“Strategy creates competitive advantage,

People and a culture of innovation sustain it,

Technology and communications are the means by which it is delivered.”

We are a team of digital transformation experts from a variety of backgrounds – technical, design, marketing and communications, education, some from public sector and some from private sector who bring our talents together to help other organisations transform and adapt to today’s rapid pace of change that is enabled by technology.

Our headquarters are in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We have an office in the US and Saudi Arabia; and an expanding network of partner consultants around the world.  We also have passports and are willing to travel.

The company was founded in 1999 by CEO Niall McKeown, visiting Professor at Ulster University.

Ionology started life as Ion Technologies in 1999; a software company that developed one of the first email marketing tools. We were pretty revolutionary at the time, selling our snazzy technology to clients such as ESPN, EBRD, Reuters, Apple, Jet2.com, Vodafone Ireland and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Our industry was disrupted when new competitors came on the scene with cheaper and more convenient platforms. That was the catalyst that propelled us into a new direction entirely – we wanted to understand the forces that drive change in the marketplace, and drive customer behaviour, how to avoid disruption and how to develop business strategies that create competitive advantage in the digital age. Hence the Ionology digital transformation framework was born – the silver lining on our cloud of disruption.

Our digital transformation framework is a practical business modelling tool that uses evidence to determine direction and create an effective plan of action that unifies leaders, marketers, technologists and innovation/R&D teams. It’s easily implemented and gives rapid results. The best thing about the framework is that it brings razor sharp clarity and transparency to organisations who use it for business planning. Because it relies on data, it gives confidence to teams, sets expectations, defines measurable outcomes, creates accountability and a culture of data-driven decision making. You can read more about it in our book, The Seven Principles of Digital Business Strategy.

We help business leaders deliver digital transformation primarily through leadership development courses but also through consultancy. We teach leaders how to use our framework to create a roadmap for transformation based on evidence. We help leaders make the transition from traditional business thinking to thinking like a digital innovator. It’s not about being more technically savvy, it’s about making the shift in mindset adapted to today’s rapid pace of change and marries customer needs with products and services in new, innovative ways that are more often than not enabled by technology. We help leaders create an organisational culture that more customers want to do business with and that more people want to work in.