Leading digital transformation in Ireland

Ronan Stafford, CEO of Codec, discusses the four decades of his organisation’s growth from a start-up in the 1980s to one of Ireland’s leading digital transformation partners and one of Microsoft’s most awarded collaborators.

When Codec first opened its doors in 1985, the workplace looked very different. “PCs were only on about 5 per cent of the desks,” recalls CEO Ronan Stafford. “We kicked off in a totally different world.”

Four decades later, the Dublin-headquartered company has grown from a small technology reseller into one of Ireland’s leading digital transformation partners and one of Microsoft’s most awarded collaborators. Ask Stafford what continues to define Codec, and the answer is simple: its people, its partnership with Microsoft, and its longstanding commitment to the Irish public sector.

Today, Codec’s 300-strong team, of which the majority is based in Ireland, works across both public and private sectors to help organisations modernise, secure and accelerate their digital operations. “Codec is a Microsoft partner, and our job is to transform our customers through digital transformation and AI transformation,” Stafford explains. “We work closely with our customers to understand what their strategy and priorities are. We help them to become more efficient, serve their customers better, operate faster, and become leaner.”

Codec’s journey mirrors the evolution of Ireland’s technology landscape. “We have been through all the crazy changes from an economy and technology perspective over 40 years, and we are probably in one of the craziest at the moment because of AI and security,” Stafford reflects. “It has been an amazing 40-year journey. It is brilliant to see people come to Codec, stay for a long time or go on to great things.”

That people-centric culture is central to how Codec sees itself. “We are a people company,” Stafford emphasises. “AI is going to change everything, but what we get motivated by is people. We love working together, taking on challenges and overcoming them. But we also love working with the people in our customer organisations.”

Nowhere is that more evident than in Codec’s extensive work with the public sector, a relationship that has spanned most of the company’s existence. “We have been in business 40 years and for most of those years we have been working with the Irish public sector,” Stafford says. “We love working with them, we have great experience, we have great respect for the sector.”

That depth of experience can be seen in the company’s long partnership with the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). About two years ago, HIQA went to tender for a major digital transformation programme, a project that Stafford describes as both complex and high-stakes.

“HIQA wanted to implement a new digital system to regulate health and social care services that is their responsibility,” he explains. “They wanted it to be in the cloud, to be secure, but they also wanted their users to be able to change the system to reflect changes in their environment as they go along, so it is quite a challenging system.”

Codec’s approach was rooted in deep collaboration. “We had to work closely with the business to understand what they want to achieve, how their business works, what their business processes are, and then our solution architects work with that information to build the technology architecture behind it,” Stafford says.

“Because the project is multi-year, this alignment is continuously revisited. Throughout the whole build we are continually working with the business owners. If our job was just technical, it would be much more straightforward, but the bigger challenge is delivering what the business wants.”

The result is a platform designed not only on the latest Microsoft technologies but also to reflect the real-world regulatory processes that HIQA must manage every day.

Codec also partnered with the Mental Health Commission (MHC) to launch the Decision Support Service (DSS), a new statutory service for people who face difficulties exercising decision-making capacity to support their rights and autonomy under the 2015 Act. The MHC needed a secure, scalable and easy-to-use online portal that would integrate with its existing systems and support a growing national user base.

Codec developed a greenfield solution to enable the DSS to operate as a modern, digital-first service. The platform now supports 53,000 registered MyDSS users, has facilitated 90,000 queries through the contact centre, and has enabled the registration of 6,000 decision support arrangements, with a further 2,600 already underway. The move from century-old paper processes to a digital, 24/7 online service has transformed how people access and manage support.

“Codec worked very closely with the MHC to understand the requirements for this system: what was important in terms of security, data capture, and how the system would interact with vulnerable people and the people around them,” Stafford explains. “It had to satisfy full legislation. That system is live now, it is successful. The MHC have a modern, digital platform based on Microsoft technologies which runs their DSS.”

Codec’s longstanding collaboration with Microsoft underpins every project it delivers. The company holds some of the highest accreditations in the market, something Stafford sees as core to Codec’s mission.

“We take it really seriously what our role in all of this is,” he says. “Our role is to take very clever products that Microsoft develop and skill ourselves up to the highest accreditation in all of those. Then our role is to advise and work with the public sector so that they can properly harness these technology products to get the best value out of them.”

Looking ahead, Stafford believes that cybersecurity and AI will dominate the public sector’s transformation agenda. “Security is going to become more of a key issue in the public sector. It is going to continue to become more important,” he notes. “AI will be adopted and it is a question of to what extent the Irish public sector are comfortable adopting it. To take advantage of AI, they need to first digitalise everything and put it in the cloud. AI will not work on-premise, so there is a greater incentive for the public sector to adapt.”

After 40 years, Codec is entering its next chapter with the same values that built its reputation: respect for its customers, belief in its people and commitment to delivering meaningful, measurable transformation.

“Codec’s 40-year journey reflects our commitment to innovation and partnership,” Stafford says, emphasising that as the public sector prepares for the next wave of digital change, Codec stands ready to help shape it.

W: www.codec.ie