Spotlight Interview: Geraldine Quinlan Burke

To start off a new year at CORE Tech, we sat down with Geraldine Quinlan Burke, General Manager of CORE Tech, who has navigated the business for almost 20 years, her journey is intertwined with the growth of the business and speaks volumes about her commitment, passion, and profound understanding of the industry and what makes CORE Tech thrive.

So, tell me a little bit about yourself and how it all started?

So a little bit about myself, I am an IT graduate, I started in Tralee RTC many years ago, I was an IT student, I have always been interested in IT and I came from a farming background. My role initially was IT server support and things like that, I lived in Dublin for a while and worked with big security companies, I then had the opportunity to come home. Then in 2004, the role at Core came available and I originally started as a business analyst, I went out to visit customers, understood what their needs were, what requirements they had and obviously if they were an Agri customer that was great as I understood their business better. I worked initially as a Business Analyst and then I was promoted to Senior Business Analyst, I then moved on and headed up the Customer Support side of the business and then post acquisition in 2015 by Cultura Technologies, I became operations manager and then in 2022 I became the general manager. I have been with CORE for 20 years at this point.

Do you have any personal ties to the industry?

I have a lot of personal ties to agriculture, I grew up on a dairy farm, so when I was a kid what I used to do to earn pocket money was I used to go and milk the cows and bring them in, I was involved in feeding calves etc.

It is very much a part of the fibre that makes me up, I came from a generational farming background, my grandparents and great grandparents all came from the land as well. Also, my IT side then comes in because I have always been interested in IT and technology and it being at the cusp of things as they have happened in tech.

I remember when we had dial up internet, I saw that moving on to where we are now with having solutions in the cloud and the steps that came in between. I have seen a lot about what clunky solutions looked like 20 years ago and how slick things become now.

Why are you passionate about Agri-Food and providing software?  

In order to work in the industry and to stay in it for any length of time, you have to have a certain passion about it. You have to really feel what it’s like to be a farmer, so I have been there and have seen first hand what it’s like to be a farmer so what I focus on is how we can make things better for the farmer as they are our ultimate customer.

For example, how can we make it easier for farmers to supply milk, to get paid, to make profit, to keep their life on the farm going against all challenges that are put in front of them. How can we make an impact in terms of an environmental impact? Everybody needs to eat, and I see our role in the industry and with our customers as fundamental, so that ties in with the Cultura mentality as well, we are working in the most important industry in the world, we are feeding people and I think that is really important.

I think if you really believe in what you want to do and it makes up the fibre of what you are and what you do, it’s very easy to be passionate about it.

How do you hope to shape Agri-food in Ireland and the UK?

I think what we can do in CORE is we can be fundamental in helping to shape the industry, how we deliver our solutions is through very close collaboration with our customer base. There is no point in us thinking it all up and saying okay we have these great ideas and pushing them… we have a fantastic customer base who come to us with ideas and tell us this is where the industry is going and where the market is going and ask how we can help them.

It’s true that a collaborative approach, sprinkling in the passion that we have for what we do and wanting to make things better is going to be fundamental in how we will continue to shape Agri-Food, I think we have already done a lot of shaping of how technology is used in a farm, with businesses that serve the farmer and I think we continue to be central to that as well.

Why are partnerships so important to CORE?

Partnerships are essential to how we work, I don’t really see our customers as customers, I see them as partners.

What is really important to me right from the moment that we have an opportunity with a customer, either to win a new customer or to increase our footprint with a customer, I see that as partnership opportunity. We partner with the people, the software is a little bit of what we provide, but what we really provide is that partnership and collaborative approach. The solution should be the undercurrent of what we do, but really what we provide to them is that technology innovation that they need to run their business and we can’t do that without our partners.

How are you developing and shaping the culture at CORE?

Culture in CORE is something that is really important to me personally and the culture in how we operate our business. The number one factor in terms of our values is respect, that we respect each other, that we respect what our customers are trying to do and what we are trying to do for the industry as well.

We have the culture in our own business in CORE, but also what is a huge asset to us is the culture of Cultura. We have all these similar business who are working in the same way as us, with the passion we have, wanting to make a real change in the industry, a real tangible change and I think in bringing the leaders of all those businesses together and then bringing all of the layers of the people who are working in those businesses together, we can really make an impact in the industry and we can foster that culture right across the industry as well.

How do CORE keep on top of trends?

With the industry we work in, and the industries we work in right across Cultura it is really important for us to know where Agri is going. What’s important, how we can pivot to change it?

So we work in collaboration with our partners like AgTech Ireland and with our Cultura partners and we look globally at what is happening from both a tech perspective and Agri/retail perspective to see what we can do and what impact we can make, it’s really important that we keep our finger on the pulse, that we know what is going on and we know what we have to do in order to service the farmers and customers at the end of the day.

It’s pertinent that we must do that, we have a strong business development function within our business to understand that and to learn more, and we have partnerships that are not just tech partners and not just our customer partnerships, but real industry partners as well. We work with the Government in terms of legislation in understanding what’s coming up, what we need to develop and really working and ensuring that whatever we deliver is in line with what is needed.

Sustainability and traceability are going to be two trends that are going to continue over the next 5-10 years, it’s going to become bigger and bigger in Agri and CORE are lucky enough to be at the forefront of that in understanding it and developing it as well.

Lastly, what do you enjoy about working for CORE?

What I love about working for CORE, what makes me wake up every day with a smile on my face and looking forward to going to work is, and I know it sounds like a trite response that people always say but no two days are the same. My role is very versatile, so I’m the general manager of CORE, but it is essential to me that I work very closely with our customers and that I work with the team in CORE. My role has to ensure that I keep on top of making sure my customers are happy, my team are happy, because happy customers and a happy team work well together. So that ties in to how we want to collaborate.

But, what I love the most about my job, I can bring my personal passions for farming, agriculture as a consumer and I can see how a business that I lead, can actually make changes that make real differences to that industry and that is something that makes me feel good every day.

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A huge thank you to Geraldine for taking the time to sit down and discuss her passion for the business and the industry and how she and her team plan to move forward on partnerships, trends and culture.

Interviewer: Amy Doherty, Group Marketing Manager, CORE Tech