Matrix Internet founder and MD Jeff Sheridan. Image: Mark Condren
Matrix Internet founder Jeff Sheridan on shifting focus to Europe post-Brexit and how Covid-19 boosted digital transformation in unexpected ways.
Sometimes crisis situations can create opportunities for a business, and this is exactly what happened to Jeff Sheridan and his company Matrix Internet.
The Dublin-based digital agency provides web design, development and marketing services. It has been around for nearly 25 years and saw its business grow steadily in the UK over the years, but that all changed with the rise of Brexit.
“What you think is going to be a bad thing or a bad development can sometimes end up … you take one step back and move a good few steps forward,” the founder and MD Sheridan said. “Brexit was actually one of those for us.”
Sheridan said the company’s business began to dry up in the UK as Brexit began to take hold, which prompted Matrix Internet to reassess where it should focus.
“Because Ireland was such a multinational place, our team was full of European people and people from all over the world,” Sheridan said. “So, we started to look across the pond, over the UK and into Europe, and we formed a very good strategy where we went straight to Brussels and we started to work on EU-funded projects and we found some clients over there in Brussels.”
This decision to expand further into Europe was a success, as Sheridan said nearly half of Matrix Internet’s business comes “out of Brussels”, along with a steady client base in export companies in Ireland. The company is involved in various EU-funded projects, supporting multiple research consortiums.
“This really worked well for us and what we realised was that we actually had an international team, we just didn’t realise it before Brexit and it really propelled us towards Europe and we’ve been quite successful over there.”
A more digital world
Another way the company – and its interactions with clients – changed over the years was from the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sheridan said Matrix Internet began to focus on Europe just prior to the pandemic and that it was good “in the long run” for the business as it “digitally transformed a lot of people” and allowed the company to work with clients abroad without the need for as many physical meetings.
“We had built up our whole business in the UK and we were back and forth to London every week or every two weeks, whereas when Covid happened we picked up a lot of clients across Europe that we didn’t meet until after Covid,” he said. “An example would be that we have a very good client called Frontex which is the European Coast Guard agency, and we worked for them for nearly three years before we ever met them in person.
“That has really been good for us because it just really made borders less of an obstacle. For example, we’re on a European project which is helping to transform digital education for people with special needs and we’re very proud to be on the project. But our partners on the project are from Australia, Iceland, Norway, Croatia, Austria [and] Bulgaria. And we’re all able to line up calls, collaborate, work together, get the work done and keep the projects moving on a daily basis.
“I think before COVID, that would have been really difficult. So this type of international collaboration and fast-moving digital work has really moved forward.”
Sheridan noted that Covid-19 had lots of terrible things associated with it, but feels that people showed a lot of “resilience” as a result and that it pushed the journey of digital transformation forward for Matrix Internet and its clients.
“It just sped up the digital transformation of how business is done by a factor of 10 maybe, in that we could meet clients online, we could collaborate on documents, all of the tools around Zoom and breakout rooms and online collaboration really progressed hugely,” Sheridan said.
Can’t avoid AI
In terms of current tech trends impacting both the company and its clients, Sheridan feels one of the key areas is artificial intelligence (AI). Sheridan spoke about the eagerness of some the company’s clients for adopting this growing technology.
“The thing that really encourages me is that, it’s the demographic of our clients who are not seen as being the most progressive, they’re actually people who really embrace it and are using it,” Sheridan said. “It’s the embracing of AI with the average Joe or Mary that’s really encouraging … There’s another thing that has come out from Covid, people are really open to technology and they’re not afraid of it anymore.”
Sheridan said this decision to embrace AI has been taken by his own company too, improving various parts of the business and improving productivity. One example he gave is an AI-powered note taker that Matrix Internet uses for its online meetings called Read AI that compiles “all the action points”.
“That’s something that has really saved a lot of time for us to be honest,” he said. “We come away from every meeting and it just compiles the notes, gives everyone their action points within a couple of minutes of the meeting. So I’d say things like that, productivity things are very welcome and moving very fast with all parts of our client base.”
Sheridan also attributed this “hurry” among clients to adopt new technology to the fact they are now in a “very digital, mature environment” with growing competition and a desire to stand out.
“All of our clients, their rivals are also digitally mature. So it means that the game has sped up a small bit. If people have an idea, they need to get out there fairly quick.
“It’s just something that we see a lot with our clients, when they have an idea, they want to move very quickly,” Sheridan said. “Whereas previously, maybe five, 10 years ago, they’d be happy to wait for a certain amount of time for an idea to be formed.
“But now because of the speed of technology, they want to develop an idea and push it out there and iterate it and test it and see what the market says.”
Not everything can be solved with new technology however, and Sheridan believes there can be a risk of a lot of companies “looking the same” as they all embrace certain types of technology.
“I see a lot of companies having to niche down and to find a gap in the market, I suppose it’s such a competitive space right now,” he said.
“So the standing out, this probably goes more to more soft skills around empathy and storytelling, which is really not very tech-y. It seems to be an area that a lot of companies are struggling with. A lot of our clients have fantastic technical solutions, but actually distilling that into a story that makes them stand out, that is probably the biggest gap we see with export companies.”
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