How Ireland’s Small Businesses Can Spend Time Where it Matters

Earlier this year, I sat at a roundtable in Dublin with local restaurant owners and operators. One owner told the room she’d rather leave her toilets broken than deal with the bureaucracy of fixing them. Another said it’s often cheaper to close two nights a week than keep up with rising wage costs.

These aren’t the words of people who have given up, but the reality for Irish SMEs is becoming incredibly difficult to manage. Between energy costs, the struggle to find staff, and visa processes that are a nightmare to navigate, the pressure is constant. 

A business owner’s most valuable asset is their focus. Right now, far too much of that focus is being pulled away from the shop floor or the kitchen and into spreadsheets and compliance. Every hour spent on a form is an hour not spent on the business itself.

The good news is that there’s a real appetite to change this. I’ve seen a genuine desire, from both business owners and the government, to make support more accessible. Grant and the visa frameworks are already there. The conversation now is about how to make them work better for established businesses, cutting the time it takes to actually see the benefit of these schemes.

At Square, our focus is on making that side of the business as light as possible. Irish companies are sitting on a massive amount of their own data, from sales patterns and payments to staffing costs, but they shouldn’t need to dedicate hours to make sense of it.

Our technology helps these companies take those figures and turn them into something an owner can analyse quickly and use in the moment. It helps them figure out a better shift pattern or spot a trend before it happens, taking the weight off an owner’s shoulders and helping them get ahead of the curve.

When Ireland’s small businesses do well, the whole country feels the lift. They are the biggest employers in our towns and the lifeblood of our local communities. The opportunity right now is for technology and the government to move in step. By giving our most resilient sector the tools it needs to grow, we’re giving owners the space to do what they do best.

Ireland’s entrepreneurs don’t want a handout; they just want things to work more smoothly. If we can clear the administrative logjam, they can focus on never missing a sale.

Article by John O’Beirne, CEO of Square International.