Ibec: Enhancing digital to support members
As part of our 10 opinions for 2021 report we interviewed Vivienne Maguire, head of Digital at Ibec. Ibec is Ireland’s largest lobby and business representative group. Their purpose is to help build a better, sustainable future by influencing, supporting and delivering for business success. Ibec engages with key stakeholders in Ireland and internationally through their six regional offices and their Brussels office, along with an extensive international network in the UK and US.
Review the other 9 opinions.
Talking about digital, what was your biggest challenge in 2020? If there were no challenges, what were your biggest learnings?
Given the size and scale of our organisation and the members we represent and the COVID-19 crisis, we needed to communicate effectively with our members and stakeholders. Globally, there was an obvious large shift to remote working in 2020. We were fortunate that the whole organisation was ready for this and transitioned well. This allowed us to focus on connecting our membership with the content they needed and to offer our prospective customers an opportunity to see how well Ibec could support their business during very challenging times.
We wanted to create the most relevant and timely experiences for our members whilst also supporting our internal commercial objectives. We accomplished this by prioritising our development requirements and working with teams across the business. Our webinar team produced an incredible amount of quality content for all areas of our business. There was a lot of engagement with this content and high demand for replays. To meet this requirement, we created a dedicated Playback section of the Ibec website which lists all the recorded webinars. Members can easily search for relevant content, replay the videos and access the service 24 hours a day.
At the beginning of the crisis, there was a huge demand for COVID-19 information. To provide easy access to the most relevant and timely webinars, publications, press releases and insights we quickly developed the COVID-19 Hub on the Ibec website. This dedicated area on the site is regularly updated to provide the latest, relevant information for our members.
We also had a very active year amplifying campaigns across the website on the 2020 Irish General Election Campaign, COVID-19, Brexit, SMEs and Budget 2021.
Even though our original plans for events were disrupted this year, our dedicated Events team successfully provided a wide range of successful virtual events which we integrated into the Ibec website.
By taking an agile approach to delivering content and relevant business insights to our members in 2020, we have grown our website traffic considerably. We have embraced the power of analytics to guide us in how we deliver the most engaging content and enhanced user experience on ibec.ie through 2021.
Where you are now, what do you think 2021 holds for you? In other words, what will your focus for 2021 be in terms of digital.
We will continue to harness the power of technology as we progress our digital transformation roadmap. The website has become a key online tool for our company, and we will work hard to continue to enhance the delivery of content, quickly and efficiently and focus on developing components that enable the platform to do this. We are migrating many sites to a new content management system and once this has been completed, we will work toward developing the best user experience possible through personalisation.
What company/companies inspire you in terms of their digital achievements? Why do you find it inspiring, and what initiatives do they do?
Ibec positions are shaped and inspired by our diverse membership, which range from small to large, domestic to multinational and our 38 trade associations cover a wide range of industry sectors. Ibec members employ over 70% of the private sector workforce in Ireland. Many of Ibec’s members have also enhanced their online presence in 2020 which has been great to see. This has enabled us all to maintain strong and effective communications and relationships with all of our stakeholders.
Learn more about Dublin Airport and Central Bank if Ireland.
Are you looking for a full digital platform like Ibec? Get in touch today.