Scaling is a critical challenge for many Irish businesses. Models that work very effectively in the Irish market face very different challenges in a European or global context. The story of Taxback and how founder and CEO Terry Clune has taken a business idea stimulated by the challenge of recouping taxes while working as a student in Germany in the mid nineties to a multi-national business is truly inspirational.
Terry came in on Friday June 24th 2011 to the IMI Diploma in Strategy and Innovation to recount the story and to give some insights as how Taxback today has clients in over 100 countries and works with partners such as Visa Europe, Barclaycard and Saon group to deliver an ever increasing range of tax and visa services. Terry offered three key insights:
First, ensure you recruit motivated and positive people; second, use the entire team to generate ideas and reward them accordingly and thirdly continually ask your customers as to other services your business can provide. Terry’s vision and energy is now also focused on motivating the Irish Diaspora to generate employment in Ireland through a very original but simple concept of providing a finders’ fee per job created. Given his track record to date, this could prove to be a real winner in the Irish recovery story.
