Enterprise Ireland IPP program: Zarion and Trinity College Dublin Success Story

Over the past 4 years, Zarion has invested significantly in the modernization and advancement of its Intelligent Work (IW) platform, giving customers greater automated intelligence, and a platform suitable for the adoption of the emerging enterprise Artificial Intelligence technologies.

Zarion has invested over €6m in Research, Development & Innovation (RDI) during this time, funded by revenue growth and government support. Part of this investment was the formation of an Innovation Partnership Projects (IPP) with Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The project was a global research study on the future of work in financial services, supporting the advancement of new insights into work practices and the application of emerging technologies.

The aim was to uncover how Intelligent Technologies (AI, ML, Intelligent Automation, Intelligent Data) impact people, work and the workplace — with a specific focus on the financial services industry.

Academic outputs included the opportunity to harness the collective knowledge in human behaviour, human factors, change management, operations management, and big data analysis (AI & ML) to explore innovative concepts and systems for intelligent work practices.

Assistant Professor Siobhán Corrigan at Trinity’s School of Psychology who worked on the project noted “our partnership with Zarion was of paramount importance as it enabled the creation of empirical based solutions, ensuring their robustness and practical applicability in the insurance and broader financial domain”.

The project was proven to be successful and has validated the future needs in this market as well as allowing the company to develop new products and services. Aidan Dillon, Head of Engineering at Zarion stated that “the IPP gave us the ability to grow and develop the business (with jobs growth expected over the next 2-3 years), increase our customers base and get deeper into current clients. We now have strong evidence to show customers and get their buy in”.

Furthermore, Zarion has committed to a long-term investment in RDI and is engaged in a second, larger phase of research with TCD that is EI funded.