Dermot O’Connor
Co-CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder, Skillko
Brendan Maloney
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Skillko
Construction and utility leaders are awakening to the benefits of digital systems and process automation that eradicate long-winded but necessary tasks
While certain industry sectors may have lagged in harnessing digital platforms to create greater efficiencies, one service provider says they are seeing bigger appetites for it now. Skillko, a training and compliance platform built for HSE leaders based out of the west of Ireland, only launched its first product in early 2019 and quickly secured its first 20 or so customers. Many are top Tier 1 construction and utilities companies. Within weeks, these customers effectively reduced their administrative time on training management by 85%.
Following that, they built a product for the onboarding and inducting of direct staff, then expanded those services to ensure the whole supply chain had staff competency and company compliance, alleviating many long-winded administrative and legal processes.
Customisable digitalisation support
Dermot O’Connor, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, says: “This year, we will be touching on having about 1,000 companies on the platform. It means hundreds of thousands of people have already been documented on our systems. It’s great scale and happened very quickly.”
As an indigenous Irish company, half the company’s staff are based in Ireland, with others from London, Lisbon and, more recently, a representative was assigned to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It has also attracted contracts with some big-name clients and is soon to announce a new contract with a large public sector utilities firm. Brendan Maloney, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, explains: “The way we are built means clients can just take one of our products, but we can also help them on their entire digitalisation journey if they take on the full platform.”
Clients can just take one of our products,
but we can also help them on their
entire digitalisation journey.
“From getting staff pre-vetted and approved to streamlining their whole competency and training management, along with the supply chain PPQ (product and process qualification) process, onboarding and inducting any new starters coming into the business all become very easy.” Moreover, Skillko wraps its technology with a customer-centric services model, which also allows clients to onboard effectively and get up and running quickly.
AI offers greater abilities
The next big digital transformation milestone is the utilisation of AI — one that the Skillko founders will be leveraging for their clients. “AI has become more accessible than ever, and we will have more generative AI, so our products will start to become an even smarter proactive assistant for EHS, supply chain and contract managers alike,” says O’Connor. “We have massive opportunities to scale our business both here and abroad; getting great feedback from our clients helps us with that roadmap,” concludes Maloney.