By Business & Finance 
Sullivan is an expert in SaaS/AI offerings and solutions. He has assisted global corporations with their digital transformation needs. He is also the current Chair of Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland, a large-scale microelectronics technology centre.
By Olivia DeWan
What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
My main priority as CEO is to lead the company in scaling our European business by helping our clients with digital transformation and deploying AI solutions to deliver greater value across the lifecycle of asset management in life science environments.
What are your biggest challenges as CEO?
Right now, the biggest challenge is keeping pace with the rate of change in AI technologies and harnessing that in safe, secure and validated methods for our end clients.
How do you keep your team/ staff motivated?
Thankfully, that’s easy; we have a great team of highly self-motivated people who really enjoy the work that they do. Now, as part of a much larger organisation, opportunities for career growth are more immediate and meaningful, and so we are looking forward to the next phase of our growth journey.
What are the challenges facing the industry going forward?
Finding the right talent at a cost level that’s affordable has always been a challenge, but with the software landscape changing so quickly now with emerging AI toolsets, this has become particularly demanding.
What new trends are emerging in your industry?
Our life science customers are moving to personalised, small batch manufacturing, but within a highly regulated framework, so delivering at speed, while also ensuring full compliance, is challenging. This can only be solved with a move to scalable digital technologies and the smart application of AI, married to skilled workforces, as ultimately, things still need to get built and made.
Are there any major changes you would like to see in your sector?
We are seeing a shift away from paper-based legacy control systems and processes to digital toolsets. For our business, this is an overdue, but very welcome change. Certainly, our sector is slower to adopt emerging solutions, but that’s understandable as, by nature, our sector has to be risk-averse. Nonetheless, to advance our clients’ ambitions for digital transformation and adoption of AI, we need to move faster to enable new medicines and med-tech to emerge and get to patients more quickly.
As an employer, are you finding any skill gaps in the market?
Well, it seems the whole world is trying to understand how best to use AI to advance and accelerate their core mission. Top talent is in short supply globally, so filling these types of roles is challenging; however, we are having good success at “growing our own” and converting smart software engineers into AI engineers.
How did your strategy develop in the context of the banking crisis and economic crisis?
Our company is very good at taking a long-term view on what we need to do and long-cycle planning. We firmly believe that if we stay very committed to building what our customers need for their future success, short-term bubbles and down cycles will work themselves out, and we will be ready to capitalise on growth phases.
How do you define success, and what drives you to succeed?
Success for me is having very happy customers who will speak well about us and be happy to recommend us to others. We know that our customers are on critical missions to improve patients’ health, and we want to play our part to help them be successful. I had a very personal experience of this in the past year, where we won business with a med-tech company building cancer screening equipment. I lost a cherished sister-in-law to cervical cancer during this period of time. The screening equipment that we support today with our services could have potentially saved, but certainly extended her life, and I want to ensure we help this company to have their product available for others.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given in business?
There’s a lot of noise and distraction in business today, so staying focused on your customers and having flawless execution is what will sustain your business.
What advice would you give to others starting in business?
It’s the most rewarding career path, but also all-consuming, and you have to be prepared for that. A new business will require you to become an expert in many fields, all at the same time. It’s accelerated learning like no other, and the best rollercoaster that you will ever get to experience.
What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
The big highlight was successfully completing a sale of our business to Blue Mountain, a US-based competitor of ours, whom we have grown to respect and admire over the years and are now delighted to join forces with them.
What’s next for your company?
We will become the European HQ for our combined business and become the launchpad for our European growth ambitions, so we will be building our capacity to deliver on those plans.
Where do you want your business/brand to be this time next year?
We want to get established in our target markets in EMEA, with a focus on the DACH region, the UK and Nordics.
What is the best book you’ve ever read (non-business) and why?
I read a tremendous amount, so that’s really difficult to answer. I have so many books that I enjoy, and I must credit my wife Irene with keeping a constant supply of great reading material to hand. I just recently read The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and found that pretty compelling.
What is your favourite hobby and why?
My favourite hobby is golf. I like to play and watch. I like the constant challenge to try to improve, to concentrate on my game and to get outside and away from it all for a few hours. Luckily, my son is a good player, and I also get to play with him quite a lot, which, as a dad, is an enormous privilege and pleasure.
What is your mantra for life?
Treat people as you would like to be treated yourself, help where you can, be kind, and you will find these things return to you over time.
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