world, but what is innovation, right? So, I mean, innovation for me is like cultivating innovative capabilities, like within the organization that we're in, sort of, and promoting those.

Eoghan: Um, and, you know, for Innovecs, you know, we're in a wide, uh, range of industries, right? Health tech, clean tech. Gaming industry, collaboration, supply chain, right? And, you know, people often ask me that you do like, what, what is it? What do I do? Right. And, you know, we having experience working in all these industries, we come across a lot of technology and often you can find yourself getting compartmentalized inside a particular vertical like supply chain.

Eoghan: And what I look at is looking at, you know, expertise we have. And seeing, can that be utilized in other industries? You know, innovation is not necessarily about, you know, needing to do [00:04:00] something new, right? Nor is it about needing to do something cutting edge, but quite often it's simply taking something that someone has done before elsewhere and using it for your own purposes.

Eoghan: Right? So, you know, a lot of what I do is that, you know, if we, we are obviously in the engineering business. We do a lot of work for clients and those clients have different needs. And sometimes we, we have a need that's actually a niche area. And I take, I look at that niche area and I, I sort of decide, Oh, can that be used?

Eoghan: In the context of a different industry, right? So that's sort of the, the innovation side of it for me. You know, we do a lot of internal work to try and foster innovation. And, uh, that's where I, maybe it's good bleed into the AI world. Um, you know, my, my, I guess, first exposure to the AI world was sort of working internally to figure out, you know, what sort of [00:05:00] controls we might need to put in place, what sort of education we might need to put in place for people, um, to understand.

Eoghan: Um, what is AI and the boundaries of AI and what you should be doing and what you should not be doing before we even get into the side of actually developing things in it, right? And there's, you know, there's a lot of aspects of AI that I think, uh, people, people need to be, um, uh, familiar with, right? Um, you know, what are you using AI for?

Eoghan: Are you, are you using it to create things, right? Are you, you, and I think, you know, You know, are you using it to create images? Are you using it to create opinions? So we, you know, a lot of my initial, as I said, exposure to that was sort of work and putting together frameworks for AI. Now that that's in place, you know, we're looking at technologies and the use of those technologies within the AI space.

Eoghan: Um, for example, everybody's talking about Gen AI, chatbots, whatnot, right? [00:06:00] Um, image, um, recognition and things like that. So, you know, we look at, we look at those technologies and try and self develop and go, Hey, do we understand them? So when the clients come to us, can we actually speak about them? Um, you know, we don't, you know, I think a lot of.

Eoghan: You know, we are, we are a development company and we do a lot of things for clients, but I would say on the AI front, um, a lot of AI development in the past has sort of been taken on by the clients themselves. Now we are seeing sort of a shift where we do see clients now starting to dabble, you know, using Resources like ours, right?

Eoghan: And that's where you know The research we've been doing is now going to lend itself to help those clothes those clients accelerate right there Um, their adoption of AI technology.

Mehmet: So [00:07:00] to, to that last point, you mentioned, oh, and like, and you know, another, uh, guest the other day told me the same thing. And, you know, even on, on our daily conversation.

Mehmet: So there's this field that companies have kind of this, uh, fear of missing out the AI moment now, because you know, you have your experience also in the, from, from the consumer industry perspective for all these years. Um, Now when we talk about b2b, you know, and you know, what like software, uh houses they are doing Whether it's like in the core Uh software development industry or for example cyber security or for example, you know cloud and so on So more or less, you know, we we we started to see this and the application.

Mehmet: So when it comes to the consumer industries um Are you seeing anything which is like different? Are you seeing something which you know, it's uh, You know getting you excited on the way they are actually [00:08:00] implementing the AI within their businesses

Eoghan: Yeah, again, good question. Um, I would say look I think a lot of what we do today is is sort of focused on the you know medium sized business enterprise sized clients, but I think on the on the consumer side, I think what really I guess attracts my attention more than anything is You know, when you, when you, when you go online and you're, you're, you're shopping, right, and suddenly, you know, I'm finding more and more that the offerings are tailored to me and, and my pattern of purchasing, right.

Eoghan: Um, I've even seen it, you know, where. You know, you can now look at an image, right, of a, of a shirt or something, and you can say, I want to buy that shirt. And there are sites out there now that actually you can tell them what the shirt looks [00:09:00] like, right? Or you can show them a picture, and they will actually locate that product in their inventory and, and offer that to you.

Eoghan: So, you know, the, you know, the, the adoption of AI. Um, some companies I think are further along than others, but what I see right now is even, you know, simple things like, you know, the, the, the reading of images and using that to help me make my purchases, like it's, it's groundbreaking, right? It certainly is groundbreaking.

Eoghan: I think, you know, product design and innovation, you know, generative AI has been used there, right? Personalized customer experiences, as I talked about. That's, that's very prevalent, I think, in the supply chain optimization, too, for consumer goods, you know, companies now are finding that AI is helping them, you know, keep the shelves stocked, right?

Eoghan: With relevant material, um, you know, I was, I was talking to someone [00:10:00] the other day where we were talking about, you know, on the shelf, based on the purchasing patterns and, and, and combining that with The location of the foot traffic in the store, you know, if you're buying your, your pasta off the shelf, they might put another product that's completely indifferent to pasta on the shelf next to you based on having analyzed the data, right, from the foot traffic or the purchasing, because they know that you're likely going to buy that product.

Eoghan: Yeah, it's quite incredible, right?

Mehmet: It is. And I was, uh, you know, lucky enough to speak actually to one of the startup founders who are doing this currently. Uh, and it's fascinating because the way they presented the, say, win win for both parties. I mean, it's a win win of course for the business, but it's also a win for the, for the consumer.

Mehmet: So they get like better deals. They get better pricing. Uh, they always feel like as [00:11:00] if there's always a, you know, Of course, it's a virtual assistant that is helping them choose, you know, or like guide them. So it's really fascinating. Now I ask this question all the time, you know, and, you know, we covered a lot from the B2B perspective.

Mehmet: I mean, in other industries, it's not easy, Eoghan, and I think you would agree with me. It's not easy to actually implement, you know, an AI strategy, uh, if we have some obstacles or challenges. What I'm interested to know from you, what are usually these challenges you see companies face when they try to start to implement AI into their consumer focused products or services?

Eoghan: Yeah, look, I think there's, there's, there's, there's a few things at play there, right? One is, you know, do you have the data? Do you, and do you understand your data? And because data, you know, powers it, you know, whether it's machine learning that you're, that you're going to use or, you know, down to the generative [00:12:00] AI, where you're trying to integrate chatbots, um, you know, you know, having access to large language models and then refining that so you can actually, you know, get specialized content out, um, through your chatbots, you know, the data is one side, the technology is the other.

Eoghan: Um, a lot of companies, um, may not have access to the resources, right. That are necessary to bring those technologies to market. And that's obviously where, where Innovecs steps in, where, you know, we, we, you know, we extend a lot of companies abilities by providing those technologies, those, those, that expertise and the access to those technologies.

Eoghan: Um, there is also, you know, there's a cost to it. Right. And I think a lot of companies. You know, need to plan ahead and decide, you know, you know, what value are they bringing and how do they stay ahead of the competition? You know, if your competitors are moving forward with giving [00:13:00] personalized shopping experiences, well, need to do the same.

Eoghan: So you need to invest in that. Um, so the data is key. The technology is key and the expertise is key.

Mehmet: Yeah. Now this is where actually innovation intersects with business a lot. And I think, you know, uh, it's, it's about like how we can implement it to the best outcome. Now, Business owners or decision makers within the business, if they are like kind of a bigger enterprise, if they want to quantify, Oh, and like this, um, you know, return on investment, let's call it of implementing these AI strategies.

Mehmet: Do you think revenue is the only metrics here? Or like there are some other metrics they need also to keep eye on. So they understand, okay, this investment that we're going to do, okay. It will not only, for example, generate extra revenue for us, but it's going to do [00:14:00] A, B, C, D. So from, from, from your experience, especially in the consumer industries domain, what like other, other than revenue, what like other metrics, you know, you advise, you know, uh, clients to, to look at when they implement these innovations and, you know, talking here about AI, of course.

Eoghan: Look, it comes down to value that you're offering, right? And. You know, customer satisfaction, right? If the customer finds no value from what they're getting, it doesn't matter how much money you spend on that. It's, it's, it's, it's going to be a waste, right? It, you know, so I think a lot of it starts with understanding the customer, right?

Eoghan: And if you understand the problem that, that you're, that, that the customer has, then You, you set yourself forth on a good path to actually be able to define some of the requirements around that. And based on that, then you can decide, you know, how much of a strategic investment that actually you want to make.

Eoghan: If you know, back to the personalized [00:15:00] shopping experiences, if that's what customers want, then, you know, that's where you're, that's where your investment needs to be. Um, there's so many, there's so many options out there for customers today. That you have, you know, you don't have a lot of opportunity when a customer comes to your website, for example, um, or comes into your store, right, to, to keep them engaged, right?

Eoghan: So you want to make sure that the value is very clear. Um, so for me, you know, customer satisfaction and value are, are, are for me, clear metrics, right, that need to be, uh, defined by a business, right, in order to succeed.

Mehmet: Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm not jumping, you know, from, from something very far from the AI, but I think, you know, I thought like I can relate it in, in, in the next thing that I want to discuss with you, um, which is internet of things or IOT, because, you know, you were mentioning [00:16:00] that, you know, Especially in the retail space, maybe this is more, uh, makes sense because they have the ability for putting some cameras, some, some, I don't know, some movement sensors and so on.

Mehmet: So how are you seeing, you know, this expansion of the IOT space also in, in, in, uh, in consumer industries and maybe also in other industries where, you know, it's bringing some innovation, like what are like, I would say the, the, the, Key opportunities you're seeing in that, uh, area.

Eoghan: Yeah. Look, I think IOT probably excites me more than a lot of other things in the, in the world.

Eoghan: Cause you know, yeah, I think a few years ago my smart meter came in, you know, and, uh, now, you know, the electricity company looks at those things and decides, you know, if you have solar, much solar to going to buy back and all that sort of thing. I think, look, the benefits of IOT, um, you know, you know, for me, there's probably Three or [00:17:00] four really clear benefits, right?

Eoghan: Deriving data driven insights, right. To help, you know, better manage your business, of course, um, increasing productivity and efficiency, right. That's, that's really key. Um, you know, obviously it's helping create new business models and revenue streams. And then I'd say the fourth would be, you know, seamlessly, um, connecting your physical business world to the digital world.

Eoghan: And if you look at the different, you know, the, the aspects of IoT that are out there. Um, you know, I think they, they said that there's going to be sort of 40 billion connected devices, right? By 2033, if I recall correctly, that's an incredible amount. And, you know, industrial IIT is probably leading that, right?

Eoghan: Smart manufacturing, connected assets, uh, smart power grids, as I said, um, even smart cities, right? Connected logistics. Um, it's quite remarkable where, where all these things are coming in. Um, I think a lot of today, you know, there's a huge progression of, of. [00:18:00] Adoption by SAS applications, right? Um, of IOT. Um, and they, you know, what they do is, right?

Eoghan: They, they analyze, right? They capture all your IOT sensor data, right? And, and what's, what's really cool is they're bringing that information to businesses. So they can actually make, Uh, better informed decisions, um, you know, where is it deployed, you know, certainly manufacturing, right? Machine monitoring, product quality, monitoring, uh, tracking of physical assets, right?

Eoghan: Where things are moving around. Um, you know, I was having, I'm having a piano delivered today and I could tell exactly where it is. You wouldn't have been able to do that. It would tell, not only tell you where it is, it's going to tell you how long it's going to take to get to you because it's using data from different, from different sources, um, you know, in the industry, when the industries were in, you know, the health tech area, wearable devices for monitoring health, you know, the amount of information that's collecting, sending back to your doctors and they're able to make informed [00:19:00] decisions.

Eoghan: Um, so, so there's so much, and, and, you know, obviously a lot of business process changes are coming out of this. Um, so look, I think, you know, if I look at cross the industries, manufacturing, automotive, there's so many examples right now where IOT is transforming those industries. And, um, I think, you know, And the great thing is those transformations are coming to us, right?

Eoghan: As as consumers, um, and I think for the, for, for back to the industrial side of things, it really is, you know, pushing, um, you know, efficiencies. You know, if you look at the automotive side, you know, equipment failure, whether it's a manufacturing automotive anywhere, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of information now.

Eoghan: Where even AI within AI IOT, it's helping companies predict where problems are going to arise. And, uh, no, we didn't, we [00:20:00] didn't talk about it earlier, but if I look at like the whole concept of digital twins, right. It's taking. All that sensor data that they've collected. And now they're, they're digitalized digitizing something.

Eoghan: It could be a, um, you know, an oil derrick in the middle of the North sea. And, you know, they'll go and replicate that as a digital twin and they're, they're using all the sensor data and they can predict where problems may happen. In the future, it's quite, you know, again, it's transformational what's happening.

Mehmet: Yeah, it's a lot of innovation is happening in that domain, which is, for me, I've been always fascinated, you know, by anything, which it's autonomous, it can work by itself, you know, and now adding, you know, the Internet of Things. So you can track, you can collect the data, then you have the AI machine learning.

Mehmet: So coupled with, with all this gives, you know, something really magical, I would say, and across all the industries to your point. So continuing maybe from the [00:21:00] manufacturing logistics perspective. And I, I know like this also from innovation perspective, you know, it's, it's been, we've been seeing, you know, a lot of advancement in that space from robotics and autonomous vehicles, let's say.

Mehmet: Um, is there anything like it's exciting you because, you know, we talk about predictive maintenance. We talked about IOT. So now we can even have robots to do things powered by I. You know, what's your point of view on, on, on, on, on that sector of technology?

Eoghan: Yeah. You know, like you, you only have to look at the latest model cars coming out, right?

Eoghan: And the, the, the, I call it the integrated dashboard, right? You've got, you got sensor information from outside sensor information from inside the car. It's all coming together. And that from an AI perspective is, is tying into the robotic side, right? What we know is like the autopilot, whatnot. And if you look at, you know, it was, it was interesting to me.

Eoghan: I was looking back at the [00:22:00] progression of autonomous vehicles. You know, the first, the first autonomous concept, right. Vehicle came out in the 16th century from Leonardo da Vinci, right. And, you know, a few years ago, they replicated it and it proved it's worth. Right. Now, you know, we've got, you know, autonomous cars and I think all the, the progression in the, um, with the, with the technology and the reward from the investments over the year with now they've, they've married the, the, the robotic side of the car with the AI side is quite remarkable.

Eoghan: You know, if you're driving down the street now, and it's winter, and there's, there's ice on the road ahead, guess what the car is going to do? The car is going to slow down and try and avoid that black ice patch, right? You know, this, this is what the power of, of AI is helping us do. Um, so yeah, huge, huge movement.

Mehmet: Right. You know, like, it's [00:23:00] kind of, I always do this joke. If I am mentioning what we are seeing today to my friends, I'm sitting with them like 20 years ago and I'm telling them this. They will probably laugh at me because, you know, majority of the things we are seeing today, you know, thankfully, I believe the cloud played a major role in this, you know, having this distributed way of getting the compute to anywhere in the world.

Mehmet: I think AI is adding a lot of things also to, to that mix. And of course, like, um, you know, IOT, as we spoke about now, you know, Yeah,

Eoghan: maybe I'll just add something right to this, right? I think, you know, we, we, we, we talk about robotics, we talk about AI and the whole autonomous car side of things, you know, if you go back to, you know, what, what are we looking for when we, you know, we bring these cars to market, you know, it's not necessarily to, you know, eliminate the human completely, [00:24:00] but.

Eoghan: Where we do try to eliminate the human, you know, there are situations where, you know, we haven't mastered it, you know, the goal, I think one of the goals of AI, you know, certainly in the automotive world is to figure out, you know, how to get the AI to learn social interaction, right? You know, we're not, we're not there yet.

Eoghan: Right. And I think human driver intuition, right, is, is absolutely a unique problem for AI. Um, you know, I was just in, in Manila, right, at a conference. And, you know, one of the first things I noticed was the policeman in the middle of the street, right, waving his, waving his hands. You know, the cars are not at that degree of intelligence yet, but the great thing is that is where, you know, AI and machine learning and identifying patterns and then, you know, moving that forward into sort of gen AI scenario, we can actually develop ways to actually interpret [00:25:00] those things.

Eoghan: So there's still a lot, there's still a lot of problems to be solved, right. And certainly within the AI field, uh, for autonomous cars and, and the use of robotics within those cars.

Mehmet: Yeah. And like one thing also people, I will not say that, uh, skeptical about AI, but you know, they say like AI is too much logical.

Mehmet: It doesn't have, for example, gut feeling. So everything is data driven and doesn't have, you know, emotions. So this is why. you know, of course, like as humans, we will be taking sometimes, you know, irrational decisions because, you know, based on gut feeling or something like this, but, but you know what, anything else that requires logic and requires, you know, to, to have proper fast response AI is indeed.

Mehmet: And definitely, you know, the, the way to go there now, I know like, you know, also like Part of, of, uh, of the things [00:26:00] from you, you help customers and is in the gaming arena as well. So gaming industry is, is another topic by itself. I know this, but when it comes to innovation, especially with AI, like any current trends, anything that, uh, you know, applications you're seeing in the gaming specifically that are promising or something that might get mainstream in the future?

Eoghan: Yeah, yeah, look, I think in the gaming world, um, there's, there's, um, some massive innovation happening and on a path to major innovation, right? Um, you know, if I look at AI and gaming, automated game testing, personalized gaming experience, you know, the same sort of experiences you have when you're in the, you know, online doing your shopping, right.

Eoghan: Um, content generation, um, you know, a lot of companies, you know, including companies like ourselves who are, you know, we've [00:27:00] got a game studio. We do a lot of art, do a lot of animation. There are a lot of tools out there now in the art world, right. We'll start with that, right. Who. who are able to generate, you know, artwork, right?

Eoghan: There's different companies out there. Some of them, they will generate art based on prompt, but in your text, you'll get, you'll get the image that you expect to get. There's a company out there who's doing the same, but they're actually, you can choose the style of the artist, right? Right. It could be Dali, right?

Eoghan: And it'll generate the images and use the style of Salvador Dali, right? Or whatever artist that you want. Really cool stuff. Obviously, you know, there's, uh, the photorealistic images, um, is, is another area that's, that's, um, quite popular. Um, but yeah, and AI generated game assets, um, definitely, you know, companies.

Eoghan: Um, want to bring their games to faster to market. So if you can produce those assets quicker, right? Some [00:28:00] assets, you want to have consistent looks, some assets, you want to have particular styles, there's plenty of technology out there that's doing that for the artwork. Now, I think a couple of other areas that's, that's, that's really intriguing for me.

Eoghan: Um, you know, a lot of games you have what are called NPCs or non player characters. And those characters, uh, what's happening in the world of those is that they are now learning from the behavior, right, of the player. You being the player, right? And there's different levels of learning, right? So, you might have, um, you know, in terms of technologies, we might be using things like decision trees.

Eoghan: Um, and you can, you can determine the status of a character, right? Depending on whether they're carrying a weapon or not, right? How cool is that? And, and then that, um, that, uh, what we call the non-player character, right? Can decide whether they're a foe or not, and they can take up a defensive status, right?

Eoghan: Simply by [00:29:00] what, what weapon that you have. Um, another area is genetic al uh, genetic algorithms, right? And, um, that might be where the. You know, that character wants to find the fastest way to navigate through an environment, right? Um, while, while taking all the different dangers in the game into account, right?

Eoghan: Because it's in a dynamic environment and that, you know, those characters might be shadowing you. So as. You make decisions where you're going and you're running into different characters. They're learning from that all the way along. Um, a couple of other areas which are in sort of in the deep learning aspect of things.

Eoghan: Um, you know, neural networks and reinforcement learning, but neural networks, you know, the, the characters themselves, again, these NPCs, they can change behavior in response to the human user's decisions and actions. Right, so that makes, you know, then the game can become more challenging on purpose, right, and give [00:30:00] you a more realistic experience, right, for you being the gamer.

Eoghan: And then I'd say the reinforcement learning, um, where that, you know, that character, the NPC, can make a decision within a game, um, and, you know, maybe they die, right, in, in, in the, in the current session that you're in, but the next time around, they know that that happened, And they're going to make a different choice, so they don't die.

Eoghan: So they'll remember the consequence, and they'll take a different approach. So there's some really cool stuff that's happening, and, and, so, you know, companies are beginning to take advantage of the deep learning, um, you know, using those neural networks, and to sort of simulate, right, complex decision making, which I, I think is really neat.

Eoghan: Um, you know, on the extension of the artwork piece, that would be the other piece, you know, developing game landscapes. So while at the same time, the characters can make decisions for themselves, you know, game landscape, game landscapes can be created so they can reshape the [00:31:00] terrain right in response to say the human player's decisions and actions.

Eoghan: So there's lots of, there's lots of opportunity within the gaming world for AI.

Mehmet: Yeah. And I think this again, back to what you mentioned about the experience and the consumer experience, I think, you know, I, I just Now, uh, I didn't play games since long time, but anyway, when I used to play something and when I repeat, and then after a while it becomes boring.

Mehmet: So, because you're passing through the same levels and you know exactly where the characters are like, of course, like we used to, to be happy. Hey, I know where that character is, but I mean. If they do it like in this kind of way, it would be like fun and i'm sure like, you know, the the The players would want to play more which is again.

Mehmet: This is the value which is bringing Engaging experience. Yeah.

Eoghan: Yeah, that's it. Exactly, right? We've all played the arcade games, right? And you right you progress through the levels and you know, oh I [00:32:00] got to level three the last time now What did I do there? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I need to do this now to get past because I You know, I didn't make it past that level The things don't, haven't changed, right?

Eoghan: It's still the same scenery, still the same characters. So how cool is it now if you got to level three and it's going to be a different character, different, you know, weapons, different, whatever, right? And you're like, Oh, okay, but the objective may still be the same. You still got to get over the hill and to the other side.

Eoghan: Right? So it's marrying that, you know, retaining the complexity of say that level or that environment, um, but giving you different challenges. Right. To get there. Right,

Mehmet: right. Right. Yeah. Just like very quickly. Also, like out of fun. Uh, my daughter saw me like playing, uh, you know, uh, the Pacman. It was like available on the Google at some time, you know, like you can just scroll it on the browser.

Mehmet: And she was telling me like, how do you know? Like this? I said, yeah, because when I was a child, [00:33:00] I knew exactly where these guys are coming from. And I know exactly the moves. You know, sequence I need to do, but she said, yes, that's fine. I find, and I think the new generation, they want this like kind of new experience to your point.

Mehmet: Oh, and so a hundred percent on that. Now

Eoghan: I would just add, you know, my, my, my son, I think he, he plays a couple of these games and they're playing them so frequently, like as a, as a gaming company, you know, do you want to invest, you know, a lot of money into humans? Right. To create things that could autonomously be created.

Eoghan: Why would you write, why wouldn't you adopt AI and do those things? And you keep the appeal, right, for these kids. Um, obviously it's a whole different, different conversation, you know, what screen time people should have, right? But, you know, when that kid wants to go back and play with their mates, I think they, they do want to have a different experience.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. A hundred percent. [00:34:00] Now, Just, you know, as we're coming to a close, there's one more topic I want to cover with you, Eoghan, and because you help other companies, right? So, so, so you basically help them, uh, getting these technologies, uh, built and, and deployed. And there is this famous debate about, you know, is outsourcing, outstaffing, especially if we are into kind of a, regulated space.

Mehmet: Let's talk about, for example, finance. That's like they, they have the PCI, right? So regulations. So when it comes to, to, to this space, what are the best approaches there? Like what, what do you see, you know, out of your experience, the best way to do it for outsourcing and outstaffing to innovation to the maximum, but at the same time, to make sure that You know, we are compliant.

Mehmet: We are like doing the things [00:35:00] in the right way that there should be done.

Eoghan: Yeah, look, I think a lot of it goes back to, you know, you know, businesses evaluating, right? Whether they require specialized skills, right? For certain things, you mentioned PCI, which is a, you know, a specialized area of, of business.

Eoghan: Financial sort of products or products that use a touch on financial things. Um, for those, you've not familiar with that, like when one of those areas would be, you know, taking credit cards and, and the rules that, you know, companies that take credit card payments online follow. Right. Um, you know, where companies like ourselves, um, I think really bring value to the market.

Eoghan: You know, we have. The opportunity to work with many clients in many industries. And when we, when we work on the same areas, if it's PCI, it's incumbent on us, [00:36:00] right, to actually stay ahead, right, of, of those, those, um, I would say, um, uh, compliance rules, right? And the, the client who's coming to us and looking for outsourcing, They can only benefit from that knowledge because we have the knowledge, we have the relevant knowledge, and we have the current knowledge.

Eoghan: So why would you as a business want to go and invest in hiring people that have that specific need if you don't necessarily need it, um, in longevity, um, and you can actually focus on your core business needs and companies like ourselves can focus on those niche areas and bring that value to you as a company.

Eoghan: Um, so I think, you know, evaluating, you know, whether you require that specialized skills is important. Um, but look, I think, you know, when it comes to outsourcing versus [00:37:00] outstaffing, you know, outstaffing, you need to decide whether you. If you want to manage remote employees, that's what it really comes down to, right?

Eoghan: And, you know, are you ready to prioritize integration into your organizational culture? Outsourcing, you know, you, you hand it off, right? You say, look, this is the problem I need solved. Can you solve it? In what timeframe can you solve it? And we obviously offer that expertise and we offer it at the highest degree of quality.

Eoghan: Because we are, we. Um, we are working with within an industry and across multiple industries. So we're able to stay ahead of it.

Mehmet: Yeah, makes sense. Make absolutely sense. Um, Oh, and we covered a lot today, you know, and thank you for sharing your knowledge and your experience with us. Um, this is a question I ask at the end to all my guests, is there any kind of advice, like many, anything that maybe I.

Mehmet: I missed to ask you, you [00:38:00] want to share with us at the end of this episode and where people can get in touch and connected with you?

Eoghan: Yeah, I guess, look, on the advice, I think it's important for everybody to continue to learn, right? You know, we've talked a lot about AI and AI as a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a new field, it's a new field for a lot of people.

Eoghan: And, you know, there's plenty of, um, I would say certifications out there. There's plenty of material that you can read about and you can determine whether that's appropriate for your business or not. Um, we obviously, uh, at, in ofx, um, have knowledge in, in, in this space, uh, as we do knowledge across, you know, different industries and the different technologies and skill sets that we're able to bring to market.

Eoghan: And I think we, you know, that's one of the, one of the things that we try to do within our company is upskill continuously try to upskill. And even in areas where we may not necessarily have clients today, we do look at. You know, solutions that we've [00:39:00] developed in the past for clients and we, we look to see can we augment those with, with new technology, um, and new areas like, like AI.

Eoghan: So I would say that, you know, learn, embrace it and, uh, you know, come and talk to us if you're looking to invest in that area and, and, you know, whether you're experienced in it or you, you, you don't have experience, we're happy to guide you through that process.

Mehmet: Cool where to come where where to go to get in touch.

Eoghan: Yeah, uh www. inovex. com I N O V E C S And, uh, you'll, you'll find me up there too. You can shoot me a message. Um, I'm also obviously on LinkedIn and a few other spots, but yeah.

Mehmet: Great. Uh, I will make sure all the links are in the show notes so people can find them easily. Uh, again, Eoghan, thank you very much for your time today on, on the show.

Mehmet: I really [00:40:00] appreciate, you know, all the information and insights you gave us and what's happening across different industries. And usually this is how I end my episode. This is for the. Audience if you just discovered this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by if you like it Please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues And if you are one of the loyal followers who keep coming sending me their suggestions messages Please keep doing so I read all of them and I take that into consideration Thank you very much for tuning in today, and we'll be again in a new episode very soon.

Mehmet: Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Eoghan: Thank you