CV Technology Innovator Awards 2016

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TAKING IT to the next level

Numerix is disrupting the FinTech industry taking next generation trading and risk solutions to the next level.

Steve O’Hanlon, CEO & James Jockle, CMO talk us through the techniques it has employed to bring it to its current, market leading success.

software solutions

We profile Aatrix Software and explore how it came to achieve its phenomenal success.

Corporate Vision l Technology Innovator Awards 2016

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WELCOME TO THE TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR AWARDS 2016 Technology has completely revolutionised the corporate landscape, providing businesses with a myriad of unique opportunities.

From instant communication through to advances in product and service offerings, almost every aspect of the modern business market has been influenced by technology. Therefore this sector has taken centre stage as a crucial component of any business and, with some of the most significant technological changes being made in the fields of productivity and communication, doors have been opened for businesses of all types, from SMEs to large multi-nationals, to capitalise on easier access to international markets and streamlined processes.

As the corporate world continues to evolve, the importance of technology and its role in the evolution of the business market cannot be overstated, and as such the 2016 Technology Innovator Awards were designed to recognise and reward the individuals, departments and firms behind the ground-breaking developments that change the way we do business for the better.

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THE WINNE 6. Numerix - Best Risk Analytics Technology Provider & Most Innovative Analytics Platform: Numerix Numerix Oneview 10. Aatrix Software - Most Innovative Accounting Software Company - USA

12. Erdmann Design AG - Award for Innovation in Medical Tech Human Centred Design - Switzerland 14. Mutare, Inc. - Best for Unified Communications Software Solutions - USA

16. Pharmidex - Best CNS Drug Discovery Solutions Company & CV Innovation Award: Human Hookworm Vaccine Project 18. ScienceLogic - Most Innovative IT Monitoring Platform - USA

20. 4bears Technolgies - Best IBM Mainframe Environment Developer - Brazil 21. Aareon UK Limited - Best Housing Management Systems Supplier - UK

22. Adgistics - Best Brand Management Technology: Brand Centre” - UK & Recognised Leader in Proprietary Marketing - UK 23. ACEA Biosciences Inc. - Premier Cell Analysis Instrument of 2016: xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell Analyzer

24. AMI Group LTD - Best for After-Theft Recovery Technology & Recognised Leaders in Plant Security Systems - UK

25. Archetype, Inc. - Best Athlete Biometric Monitoring Technology: PlayerMD & Most Innovative IoT Sensor Integration Platform: TerraTrace™ 26. Asite - Best Global Cloud Technology Company

27. Biogas Technology Limited - Best Landfill Site Support Company - Europe & CV Environmental Stability Award - Europe 28. Body Labs - Best in 3D Body Modelling Software - New York 29. breatheHR - Best HR Software Company - UK

30. Business Systems UK Ltd - Best for Call Retrieval & Replay Technology - UK & Recognised Leaders in Workforce Optimisation Solutions - UK 31. Centium Software - Best Event Management Software Company 32. CJC Ltd - Best Managed Support Service Provider & Recognised Leaders in Financial Technology 33. Complis® - Best Workflow Solutions Software: Complis® - UK & Most Innovative Tech SME - East Midlands 34. Concirrus Ltd - Best IoT Company - UK 35. CoreHealth Technologies Inc. - Best Corporate Wellness Platform 36. DataGenetic Ltd - Best for Smart Commodity Data Management Software 38. Data Systems Analysts, Inc. - Recognised Leaders in Mission Critical Systems & Software - USA & Most Innovative Social Networking App: milSuite 39. Distributed Management Systems Ltd - Best Authentication Technology Company – UK & CV Excellence Award for Cybersecurity - UK 40. EARA Technologies Inc. - Best Safety Information Management System – Xilo 41. Estée Lauder Companies - Best Skin Care & Beauty Product Manufacturers & Award for Innovation in Enterprise Managed Technology Services 42. Exceedra Software Ltd - Most Innovative Integrated Business Planning Company 44. Falafel Software Inc. - Most Innovative Software Development Engineers: ‘Falafel Software Inc’ 45. foosye® - Best Mobile Food Industry Platform: foosye® - USA 46. Green Energy Options Ltd - Best for Home Energy Management Products 47. Imprivata - Best Healthcare IT Company - UK & CV Innovation Award for Cybersecurity - UK 48. Improved Apps Limited - Best in Enterprise Success Planning 2016 49. IRM Security - Best Cybersecurity Consultancy - UK 50. ITStaff® - Best IT Contract Consulting Service - USA 51. KPMG Small Business Accounting - Best New Small Business Accounting Service 2016 & CV Innovation Award for Financial Services Technology 52. Locassa Ltd - Best App Development Company 2016 - UK 53. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) - Award for Innovation in Learning Technology 2016 - London 54. Loop - Best Mobile Recruitment Solution 2016 55. Majority Strategies - Most Trusted Targeted Mobile Advertising Company - USA 56. Meritec Limited - Digital Supplier of the Year 2016 - UK & CV Innovation Award: ESB Agile 57. MeWatt Corporation - Best Energy Conservation Technology: ‘MeWatt Corporation’ 58. Multi Tech Systems Inc - Best for Industrial Internet Communications Equipment - USA 59. NAJMTEK - Most Innovative Hybrid IT Device: UBook 60. Netnumber, Inc - Most Innovative Signal Control Platform: NetNumber TITAN 61. OnShore Technology Group, Inc - Best for Life Science Verification Services & Most Innovative Enterprise Validation & Quality Management System: ValidationMaster™ 62. OpusVL - Award for Innovation in Open Source Business Management Software - UK 63. Path Solutions - Best Islamic Core Banking System Provider 64. Peratech Holdco Limited - Best Force-Sensing HMI/MMI Solutions Company - UK & CV Innovation Award: QTC® SP Sensors 65. Qcom Outsourcing Ltd. - Best Technical Outsourcing Company 2016 - Europe - Outcome based outsourcing; a way of life for Qcom 66. QualiTest Group - Best Software Testing Company 2016 & Recognised Leader in Software Testing Outsourcing 67. ReproCELL Europe - Most Renowned for Innovation in Cell Technology 2016 & Development of Advanced 3D Tissue Models using Alvetex 68. Sammedia Limited - Most Innovative Fintech Firm - UK & Best Money Management Platform: Moneyinfo 69. Semafone Limited - Most Innovative Call Centre Technology Solution 2016 70. StatPro Group - Best Portfolio Analytics Software Solutions Company & Award for Innovation in Asset Management Technology 71. Strategic Management Partners - Most Advanced Independent Consultancy - Brighton & Hove 72. Sysrepublic - Best Retail Data Analytics Company & Recognised Leaders in POS Solutions 73. Systech International - Recognised Leaders in Brand Protection Solutions - USA & Most Innovative Authentication Technology: UniSecure™ 74. Tavant Technologies Inc - Best Building Custom Technology Solutions Provider & Recognised Leader in Independent Software Testing 75. Terso Solutions, Inc - Best Automated Inventory Solutions Company - Wisconsin 76. Veriphy Ltd - Best for Anti-Money Laundering Checks 2016 77. Visual Connnections LLC - Most Innovative IT Project & Portfolio Management Company - USA 78. VMware, Inc - Best Business Mobility Virtualisation Company 79. Youcall-it.com - Best IT Service Platform: youcall-it.com 80. Accretive Technologies Inc - Best Business Optimisation Platform: X-Act Optimal Business Control & Most Innovative Predictive Analytics Company – USA 80. Ace IT Relocation Ltd - Best IT Relocation Services Company - UK 81. Acronym - Best for Intent-Based Marketing Strategies 81. Ad2pro Media Solutions - Most Innovative Global Digital Advertising Company 2016 82. Adaptrade Software - Best Systematic Trading Software: Adaptrade Builder & Most Innovative Financial Software Company - California 82. Aria Systems, Inc. - Best Cloud-Based Billing Provider - USA 83. Avalara - Best VAT Automation Solutions Provider 83. BELLIN - Best Treasury Focussed Software: tm5

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ERS ARE...

84. ChannelAdvisor - E-Commerce Platform of the Year

84. Chromaflo Technologies - Best International Chemical & Pigment Dispersions Supplier

85. ClearStructure Financial Technology - Most Innovative Portfolio Management Solution: Sentry PM™

85. Computer Data Source Inc. - Best 3rd Party EMC Support Provider & Recognised Leader in OEM Quality Services 86. Comtec Group Ltd - Best Travel Technology Company - UK 86. CRF Health - Best eCOA Solution: TrialMax®

87. Crossgates Gas Service and Maintenance Ltd - Best Heating Engineer 2016 - Fife 87. Concentrix Corporation - Best Insurance Administration Solutions Partner

88. Data Direct (Thames Valley) Ltd. - Best Remote Monitoring and Management Software: PIPS 88. Data8 Limited - Best Data Solutions Provider - UK

89. DM3D Technology, LLC - Best Additive Metal 3D Company – USA & Most Innovative Additive Metal Process: DMD®

89. E direct Link Ltd - Best Web Design Company - South West & Recognised Leaders in Online Marketing - South West 90. Eagle Point Software Corporation - Best Autodesk Implementation & Support System: Pinnacle Series 90. Elixir Technologies Corporation - Most Trusted CCM Software Company 2016 – USA & Most Innovative BXP SaaS Platform: Tango+ 91. Enhanced Software Products, Inc. (ESP) - Most Client-Focused Credit Union Solutions Company – Washington & Best Core Processing Software: FORZA3™ 91. Fastsms Ltd - SMS Service Provider of the Year – UK & Best SMS Business Platform 2016 - UK 92. Fat Media - Best e-Commerce Website Provider 2016 92. Financial Recovery Technologies - Best for Investment Claim Filing & Monitoring Systems 93. Goal Group Ltd - Best Global Tax Reclamation Company & Recognised Leaders in Class Actions Recovery 93. HBXL Ltd - Best Estimation Software: EstimatorXpress 94. Independent Purchasing Cooperative, Inc. - Most Innovative Supply Chain Information Technology 2016 94. InPhase Limited - Best in Business Intelligence & Performance Management Solutions – UK 95. International Financial Systems - Best International Banking Software Provider 95. iPayX - Best for Electronic Billing Solutions - Mid-West USA 96. Interoute - Best European Cloud Services Platform 2016 & Best ICT Acquisition: Interoute/Easynet 96. Itiviti AB - Best for Electronic Trading Technology Solutions & Most Innovative Trading Platform: Tbricks by Itiviti 97. LINKFRESH Software Limited - Best Food Supply Chain Software Company - Europe 97. Lionbridge - Most Distinguished in Language Translation Solutions 2016 & CV Innovation Award: onDemand 98. MCR Systems - Best Enterprise Management Solutions Supplier – UK & CV Innovation Award: Symphony Suite 98. MyGate - Best Online Payment Gateway 2016 - Africa 99. Microtrading Ltd - Best IT Support Solutions Provider 2016 - UK 100. Netformx - Most Innovative Cloud & Telecom Solutions Provider - California & Best Multivendor Proposal Product: Netformx SalesXpert 100. NGCodec - Best IP Technology Provider 2016 - California 101. NRG - Best Integrated Power Company - USA 101. Ocean Harvest Technology - Most Pioneering International Aquaculture Company 2016 - Ireland 102. OnPath - Best Direct Marketing Agency – Canada 102. OpenMarket - Most Innovative Mobile Engagement Solutions Provider 103. Pi Communications - Most Innovative Television Company 2016 - Ireland 103. Process Solutions, Inc. - Recognised Leaders in Process Fluid Purification - Ohio 104. p-Tech ltd - Most Innovative SME IT Consultants 2016 - West Midlands 104. Richard Chambers GmbH - Most Innovative Emissions-Reduction Product Programme 105. RAE Computing Ltd - Best IT Support Company 2016 – Yorkshire 105. Rebmark Legal Solutions - Rebmark Legal Solutions - Best Software Solutions for Injury Lawyers 2016 106. Redland Business Solutions Limited - Best Business Software Company Worcestershire & Best Financial Services Compliance Platform: Insight 106. Ribose - Best Secure Collaboration Platform 107. Robokind - Best International Social Robotics Company 2016 107. TeamCard - Best for Sports Card System Design Solutions 108. ServicePower Technologies, Plc - Best for Mobile Workforce Management Software Solutions 108. Shaping Tomorrow Limited - Best Use of AI Software in Consultancy Practices 109. Solar South West Ltd - Best Solar PV Systems Installation Company - Somerset 109. Solarvista Software - Best Field Service Software Provider 2016 110. SORCE Intranet - Best Intranet Software Solutions Provider 2016 110. Sycous - Most Innovative Energy Billing Application 111. Symec Technologies - Best for Enterprise Mobile Hardware 111. Tarmin, Inc. - Best Data Defined Storage Solution: GridBank Data Management Platform 112. Technical Solutions and Maintenance, Inc. - Best for Business Process Reengineering - South-Eastern USA 112. Technology Associates Limited - Best SME IT Training Company 2016 - UK 113. Translational Research In Oncology (TRIO) - Most Innovative Cancer Research Organisation - Canada 113. Utilitywise - Best Energy Management System Provider 2016 114. Urban Foresight - Best International Smart Cities Consultants 2016 114. Vecta - Sales & Management Solution of the Year 2016 115. Via Wire - Most Dedicated SME IT Support Company - South East 115. W2 Global Data - Award for Innovation in Financial Technology & 2016 Customer Excellence Award in Computing 116. World Programming - Best International Data Analysis Software Provider & Most Innovative Data Analysis Solution: WPS 117. Hughes Systique Pvt Ltd - Best Multimedia Software Development Consultants

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Best Business Technology Solutions Company - UK

AdEPT Telecom plc is one of only a handful of Telecoms companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. They supply services to nearly 20,000 customers across the UK, including many well-known national companies, 40 Councils and some Central Government departments.

We spoke to Ian Fishwick, Chief Executive, about the products offered by AdEPT and their exceptional customer service.

As the company that profoundly innovated and pioneered the space for multi-asset class derivatives pricing, Numerix has evolved from a dominate analytics player to a global, enterprise risk technology company providing next generation trading and risk solutions to financial services institutions. It was Numerix’s experience in unwinding Lehman Brothers’ derivatives book post-bankruptcy that propelled the company forward in terms of establishing a future vision for effective risk management solutions. Steven explains.

“Since its inception in 1996, Numerix technology has helped hundreds of financial institutions optimize trading and risk operations, provide visibility into total cost of trading derivative products operations, reduce risk exposures, reducing capital charges while improving return on equity – ultimately facilitating cost savings through the reduction of legacy and duplicative systems.”

Numerix’s dominance and leadership position as a front office pricing company in its early years enabled the firm to develop risk solutions consistently and holistically. As a result, in the aftermath of the financial crisis Numerix was first to market with Basel III’s CVA requirement, recognized as the adjustment to the fair value price of derivative instruments to account for counterparty credit risk.

Having now pivoted to risk, the company once again anticipated which direction the market was moving so took steps to cohesively build out all of the front office XVA adjustments for pretrade pricing, as well as counterparty credit risk exposures and market risk measures.

Many of the institutions Numerix is working with have found themselves at a critical inflection point toward transforming their trading operations with the goal of bringing front and middle offices together on same technology platform.

What is clear, the relationship between risk management, capital efficiency and liquidity is

crystallized by the new regulatory requirements, forging a direct link between the quality of risk management and the ability to manage capital and liquidity efficiently.

“Today’s sell-side institutions are changing.

New interacting regulations focused on the trading book are linking different elements of the market. Whether it be FRTB, SA-CCR or XVA we’re witnessing a front office operating model transformation.”

New business models pursued by the sell side also require substantial shift in analytics infrastructure. The impact of FRTB for example is not just about the capital that firms have to hold and their PnL attribution, but more fundamentally on the way they are organized and structured.

“Now a robust enterprise technology company our next generation risk technology platform, Numerix Oneview supports front office trading and middle office risk in a unified way acting as the single source of truth for trades, valuations and analytics.”

Numerix CrossAsset is the firm’s flagship brand. The Numerix CrossAsset library offers the industry’s most comprehensive collection of models, allowing institutions to price any conceivable instrument using the most advanced calculations. Numerix offers the ability to model any type of OTC instrument using a comprehensive mathematical library and transparent pricing framework providing a unified platform for consistent valuations across all positions and asset classes – underpinning a powerful risk calculation process.

With the Numerix CrossAsset model library and robust calculation engine at its foundation, the Numerix Oneview Enterprise platform includes enabling component technologies that can be leveraged for addressing specific functions within banks and insurance companies.

Oneview pricing and risk applications can be extended to address structured products distribution, front office trade capture, desk and

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Company: AdEPT Telecom Plc Name: Ian Fishwick Email:Ian.fishwick@adept-telecom.co.uk Company: Numerix Web Address: www.adept-telecom.co.uk Name: James Jockle, Chief Marketing Officer Address: Oakhurst House, 77 Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells TN4 8BS Web Address: http://www.numerix.com/ 07720 Address: Telephone: 99 Park Avenue Fl.555050 5 NY, NY 10016

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Best Risk Analytics Technology Provider & Most Innovative Analytics Platform: Numerix Oneview

portfolio level market risk, counterparty credit risk, pre-trade pricing and XVA adjustments as well as calculations for Basel III related regulatory compliance for bank capital and margin requirements.

What sets both Numerix CrossAsset and Numerix Oneview platform apart from its competitors is the consistency of the analytics which underpin both solutions, according to Steven, who recognises the need for differentiation in such a competitive market.

“Our platform’s flexibility, dynamic user interface and customizable user workflow gives users the ability to bridge silos between departments and holistically visualize risk for front office/ pre-trade analysis as well as post-trade middle office. Working from a single platform, users can optimize capital, collateral, funding and other variables to maximize enterprise profitability.”

Elements of enterprise model risk management, governance and validation ecosystem have also been accelerated by global regulators. As regulators bring standards even higher, financial institutions’ revenue lines are at risk of regulatory curbs on trading.

“Increasing regulatory demands slow down the validation process, and validation backlogs develop. Firms fall victim to nimbler competitors if they cannot act quickly on opportunities.”

Numerix’s regulatory solution for validating models brings automation to this challenge, where speed is only a question of the amount of compute power that can be brought to bear. Numerix’s mathematical approach and parallel computation framework allows more rigorous tests to be carried out over thousands of scenarios.

“Our approach gives our clients rigor and thoroughness that is head-and-shoulders above the market, ensuring business lines suffer no regulatory disruptions.”

O’Hanlon adds that the firm’s mission is firmly focused around its clients and their future success, highlighting the company’s client focused approach which underpins every aspect of the services it provides.

“Our mission is to help global financial institutions transform their pricing and risk analytics strategy to achieve their goals – whether it be to increase revenue, acquire new clients, realize cost savings, achieve regulatory compliance or increase operational efficiency.

With Numerix financial institutions can attain a holistic view into their risk exposure from a single platform driving risk-informed forecasting and decision making capabilities for optimized profitability.”

“To achieve this we have always been keen to ensure that our relationship with our customers comes first – we listen, understand and address their challenges with optimized trading and risk analytics solutions.”

Additionally, as Numerix continues down its path towards pioneering bank transformation the entrepreneurial spirit never ceases to inspire its thinking.

“Driven by big ideas and a unique vision I constantly endeavour to instil change, define new markets and disrupt the status quo. Being a FinTech disruptor means inventing and adopting new approaches that push the bounds of innovation and drive our technology forward.”

Looking to the future, O’Hanlon was optimistic about the firm’s continued success.

“Going forward we will continue to focus on selling solutions and remaining customercentric. Numerix is now moving from a stage of organic growth to one that would be acquisitive.

We will also focus on expanding the footprint of front office risk management platform” Over the next three years, Numerix has the unique opportunity to be disruptive and capitalize on rapidly changing market dynamics.

Its growth strategy also requires it to anticipate market needs and trends.”

The latest available technology has also been driving change as Numerix continues to develop its pricing and risk solutions. Reduced memory costs and change in the nature of compute costs is challenging conventional computational approaches.

With regards to the wider market, O’Hanlon has high hopes specifically for its performance based technology. Leveraging computation techniques like GPU technology can significantly speed up performance, as well as new mathematical approaches like Adjoint Algorithmic Differentiation.

“As banks are undergoing various elements of transformation within their institutions we see two things happening – banks that refuse to challenge the status quo, and banks that are going to embrace change. While challenges will continue to take shape in terms of from a software, data management, IT infrastructure and architecture perspective those that successfully implement change will have a fundamental operating advantage in the market as they’ve opted to spend more today, to reduce cost in the future.

“Therefore, in the future we foresee the market adopting a more integrated and holistic approach for managing risk, assessing trade profitability and allocating capital to their businesses. This combines real-time performance and a robust IT infrastructure for risk and pre-trade pricing.

“Whether leveraged to drive growth or innovation the concept of agile analytics will also, we believe, become increasingly popular in the coming years. From our perspective, while real-time and predictive analytics are well defined, agile means consistent, flexible, scalable and responsive.”

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Over 700 clients and 90 partners across more than 26 countries have come to rely on Numerix analytics for speed and accuracy in valuing and managing the most sophisticated financial instruments.

With offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, Vancouver, London, Paris, Milan, Helsinki, Frankfurt, Dubai, Beijing, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Taipei, Numerix brings together unparalleled expertise across all asset classes and engineering disciplines.

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Most Innovative Accounting Software Company - USA

Aatrix Software Aatrix Software offers software solutions designed to support a range of clients with their accounting needs. We profile the firm and explore how it came to achieve its phenomenal success.

Located in Grand Forks, ND, Aatrix Software has been developing innovative accounting software solutions since its establishment in 1986 by Steve Lunseth, who remains the firm’s President and CEO. Originally founded to develop Macintosh accounting and payroll applications, Aatrix’s Electronic Forms Division has established itself as a leader in payroll tax forms, providing Electronic Payroll Reports and eFiling (Windows and Macintosh) to accounting software. Aatrix’s finance software has received numerous awards, including Software Digests highest overall rating and Home Office Computing Editors Pick.

In 1998 Aatrix established a Windows® development group given a mission to create a comprehensive state and federal payroll reporting solution module that could be integrated with any accounting software. Today, after millions of dollars invested and armed with a US Patent, The Aatrix Electronic Forms Division is now one of the nation’s premier payroll reporting specialists.

The recently released Aatrix State Payroll Reports™ module for Windows provides over 300 certified payroll reporting forms that are completed from host data and can be printed on plain paper and mailed, or electronically filed utilizing Aatrix’s eFile Center.

The revolutionary -Point™ eFile Center allows clients to eFile any of the supported state and federal payroll reports to one site for processing.

Once they have reviewed the form, clients simply select “eFile” and the information is sent directly to the Aatrix Payroll eFile Center, from which they will then receive confirmation that the file was received via email. The form is processed and sent to the appropriate agency, making it incredibly quick and simple, as well as reducing the amount of paper firms waste.

In addition, Aatrix’s State & Fed Payroll Reports allows Payroll customers to automatically complete over 330 state & federal unemployment, withholding, and new hire reports from the payroll data within their payroll software. Aatrix’s State & Fed Payroll Reports eliminates the need to create these reports manually. Once the reports are automatically completed, reviewed, and edited on screen, they are printed on plain paper, ready to be mailed or eFiled in minutes to the Aatrix eFile Center for processing.

The interface is simple to understand, easy to use, and makes quarterly and annual reporting a snap. Aatrix’s State & Fed Payroll Reports is a comprehensive state reporting tool that gives instant and seamless integration to tax forms and new hire reports for each state, ensuring that clients remain current with all state tax reporting and state law changes.

Alongside this, Aatrix Top Pay for Mac is a powerful payroll software designed by Mac users for Mac users. Top Pay combines an easy-to-use interface with an impressive set of features perfect for small businesses. Choose the features that fits the company best: small companies can keep things simple, while larger companies can take advantage of the more powerful features.

Finally, Aatrix Print & Mail Payroll Reports allows the payroll customers to automatically complete over 330 state and federal unemployment, withholding, and new hire reports from the payroll data within Top Pay. Aatrix Print & Mail Payroll Reports eliminate the need to create these state and federal reports manually.

Once the reports are automatically completed, reviewed, and edited on screen, they are printed on plain paper ready to be mailed or eFiled to the Aatrix eFile Center for processing.

The interface is simple and easy to use, making quarterly and annual reporting a snap. Aatrix Print & Mail Payroll Reports is a comprehensive state reporting tool that gives instant and seamless integration with tax forms and new hire reports for each state. Stay current with all state tax reporting and state law changes.

Working collaboratively with a range of industry partners including Open Systems, DealerBuilt and Sage, Aatrix are able to provide clients with comprehensive solutions which are compatible with both Mac and Windows computers.

Moving forward, Aatrix will continue to expand its Electronic Forms Division, adding Human Resource, Sales Tax, and other forms needed by the accounting community. Aatrix’s patent pending FormViewer and electronic forms development capacity will allow deployment of many additional electronic reporting forms with eFile ability.

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Company: Aatrix Software Address: 2100 Library Circle, Grand Forks, 58201 Phone: (800) 426-0854 Email: sales@aatrix.com Website: https://www.aatrix.com/

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Award for Innovation in Medical Tech Human Centred Design - Switzerland

Erdmann Design focuses on providing marketable, human centered designs for the medical industry. We explore this innovative firm and gain an insight from CEO Raimund Erdmann.

The time between medical product approval and market introduction can be lengthy. In strategic workshops, Erdmann Design presents the process and development steps in a target-oriented manner to speed up the product launch. Raimund outlines this process and how the company aims to always offer firms quality service with added value.

“Our tried and tested tool as an insight platform for project and risk management. Design, engineering and marketing teams work together – from the very start. Doctors, nurses, care attendants and patients are involved in the development stage because their needs, concerns and experiences provide the decisive impetus for product development.”

Providing knowledge from the market, for the market, is essential for success. The experience map provides valuable insights into what the market expects from new products. Areas which the firm specialise in are navigated surgery, robotic surgery and laser surgery. Raimund outlines the means by which the firm is revaluating the design process in these markets, drawing on its specialist knowledge and experience.

“Until fairly recently, many corporations only thought of design as a way to “make things pretty”. It was up to engineers to innovate and add functions. But this approach leads to a pitfall: A new function is only as good as its acceptance by the customer. In order to avoid surprises in the market, product development needs to be started with a preliminary project and requires more intelligence than engineers can bring to the table. Not just individuals but even businesses are prone to information overload these days. In order to make sense of a sea of information and development options, people skilled in pattern recognition and visual communication are needed; this is exactly what designers excell in. Today, essential contributions to successful innovation and corporate strategy are expected from designers.

They visualize the world as it could be, even if what they envision is a significant jump from current reality. The designer’s ability to render new ideas tangible serves to drive rapid buy-in and improve the decision-making and iteration processes.

“We see design is a corporate strategy: Leading businesses who wish to be competitive in tomorrow’s markets must be ready to innovate usability. Human centered design is a new strategic approach that helps to streamline the innovation

process. Solutions-driven and value-creating, human centered design accelerates product development by conducting different processes in parallel.

“An essential question that defines design driven product development is the characterisation of the market. Medical technology companies that outsource the design process enable external partners to get early feedback about new product ideas from the end user - namely medical professionals and patients. This work flow reduces the bias that is generated through existing buyer-seller relationships. By outsourcing design, companies buy themselves the freedom to be wrong (for a little while), in order to find new and better ways to be right on target with the final product. “It is too heavy.” “It is too small.” Such may be the verdict of a first consumer analysis. But “heavy” can also amount to “more stable”. When an end user finds an early mock-up “too small”, this may signify that larger, cheaper components can be used for the final version.

“Therefore, during the initial phase of market research, our engineers and designers are already developing ergonomic prototypes. Our early testing approach optimizes further product development.

Problems are discovered and solved faster.

Designers play a key exploratory role. Their goal is the development of a convincing, smart product which accentuates a positive user experience through intelligent design.”

In addition, Raimund explains that the firm is not just committed to supporting clients: the wider industry is also a focus, and through their partnerships with centres of excellence such as the University of Zürich, the company is able to support industry members around the world and throughout the medical industry.

“Our commitment is not restricted to the academic world in the area of further education and training; we pass our knowledge on to companies through “hands-on” design workshops.”

As a final comment, Raimund outlines his hopes for the future of Erdmann Design AG. “Looking ahead, we are keen to become the strategic partner for a larger engineering or strategy consultancy, in order to work collaboratively to support a wider range of clients.”

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Company: Erdmann Design AG Address: Stahlrain 2, 5200 Brugg, Switzerland Phone: +41 56 460 9 460 Email: info@erdmann.ch Website: http://www.erdmann.ch/

Visual: Dental Implantology with user.

Text: Project DENACAN System, www.mininavident.com We help physicians improve patient experience, clinical outcomes and practice productivity in dental implantology.

Miniaturized and ergonomic designers Real-time 3D navigation Interface to implant planning software Reduced planning time

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Best for Unified Communications Software Solutions - USA

Mutare creates customized software that makes communication easy, secure and efficient, with solutions for speech to text transcription, smart collaboration, secure mass notification, analytics and more. We caught up with Scott Brown, Vice President Sales and Marketing, to learn more about the firm’s service offering and explore how it came to win this prestigious title.

For more than 25 years, Mutare has made information access easier and faster for businesses and partners. No one knows more about unified communication and smart notification technologies that help enterprises improve performance.

The company is an independent software developer focused on creating solutions that allow customers to communicate smarter. Through its dedication to innovation and client service, the firm has emerged as the market leader in enterprise-class speech to text deployments and secure communication solutions.

In his opening comments, Scott outlines the importance of creating solutions designed to meet the business needs of each of Mutare’s clients.

“Here at Mutare we create software and software solutions that are typically tailored for each of our customers. All of our current solutions originated from our response to a specific customer or market need. Our focused discovery and pre-sales process is critical to ensuring that we create solutions that truly solve our customer’s communication challenges and make their organizations more responsive.

“Thanks to the success of this approach, we have deployed our solutions to more than 2,000 companies, with two million users worldwide. We have solutions across all industries and verticals with a focus on finance, transportation, legal, manufacturing and healthcare.”

Working in such a dynamic and fast-paced market means that Mutare has to have an equally innovative culture, as Scott explains.

“Mutare maintains a highly entrepreneurial and high-energy culture. We are constantly driven to think ‘outside the box’ in order to meet the unique needs of our customers, but with the understanding that customer satisfaction is best achieved when you have an environment where everyone supports the needs of the internal team.

“Because of this culture, our firm has operated for two and a half decades with near-zero turnover in its operations/support staff. We typically hire people who have done work with us or those we have served, so they already know and appreciate our culture and our approach. We are always looking for individuals who we feel will add value and thrive in our unique environment.”

According to Scott, the greatest impact on the technology market is currently the speed of changes taking place. “The rapid growth of smart phone usage, coupled with the expanded communication capabilities of the Internet, together create an incredibly dynamic market place. This growth has fostered a demand for new ways to approach communication challenges which is something Mutare is keen to cultivate.”

Scott continues, “Mutare stays ahead of the curve by constantly listening to the needs of our customers.

With a large, world-wide customer base, we hear of their challenges and learn about emerging business trends before they are widely addressed.

Our diverse development team is constantly looking for new and different ways to meet the needs of our customers which leads to innovation, and our agile development process allows us to create those innovative solutions at a fraction of the time and cost of larger vendors.”

That is what differentiates Mutare from its competition, according to Scott, who is proud of the firm’s achievements, particularly in the area of product development.

“Our engineering and support team is unmatched in the market both in terms of experience and ongoing dedication to the customer. Our pre-sales, implementation and ongoing support process is truly unique, backed by a development team that is always available to assist customers before, during, and after solution deployment.”

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Company: Mutare Name: Scott Brown Vice President Sales and Marketing Email:sbrown@mutare.com Web Address: mutare.com mutarehealth.com Address: 2325 Hicks Road Rolling Meadows, IL Telephone: 847-496-9006

Looking to the future, Mutare sees its core unified communications market undergoing a dramatic shift. “Mutare has always created solutions to make voicemail and UC better and more useable, and going forward this will continue to be our goal.

But with companies such as Coca Cola and JP Morgan Chase announcing their abandonment of voicemail, the market has responded in kind looking for alternatives. To that end, we have created Smart Assist by Mutare (SAM), which is a full replacement strategy for voicemail.

“The fact is, our customers still want to accommodate client calls but need a way to deliver those messages into a more efficient digital workflow for the sake of their employees. Mutare and SAM do just that. SAM replaces voicemail with a cost-effective, streamlined, text-based callcompletion and delivery system that eliminates the need for, and hassles associated with, management of the voice mailbox. We feel SAM is a disruptive technology that will generate significant market share.”

Mutare is also focused on the growing need for data security as communications are increasingly taking place over smart devices. This trend is of particular concern in the healthcare market. “Addressing the need for data privacy and protection is critical to our Vital Link communication platform, which adheres to all appropriate laws and will adapt around changes in the market moving forward,” says Scott.

“Mutare applications leverage emerging communication technologies that allow clinicians to securely communicate and collaborate with each other on the fly while giving patients better ways to stay in touch with their care providers.

These applications result in improved healthcare outcomes and reduced costs - both key goals for healthcare reform under the Affordable Care Act, and “definitely what Mutare will be focused on in that vertical going forward.”

The 2016 Technology Innovator Awards were designed to recognise and reward the individuals, departments and firms behind the ground-breaking developments that change the way we do business for the better and as such Mutare were awarded ‘Best for Unified Communications Software Solutions - USA’.

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Best CNS Drug Discovery Solutions Company & CV Innovation Award: Human Hookworm Vaccine Project

Pharmidex provides translational solutions using its world renowned expertise in CNS/Oncology, drug discovery and ADMET/PK. Founded in the UK in 2002, the firm operates in state-of-the-art facilities in London and Stevenage to provide high quality bespoke experimental data to support drug discovery and development. We invited Mo Alavijeh, Managing Director of Pharmidex to talk us through the secrets behind the firm’s success.

Pharmidex is a pharmaceutical services company that provides a comprehensive array of integrated early discovery to early development solutions for potential new medicines. On the basis of scientific excellence, the company provides an outstanding (and often bespoke) service from its three state-ofthe-art facilities in the UK: at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, Hatfield Business Park and Northwick Park Hospital. The company’s drug discovery and development professionals have experience in a number of therapeutic areas (particularly central nervous system disorders and cancer), which means that we are well positioned to identify and effectively deal with unexpected risks and issues in an open and transparent fashion.

The industry expertise within Pharmidex and its dynamic client interaction delivers a high level of customer satisfaction and has been the

key in forming strategic international alliances.

Key areas of expertise are: in-vitro & in-life ADMET, Pharmacology, CNS/Oncology, Drug Discovery, Bioanalysis, Metabolite Identification, Bioimaging and toxicology (including Zebrafish).

Our services include both in-vitro and in-life assays in the area of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, assessment of blood-brain barrier penetration, bioanalysis, metabolite Identification, bioimaging, toxicology (including zebrafish), along with preclinical and IND-enabling GLP/GMP programs.

As testimony to the firm’s success we have a list of clients from across the Globe that includes major Pharma, biotechs, governmental institutes, universities and medical charities. We also have extensive experience and success in grant funded research collaborations in the UK, the EU and the North America.

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Company: Pharmidex Pharmaceutical Services Ltd Website: http://www.pharmidex.com/

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Most Innovative IT Monitoring Platform - USA

The ScienceLogic platform was created to enable smarter IT management and monitoring, helping organizations around the world move faster towards their business goals. Co-Founder Dave Link talks us through how the firm achieves this ambitious target.

ScienceLogic is the global leader in hybrid IT monitoring for the network of everything. Over 25,000 global service providers, enterprises, and government organizations rely on ScienceLogic to significantly enhance IT efficiency, optimize operations, and ensure business continuity.

Dave explains how the firm focuses on innovation to create pioneering new solutions for clients.

“ScienceLogic is the first monitoring solution to provide a comprehensive view of all IT components through a single pane of glass, whether they reside in a public cloud environment or on-premises. With over 1,500 dynamic management apps and custom dashboarding capabilities, we deliver the scale, resiliency, and automation needed to simplify the constantly evolving task of managing IT resources, services, and applications.

“Innovation is the core of what we do at ScienceLogic. It is what drove myself and two other co-founders to devise a streamlined, reliable solution to a common problem. Since then, we have built a team of hard working,

forward thinking, passionate employees. Their dedication and connection to ScienceLogic’s mission, to deliver a smarter approach to infrastructure monitoring and management, is unique and palpable.”

In order to achieve this mission ScienceLogic has worked hard to develop and simplify core management and monitoring functions that IT teams rely on to run their businesses efficiently and effectively. Dave explains how the product was built around the company’s client base.

“ScienceLogic was one of the first providers of this type of product, which was created based on a need that the co-founders identified in their previous jobs, and as such our solution is uniquely designed to solve the complex problems that IT professionals face every day.

“Our relationship with our customers is incredibly important to us. Our teams work closely with the customers throughout all stages of the purchasing and on-boarding process to ensure that all needs are met and questions are answered. Our support team is seamlessly integrated into the overall customer experience making it very easy for our clients to get the most out of their solution.

“In addition, because we build our solution with future technology developments in mind, our technology is able to easily adapt to and support new capabilities or hardware over time, ensuring minimal disruption for clients.”

Looking to the future, Dave is keen to emphasise that the future is very bright for ScienceLogic.

“The evolution of technology is accelerating at a speed that many never thought would be possible. The only thing constant in this industry is change, and the success of your company often depends on your ability to rapidly adapt to these changes. Luckily, ScienceLogic has operated with this in mind for over ten years, which means the future is full of opportunity for us. We are on a sharp trajectory of success, and are looking forward to continuing our development of our product.”

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Company: ScienceLogic Email: sales@sciencelogic.com Web Address: www.sciencelogic.com Telephone: +1.800.724.5644

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Best IBM Mainframe Environment Developer - Brazil Company: 4bears Technolgies Name: Alexey Amorim da Hora Email: alexey@4bears.com.br Web Address: http://www.4bears.com.br Address: Alameda Mamoré, 503 – CJ 53 – Barueri – São Paulo - Brazil Telephone: +55-11-2078.3132

4bears develops solutions and services for the IBM mainframe environment. Alexey Amorim da Hora talks us through the firm and its innovative offering.

The technologies used by 4bears products produce operational efficiency and financial ROI results at the same moment they are adopted by customers.

Alexey explains how the firm’s solutions enable it to achieve this.

“4bears goal is offering our customers innovative solutions in the IBM mainframe management and monitoring area. These technologies are breaking some mainframe paradigms and changing culturally the way mainframes analysis are being performed today.

“Our development lab is fully dedicated to improve the mainframe environment, simplify governance, decision support and performance analysis for mainframe data centers. Our lab engineers are always refining and improving the software and services for this platform.

“Ultimately our products promote better governance, security, compliance, management and monitoring of the IBM mainframe environment, doing it efficiently, automated and not consuming the machine resources.”

Big data is the firm’s speciality, and the firm operates heavily in this market. Alexey explains the market and provides us with a unique overview of the landscape currently.

“With cloud technology growing, we invariably open the door of our IBM mainframe legacy systems outside of the datacenters and place them as an important service available to this new economy.

This factor leads the mainframes into being a Big Data generator by nature.

“Big Data can also be qualified as any type of data that tests the limits of a particular technology. In this case, mainframes plays big.

“The mainframe can perform and attend billions transactions daily on a single machine. This massive transaction event generates logs known as SMF (System Measurement Facility) and it is naturally a challenge of Big Data because its distinctive characteristics, different sizes, quantity and speed in which the system generates it. The diversity of source is huge and almost every event on the mainframe can generate an SMF log.

“IT professionals’ were using the mainframe logs in history in a very parsimonious way to meet matters of capacity planning, production analysis or looking into problems when they occur in the environment and needed to be investigated.

“When we hear the term Big Data, automatically we think of a very large amount of data. Certainly, the amount of data is an important fact that we use for qualifying Big Data, but not the only one into consideration.

“Big Data is skyrocketing driven by factors such as scientific data analysis, increased use of mobile devices, new social media networks, among other factors.

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“The new challenge now is to make these logs available in real-time, in a great historical amount of time, online and mainly not consuming too many resources.

“With that, this important mainframe IT asset is available real-time, online and accurate for analysis, allowing customers to take actions and decisions with the speed that the new economy demands.

“It is in this niche that 4bears helps mainframe customers to intercept, collect and store the avalanche of logs generated by billions of transactions and get real-time characteristics of the events that run on the mainframe right into a unique central repository for analysis.”

To round off the interview Alexey assures us that the firm has a bright and exciting future ahead.

“4bears is booming and we have a great future ahead of us. We just opened the operation in the US through the ALA Services LLC, the investment company of Mr. Allen, former CEO of ASG Software.

We have a network of distributors in Europe also, and as such good focus for us moving forward will be our internationalization.”

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Best Housing Management Systems Supplier - UK Company: Aareon UK Ltd Name: Stephen Makin, Managing Director Web Address: www.aareon.co.uk Address: Building 500, Abbey Park, Stareton, Kenilworth, CV8 2LY Telephone: 02476 323723

Aareon UK Limited Aareon UK is part of Europe’s leading provider of systems and consulting service for the housing and property industry. Stephen Makin, Managing Director, talks us through the UK company and the secrets behind its success.

Aareon UK focuses on software and services for Social Housing providers. The company currently has 120 customers throughout the UK, from The Orkney Islands to The Channel Islands, together managing over 600,000 units on Aareon QL software. Stephen explains this innovative software offering and the factors which set it apart from other, similar solutions.

“Aareon configures each Aareon QL solution to meet each customer’s individual needs, requirements and local practices. Aareon Consultants have the experience and knowledge to build and customise our client’s system – no matter how difficult and complex it may be.

“Aareon QL is a truly integrated and highly functional software solution designed specifically to meet the needs of social housing providers. The Aareon QL product suite comprises of Housing, Financials, HR, Asset Management, CRM, EDRM, Mobile Working, Self-service portal, Repairs & Maintenance.”

What truly sets Aareon UK apart from its competitors and has led to the unprecedented success we have seen in the past few years, according to Stephen, is its staff, who are highly experienced and dedicated to supporting clients.

business needs and processes from a social housing point of view and not just as their IT supplier.

“Ultimately, whether Aareon UK implement an enterprise-wide solution or optimise and customise a number of individual modules to complement your existing applications, each Aareon QL solution encompasses years of know-how, the experience of more than 100 Aareon QL projects and over 50 years of social housing expertise.”

Looking ahead, Stephen highlights how developments in the market will affect the company and how it will work tirelessly to support clients through these changes.

“As social housing in the UK becomes more complex it requires more sophisticated IT systems; comprehensive, scalable and as versatile as the tasks that our customers have to deal with. Tasks that often go far and beyond the core processes of social housing management.

Aareon UK deliver tailored enterprise-wide solutions designed specifically for the needs of Social Housing Providers in the UK.”

“Each Aareon QL solution encompasses years of know-how, the experience of over 100 implementation projects and over 50 years of UK social housing knowledge. We are one of the only Housing Management Software suppliers that work exclusively with Housing providers.

Housing is our business.

“Additionally, the Aareon team are not just experienced in the world of IT but they are also at home in the world of social housing. Many of our staff are from social housing backgrounds and therefore are able to relate to our customer

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Best Brand Management Technology: Brand Centre” - UK & Recognised Leader in Proprietary Marketing - UK Company: Adgistics Name: Joe Jarrett, CEO Email: sales@adgistics.com Web Address: www.adgistics.com Address: 1249 Anthony Rd, Wheeling, Illinois 60090, USA Phone: +1 (331) 777 0012

Adgistics was founded in 1999 to provide internet-based capabilities for the marketing and brand management communities. We interviewed CEO Joe Jarrett, who talked us through the firm’s history and how this has helped it to achieve its current success.

Adgistics is dedicated to empowering brands to grow value. Joe talks us through the firm’s history and how it works towards this goal.

“The Adgistics brand is embodied in the words intelligence, partnership and design. Through strong partnership and innovative design, intelligently applied, we produce successful outcomes. Our approach can be summarized in the words – Smart, Service & Growth. We focus on developing smart solutions, offer excellent service and grow value for our clients.”

“Working initially in the storage and distribution of marketing assets and collateral, our solutions platform, the Brand Centre, has evolved since inception, to meet the changing demands of brand management.”

“The Brand Centre is a suite of networked technologies that enable companies to optimize and support all major brand and marketing activities, processes and operations. It has been developed on solid, proven marketing asset management and business process management technologies, but we also match specific functionality to individual enterprise needs and recognize that these needs evolve.

By doing this, we ensure optimum uptake, operational efficiency, improved productivity, organization-wide transparency and contribution to building brand advocacy.”

With such stiff competition in the industry, Joe is keen to highlight the lengths Adgistics goes to mark itself out as the best possible option for clients.

“Adgistics is a marketing technology solution provider that views every aspect of an organization’s business system through the lens of the brand. We believe that a company’s brand extends beyond marketing communications.

It is a management asset and business system that provides a common language across the multiple specialties in a business. It can be optimally managed through a Brand Centre to create growth, profit, sustainability and long-term value.”

“As such, one of Adgistics’ great successes have been to make brand techniques that were once the exclusive territory of multi-billion dollar companies available and practicable, through a unique combination of technology and human services, to small and medium sized businesses around the world.”

Moving forward, Joe emphasises the company’s focus on maintaining its current high standards.

“As a growing business in a rapidly evolving market place, the balance between innovation, our focus on customer service and the scale of distribution is key to our agenda. We believe that

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our working, dynamic model of the brand and the ways in which people interact with it – inside and outside the organization – will drive our technological development in a way that remains commercially relevant.

We seek to continue to embed our systems as a measurable contributor to balance sheet value, developing solutions that identify brand value, facilitate brand processes and measure improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery.

“Looking towards the future, I am very confident that Adgistics will continue to grow in 2016 and beyond. Why? It would be too easy to focus on ‘delivery and results’ and lose sight of what is more important. We need to ensure we have clarity on what we stand for, where, why and how we’ll get there. We operate in the ‘world of Branding’ and the world becomes more ‘social media friendly’ through the development of new and exciting ground-breaking technologies.

The technological advances have and will continue to transform life, business and the global economy which has shaken up the status quo and enforced a management re-think.

At Adgistics, we want to stay on this ‘wave of change’ and be the company our clients look to for inspiration.”

Premier Cell Analysis Instrument of 2016: xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell Analyzer Company: Asite Company: ACEA Biosciences Inc. Name: Xiaobo Wang, Ph.D. Email: xbwang@aceabio.com Web Address: www.aceabio.com Address: 6779 Mesa Ridge Road, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121 Telephone: (+1)-858-724-0928

ACEA Biosciences Inc. The mission of ACEA Biosciences is to provide innovative, high performance technologies that advance scientific discovery and improve outcomes in healthcare. In this interview ACEA’s Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Xiaobo Wang, shares his vision for their technologies and describes how they are already benefiting cell biology laboratories around the world.

Founded in 2002, ACEA Biosciences Inc. is a privately held biotech company headquartered in San Diego, CA, with a subsidiary in Hangzhou, China. ACEA develops and produces innovative high performance instruments and consumables that advance life science research, drug discovery, and clinical diagnostics.

Positioned between molecular analyses and live animal studies, cell-based assays have become an indispensable tool in both basic and applied biological research. However, a challenge with traditional cell-based assays, explained Dr. Wang, is that they are typically only capable of evaluating a single molecular target, and at just one specific time point. As such, these “endpoint” assays provide limited information about cell health and behavior, making it difficult to monitor dynamic responses to small molecules, biomolecules, or other cells in culture. “To overcome these deficiencies, a big part of our mission has always been to transform cell-based assays by improving the accuracy, reliability, and scope of cell measurements,” stated Dr. Wang.

Towards this end, ACEA currently produces two product lines, the xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell Analyzer (RTCA) instruments and NovoCyte® flow cytometers.

Designed to operate within standard tissue culture incubators that are ubiquitous in cell biology laboratories, when it was introduced in 2004 xCELLigence® RTCA was the first real-time cell analysis instrument capable of monitoring cells over durations spanning anywhere from minutes to weeks. Explaining how this technology works, Dr. Wang described gold micro-electrode biosensors that are integrated within the microtiter plates used by xCELLigence® RTCA instruments.

“As they adhere to these gold surfaces cells act as insulators, impeding the flow of a microampere electric current between electrodes. When these cells are subjected to biological, chemical, or

environmental stimuli, the cellular impedance signal provides unique time-dependent information in a format that is easy to understand and interpret. The fact that cells do not need to be labelled prevents confounding artifacts and maximizes the physiological relevance of RTCA data – which is also typically more reproducible than the data generated by traditional in vitro cellular assays.”

“Because it monitors cell number, morphology, and attachment quality, xCELLigence® RTCA is useful for a broad range of applications” stated Dr. Wang, “including cell proliferation/apoptosis, cell migration and invasion, cell-mediated (NK cells, T cells) cytotoxicity, antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC), T-Cell activation, predictive toxicology, cardio safety, and much more”. In fact, there are now over 1,250 scientific publications employing RTCA for dozens of applications.

Dr. Wang went on to say, “Amongst all the ways RTCA is being utilized, the fastest growing application is, without question, cancer immunotherapy. This is a consequence of RTCA being able to monitor, with extreme sensitivity and a streamlined workflow, the killing of cancer cells by effectors such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells). The quantitative killing kinetics captured by RTCA enable facile comparison of different effector cells, antibodies, and combination therapies.”

Importantly, this technology is also readily scalable, which means that it may ultimately be used for patient screening and monitoring, or for quality control testing of engineered cells prior to infusing them into patients.

Eliminating the time and labour intensive steps of traditional methods, xCELLigence® RTCA provides walk-away, fully automated data acquisition – which leads to improved operating efficiency and overall productivity

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for cell biologists. With nearly 1,800 instruments installed around the globe, xCELLigence® RTCA is beginning to represent a new standard for cellbased assays.

Over the past few years, ACEA has also been developing and producing the NovoCyte® line of high performance, customizable benchtop flow cytometers. By including features such as fifteen detection channels with 3 lasers and 7 log dynamic range, direct volumetric cell counting, and a versatile high throughput auto-sampler, NovoCyte® flow cytometers are setting the bar for the next generation of benchtop cytometry machines.

Dr. Wang explained how, in its quest to create innovative products for its customers, ACEA benefits from being a small company. “The technologies, products, and solutions that we develop here at ACEA are all designed to improve work flow and productivity, with data quality being paramount. ACEA’s size enables us to rapidly and continually innovate in each of these areas.

We are nimble, able to quickly meet customer’s requirements, regardless of whether that is a new hardware feature, software functionality, or a novel experimental assay protocol.”

“We believe that being customer-centric is one of the most important attributes of a successful business. By providing solutions to our customer’s needs in an expedient manner we quickly optimize our products and maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace.”

When discussing plans for the future, Dr. Wang stated that the company and its people are committed to innovation. “We have a long track record of being an innovative company, and this will continue. We are actively developing new lines of products that we fully expect will catalyze life science discovery and improve healthcare far into the future.”

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Best for After-Theft Recovery Technology & Recognised Leaders in Plant Security Systems - UK Company: AMI Group LTD Website: http://www.amigroup.co.uk/

AMI Group specialises in advanced telemetry and tracking systems, primarily to protect against theft in the plant and construction industries. We caught up with Nickelle Bate to find out more.

AMI Group is dedicated to providing quality tracking devices which are covertly installed on plant machinery such as Excavators, Generators and Compressors to provide the ultimate in anti-theft protection.

Developed utilising advanced GPS (Global Positioning System), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), RF (Radio Frequency) and battery powered technology, AMI’s tracking devices are used in conjunction with the AMI Nexis web-based portal whereby customers can login to establish the destination of plant equipment in the event of it being stolen. Customers can also use the system as a total fleet management solution to help reduce their fuel costs, reduce their carbon footprint or enhance productivity, and they can even remotely immobilise equipment from their mobile phone.

The company’s head office is based in Denton, Greater Manchester and many of the leading names in the plant hire and wider construction market rely on AMI tracking solutions to track all of their plant. To date, over £245 million worth of customer assets is protected with AMI tracking devices.

It is a real honour for AMI Group to be recognised as leading the industry in plant security systems and after-theft recoveries, and its excellent recognition for our staff who work hard to recover stolen plant equipment on behalf of our customers. Despite efforts by the Police and the UK Government, plant theft still remains a huge problem and it is a major expense for many companies in the construction sector. We estimate that the average cost of a stolen machine is between £15,000 - £20,000, so if an item is stolen, this can prove extremely costly and inconvenient for companies to replace. Not only that, but it can lead to loss of business and significantly increased insurance premiums.

AMI’s innovative tracking devices are allowing companies UK-wide to protect their plant fleets

against theft and saving them tens of thousands of pounds in the process. Industry-wide, just 10% of stolen plant machinery is successfully recovered, but a remarkable 100% of stolen equipment protected with a covertly installed AMI tracking device has been successfully recovered.

Additionally, the use of AMI systems has led to the recovery of a great deal of other equipment not protected with an anti-theft system, in one recent example, £100,000 of stolen machinery was recovered. The speed of the system in recovering equipment is remarkable, thanks to the latest Google mapping and GPS positional information, equipment has been recovered less than an hour after being reported stolen.

AMI Group has always remained family owned and is run by Managing Director Gary Stockton in conjunction with his son Peter Stockton, the Operations Director. Despite their technological innovation, the Stocktons base their business on good old fashioned family values, providing a very personal level of customer service. It is not uncommon for Gary and Peter to actually locate and recover stolen plant equipment themselves!

Many of our competitors simply offer ‘off-the-shelf’ tracking solutions, but our solutions are completely bespoke and are designed to meet the tracking or fleet management needs of individual businesses.

Although many of our customers have been with us a long time, the challenges they face are evolving and we evolve with them.

Our tracking devices utilise a private APN system which detects the strongest network signal available and sends its data using the best available network. This ensures optimal coverage and helps to eliminate black spots and loss of coverage. In situations where GPS is unavailable, the device relays GSM cell site positions and the internal RF beacon can be activated to assist in locating stolen assets.

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The last 12 months have proved to be amongst the most exciting in the company’s history. AMI Group has launched a revolutionary, industry-changing product called the AT5 (a self-contained, battery operated tracking device utilising GPS, GSM and RF technology) which can last up to 18 years and offers 30% better battery life than competitive products. Just 21 x 55 x 52mm in size, the AT5 can be concealed almost anywhere on any asset without being detected and it utilises highly sensitive assisted GPS positioning which is accurate to within 1 metre and enables versatile fitment options compared to traditional GPS systems.

Overall we are looking forward to the years ahead with real excitement. Although our roots are firmly based in plant tracking, we are diversifying our product range and our aim is to be on the leading edge of the IoT industry. One new innovation for commercial vehicle fleets is AMI Nexis Fuel Pro which allows customers to monitor fuel efficiency and consumption. The system creates the potential to save up to 40% on fuel costs, translating into a return on investment within 2-3 months of installation.

Another new development we’re extremely excited about is the AMI Nexis Personal - a tiny tracking device which can be attached via a watch or belt, or carried in a pocket. With a red centre button which can be used to call for immediate assistance, the device is ideal for the protection and surveillance of elderly people, dementia patients and the vulnerable. This takes us into new markets and our ultimate aim is to develop a worldwide Genesis network of digital id devices to help prevent child abduction and to assist the vulnerable.

Best Athlete Biometric Monitoring Technology: PlayerMD & Most Innovative IoT Sensor Integration Platform: TerraTrace™ Company: Archetype, Inc. Name: Jason Cooner Email: jcooner@ archetypecorp.com Web Address: www. archetypecorp.com Address: 5607 Summit Pointe, Pinson, AL 35126, USA Telephone: +1 855.999.2724

Jason Cooner is president and CEO of Archetype, a software company which is responsible for creating two award winning products - TerraTrace™ and PlayerMD. Archetype, Inc. was founded in 2002 to develop and market mission-critical embedded hardware and Internet enabled services, under a Strategic Alliance agreement with Siemens AG. President and CEO of Archetype, Jason Cooner discusses the two award winning products PlayerMD and TerraTrace™ and how they benefit clients.

“We were able to capitalise on our global GPS network and secure a wireless platform to develop a new family of products designed to remotely monitor and store key health indicators for individuals participating in contact sports and other physical activities. Archetype worked closely with Dr. Jeff Dugas as well as several leading biometric experts to further design and development of sensor based headgear to monitor for G-force impact and overheating.

“The company worked with Siemens AG in 2005 to develop “M2M One”, the premier marketing platform of the M2M space and precursor to the “Internet of Things” (“IoT”). Three years later, Archetype Inc. was chosen by Siemens as “the best-of breed” provider to deliver M”M platforms for Siemens’ Tier one customers. Since 2010, Archetype’s focus has been on TerraTrace™, emerging as the IoT industry’s “best-of-breed” solution platform.

“Patent approval of 150 claims predating all competitors in wearables, and covering the application of more than one sensor types on the body to capture biometric data and the wireless transmission to the cloud; with hundreds of additional claims related to all OpenWare™ hardware designs, the OpenWare™ wireless protocol and network infrastructure pending.”

Archetype provides the TerraTrace™ IoT Edge Platform to securely produce and capture sensor data from all IoT environments to Microsoft’s

Azure™ Platform, while solving the four biggest problems facing IoT; security, interoperability, mid-range wireless transmission and power management.

Core to the TerraTrace™ architecture is the OpenWare™ Edge Hardware Series, which provides dramatic improvements in overall IoT Edge equipment performance, form factor and networking capabilities in an exclusive IoT delivery model.

TerraTrace™ TerraTrace™ is a standardised, wireless IoT Edge Platform extending from the sensor through the Azure™ Cloud to the Enterprise. TerraTrace’s™ exclusive OpenWare™ four-phase commit midrange (1000 feet to ¼ mile line-of-sight with internal antenna) wireless protocol guarantees delivery and goes well beyond the stability of other platforms; making it ideal for mission critical, healthcare and industrial applications.

The platform includes an extensive line of power efficient OpenWare™ sensor devices which are customisable for a variety of applications, and support the integration of over 10,000 types of sensors into the TerraTrace™ Platform. Longrange backhauling is provided using either cellular (GSM, CDMA, etc.), satellite (Orbcomm, Iridium, GlobalStar), or the Internet. Frequency and/or Exception-Based Reporting and our online portal enables companies to control and monitor sensor data in real-time.

PlayerMD The PlayerMD™ Biometric Platform is the most technologically advanced Athlete Performance Management Platform currently available.

PlayerMD™ PM (Performance Management), monitors an athlete’s vital sign whilst PlayerMD™ GM (Gear Management), ensures proper helmet fit and performance of safety equipment.

The platform is designed to enable athletes to

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perform at peak levels throughout the season while allowing them to maximise performance and longevity in sports. A small sensor pack weighing less than 15 grams is inserted into a skull cap, head band or fitted into Russell Athletics CarbonTek™ shoulder pads, currently in use at the NFL and the NCAA, to measure individual performance and biometric readings. PlayerMD™ sensor packs run for 400 hours on a single battery which means no recharging throughout the season.

PlayerMD™ PM captures an athlete’s heart rate, burned calories, blood oxygenation levels, body temperature, speed, acceleration/deceleration and total distance travelled during play. Additional features such as breathing rate and other metrics are also available. Coaches and athletic trainers receive performance alerts in real-time, via email and text messages, when certain performance thresholds are reached or vitals change so an athlete’s overall performance can be monitored. Performance data can be used to help guard against overheating, fatigue and other related injuries.

PlayerMD™ GM monitors helmet fit using a combination of sensors packs with one in a skull cap and one mounted to the helmet.

This allows impact data to be compared between the point-of-contact (i.e. helmet) and the head itself to ensure proper helmet fit and overall performance throughout the season.

PlayerMD™ GM monitors shoulder pads by fitting one sensor pack in the shoulder pad and another underneath the pads to measure overall pad absorption and performance.

PlayerMD™ was developed under the guidance of leading sports medicine experts including Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Jeffrey Dugas of the Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center and technical experts from Siemens AG and ST Microelectronics.

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Best Global Cloud Technology Company Company: Asite Email: marketing@asite.com Web Address: www.asite.com Address: Asite HQ, Albert House, 256-260 Old Street, London, EC1V 9DD, UK Telephone: 0207 749 7880

Asite is a leading global SAAS organization, specialising in providing collaborative cloud based solutions to firms around the world. We profile the firm and examine its commitment to creating truly innovative technology that meets the needs of its myriad of international clients.

Asite delivers cloud technology that gives everyone involved in construction projects access to key information online, allowing for increased collaboration, fewer mistakes, reduced rework, giving demonstrable time and cost savings.

Providing a corporate collaboration platform for international companies. Born out of Sir John Egan’s “Rethinking Construction” whitepaper it has developed into a world renowned cloud platform, enabling clients to communicate and share knowledge in a secure environment.

In its early stages the company focused on developing its platform to suit prospects requirements. In the last five years the emphasis is on its global marketing strategy. Already matured in the UK Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry the company now looks to concentrate on US, South African and Australian markets and eventually an IPO offering.

Historically the firm managed the entire asset lifecycle for the AEC community, from concept through to completion. It now offers Cloud based services to the owner operated, FM firms, essentially anyone with a built asset to manage. Through its award winning collaborative Building Information Modelling (cBIM) technology, the firm covers the entire building lifecycle form concept to completion and beyond.

Since Asite’s inception the UK AEC industry has evolved. Gone are the days when constructions teams relied on paper forms, plans and projects.

Over the past 10 years’ firms have progressed into leading innovators of project management, several large contractors design their own in

house systems to manage their supply chains.

The reputation of the construction industry has developed firms into trailblazers leading the way in managing BIG DATA. Employers are now beginning to understand the true value in their data, once thought of as an annoyance, now an asset. AEC organizations are harnessing their data and developing their relationships with smaller firms through a common data environment. The rise in mobile technology and BYOD trends have also assisted in creating a mobile and smart workforce delivering construction projects ahead of time and saving costs. Cloud technology has provided firms with a cost efficient alternative to paper/server based and on premise solutions, which are empowering employees to access their data when they want wherever they want.

One key innovation which the firm has developed during its time in the industry is its Adoddle platform, which allows teams to store and manage all project data in one central and secure repository. It also enables customers to fully customize the structure of their content with highly controlled access and rich configurable workflows to allow project controls. The Adoddle platform is used by leading architecture, engineering and construction firms, as well as property owners world-wide to manage their largest and most demanding capital investment programs.

What sets the firm apart from its competitors is its truly global approach. With prospective clients keen to deliver on time whilst managing their worldwide workforce SAAS providers look to create a strong reputation globally. Language must be universal appealing to both the AEC sector as well as finance and retail. Emerging countries with developed internet bandwidth

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now look to compete with developed markets, opening up competition across the globe and prospects are looking further afield to generic collaborative platforms as an inexpensive alternative to AEC specific SAAS platforms.

Asite’s strong global reputation sets it apart from its competitors, many who either changed their name or were recently acquired by larger competitors. The global SAAS market is a diverse and fast paced world with constant new and emerging technology driving completion to an exciting new world.

Looking to the future, the next three years will see exponential growth in manufacturing, mining and finance industries, building on its strong reputation it has created within the global AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) community.

This is because, as future technology trends predict, the way businesses communicate will evolve from archaic desktop bound systems to intuitive platforms. This will transform any organizations project delivery and empower supply chains to radically change their way of exchanging. As such Asite’s application platform will evolve into a full featured lifecycle management system existing only on Mobile devices creating an open data system for all end users. With big data a fundamental issue for any profitable business, Asite will look to educate and assist companies with their digital assets, with an end goal of eventually becoming Facebook for business.

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Best Landfill Site Support Company - Europe & CV Environmental Stability Award - Europe Company: Biogas Technology Limited Name: Andrew Masi Email: Andrew.masi@biogas.co.uk Web Address: http://www.biogas.co.uk/ Address: Brookside Industrial estate, Sawtry, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, PE285SB Telephone: 01487 831701

Biogas Technology (BTL) was founded in the mid 1980’s out of the requirement to destroy unwanted and highly explosive methane gas found within landfill sites. We spoke to Andrew Masi to learn about how the firm has developed since inception.

Biogas Technology provides landfill site support services to the UK landfill sector, as well as supplying landfill gas management systems and products to the rest of the world. Andrew explains how the firm’s innovative service offering was conceived.

“When we started, Biogas Technology mainly focused on the flaring technology and pipe work infrastructure required to remove the gases to make the sites safe. Over the next 30 plus years Biogas has been involved in the ever evolving landfill gas industry from the NFFO (Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation) pumping trials of the early to mid-1990’s to the Kyoto CDM (Clean development mechanism) from the mid 2000’s to present day, where Biogas have actively reduced Ch4 emissions on several active landfill sites within several countries including Mexico, Brazil, Peru,UAE, Chile, and China. “We also recently teamed up with both The UK Environment Agency and DECC, along with several other partners, to work on the ACUMEN project (Assessing, Capturing and Utilising Methane from Expired and Non-operational landfills) This project accessed new and existing technologies to help reduce carbon emissions to atmosphere from expired and non-operational landfills. Biogas designed and developed a new prototype Low Flow, Low calorific high temperature ground flare which was successfully demonstrated as part of the project”. This award winning flare system is likely to have a long term place in serving the post closure requirements of landfill operators for some years to come.

“Biogas Technology Limited has continued to provide aftercare packages for our customers and have had several contracts with councils and private companies that have been in place for over twenty years which shows our overall commitment to our clients which entrusted them to enable Biogas to manage their sites and equipment. We also provide the same services into the anaerobic digestion industry and the coal mine / coal bed methane sector.”

What sets the firm apart, according to Andrew, is the firm’s vast experience and superior knowledge.

“As the longest standing landfill gas specialist company in the UK market place BTL has the experience and in depth knowledge of clients sites which simply cannot be provided by others who do not have the longevity of BTL. This combined with a proven long standing track record of quality service which is uniquely provided in the spirit of long term relationships, rather than short term wins, as is reflected by some contracts that have been in place continually for more than 20 years, is what sets BTL distinctly apart from others in this space.

“Overall I would say the main reason for Biogas Technology’s’ success is our core knowledge and experience of the industry and what is required to keep ahead of the regulations and requirements set out by the governing agencies. To provide the technology for the customers to make sure their site and equipment are run and maintained in the most

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cost effective way, and technologies are updated if and when required.”

Moving forward, Andrew outlines the exciting plans the company has to continue to adapt to the ever evolving industry it operates in.

“Looking to the future, technology has to meet increasing demands in terms of energy efficiency and emissions to atmosphere and we work constantly with all the necessary agencies to make sure we design technology that meets these requirements as they develop.

“As such we foresee a very consistent and demanding future for BTL in the UK landfill sector, although active landfill sites are in decline due to waste management strategy, the legacy of larger closed landfills will exist for many years to come.

The post closure management of landfill gas becomes increasingly difficult and complex as time goes by.

“BTL is actively developing products and services that will meet these demands and ensure future compliance to assist landfill site owners. We see the development of the low cal flaring system developed and demonstrated through the ACUMEN project, in conjunction with the EA, as a key product in the requirements these sites will present in the future. BTL will also continue to develop new and innovative products to meet these requirements.”

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Best in 3D Body Modelling Software - New York Company: Body Labs Name: Bill O’Farrell Email: bill@bodylabs.com or jon.cilley@bodylabs.com Web Address: https://www.bodylabs.com/ Address: 37 E 18th Street (8th Floor), New York, NY 10003 Telephone: 2077526102

Body Labs Body Labs creates innovative 3D modelling software which unlocks the secrets of human body shape. We caught up with Bill O’Farrell, CEO at Body Labs, to learn more about this revolutionary software.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Manhattan, Body Labs collects, digitizes and organizes all of the data and information related to human body shape, pose and motion. Its mission is to transform the human body into a digital platform upon and around which goods and services can be designed, produced, bought and sold.

focusing on the data behind body shape we can also offer key insights for businesses or consumers that is just not possible with traditional scanning techniques or hardware.

This approach also liberates us from costly and constraining scanning hardware and enables us to tackle a variety of problems and industries simultaneously.”

Clients range from Fortune 500 fashion and apparel brands, leading aerospace companies, major health and athletic clubs and bleeding edge technology companies, with solutions ranging from professional services for large enterprise clients to productized measuring and scan processing solutions. Bill outlines the firm’s approach to client service and ensuring that their solutions meet the clients’ needs.

Moving forward, Bill believes the industry will continue to see substantial adoption of mobile 3D sensor technology. This will deliver the power of a high-end 3D scanner into the hands of ordinary consumers. Bill explains what this will mean for his company.

“Our mission is to deliver a horizontal platform that can empower businesses and consumers to designed, manufacture, buy and sell personalized products or services.

“To achieve this we work extensively with our clients to ensure the highest degree of success. We have a highly skilled professional services team that works directly with the client to provide them with the resources, data and technology to help them reach their goals.”

The firm is the first and only solution to digitize human body shape using machine learning algorithms and their statistical model of human shape and pose, which, as Bill emphasises, makes them a pioneer among 3D modelling companies.

“The widespread adoption of this technology will further impact what markets and solutions Body Labs can deliver to interested users.

“As such we are planning to make a rather sizeable push into the fashion and apparel space in the future. We are already working with top brands in this space and we have plans to deliver more scalable and productized solutions that meet the demands within this industry.

“However, we are not stopping there. We are looking to move into other industries that have rather sizeable market pain such as health, fitness, VR, AR and more.”

“The combination of algorithms and statistics enable us to reference nearly any 3D body scanning device or even basic measurements (using no scanning hardware) to accurately reproduce individual 3D digital avatars. By

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Best HR Software Company - UK Company: breatheHR Name: Rachel King Email: rachel@breathehr. com Web Address: www. breathehr.com Address: Unit 19 Oakhurst Business Park, Southwater, West Sussex, RH13 9RT Telephone: 01403 288700

breatheHR is a fast growing HR software company based in Horsham, West Sussex. We invited Customer Success Director, Rachel King, to talk us about the company and the services it offers.

breatheHR was born in 2012 and now helps over 1,700 small companies around the UK and beyond manage their human resources. The firm’s parent company Centurion Management Systems have been selling HR software for 20 years, and as Rachel highlights, breatheHR takes full advantage of this experience, drawing upon it to offer clients the very best service possible.

“Here at breatheHR, our vision is to create the most user friendly software to simplify and automate how SME’s manage their people.”

“Our HR software is designed to free up valuable time for small business owners and managers who look after the HR for their small businesses.

We pride ourselves on keeping the system as simple as possible to help with the typical pain points such as managing holidays to having somewhere to store all of the employee documents. We back this up with exceptional customer service. My team love the software we provide and are passionate about helping customers get the most from it.”

Collaboration with customers, according to Rachel, is crucial as this ensures that clients are supported throughout the process.

Supporting the breatheHR is also of equal importance, and Rachel outlines how the company endeavours to ensure that employees are equipped to support clients to the best of their ability at all times.

“Our team are so important to us and we work hard to make sure they feel valued and cared for. Every member of the team has clear goals, objectives and training plan– all recorded in breatheHR of course!”

As a final comment, Rachel outlines the breatheHR’s approach to client service and how it aims to always ensure everyone that works with them is satisfied with the service they receive.

“Fundamentally, what sets us apart is that we listen to our customers, for example, we have an active ‘ideas wall’ and encourage our customers to give their opinions on how to make the system even better and vote on ideas already there. We can’t guarantee that all will go in but we’ve already implemented hundreds of popular suggestions”

“We know that many of our customers have never used HR software before so it’s important that every single customer is comfortable with rolling the system out to their employees. We offer a wide variety of support solutions to make this happen. Whether it’s a one on one clinic, a webinar or our knowledge base.

We have some super feedback on the service our support team provides, for example: “Very professional and always very helpful with advice and knowledge excellent customer services skills and frankly very people focused and approachable with a can do attitude what a fab team.”

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Best for Call Retrieval & Replay Technology - UK & Recognised Leaders in Workforce Optimisation Solutions - UK Company Name: Business Systems (UK) Ltd Email: contact@businesssystemsuk.com Website: www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0)20 8326 8200 Address: 462 London Road, Isleworth, TW7 4ED Twitter: @BSLHQ LinkedIn: /company/business-systems-uk-ltd

Business Systems specialises in providing call recording and workforce optimisation solutions, and today ranks as one of the most experienced independent providers with expertise covering systems design, project management, implementation and ongoing service delivery and support. We invited Managing Director Richard Mill to provide us with an absorbing overview of the firm and the unique solutions it offers.

Incorporated in 1988 Business Systems is the UK’s largest and most established independent call recording specialist. Founded to service the City’s financial institutions, the company has built an impressive reputation for implementing complex projects on time and counts amongst its clients, institutions such as The Bank of England and Standard Life.

With contact centres demanding increased sophistication in their voice and data applications, Business Systems has since established itself as a leading systems integrator and workforce optimisation specialist for major in-house and outsourced contact centres across UK. Its solutions range from basic call recording (on premise, hosted and mobile) and legacy data retrieval through to quality monitoring, speech analytics, workforce management, business intelligence and process automation tools.

The company ensures high quality and fit-forpurpose implementations with a range of value added services including consultancy, project management, integration, training, and technical support.

Richard explains the process the firm undergoes whenever it starts working with a new client, and provides fascinating insight into the factors that set the firm apart from its competition.

“At the start of every project we actively work to ensure that the client’s needs will be fulfilled with the overall outcome. From assessing what the desired outcomes should be, to designing the solution that best meets our clients’ requirements, budgets and existing infrastructures, we work to provide real value for their investment. Our Professional Services ensure that each stage of the technology “life cycle” is addressed with this premise

in mind, covering consultancy; equipment and technology planning; selection and procurement; implementation; management and support; and end of life management.

“Drawing on our 28 years of specialisation in call recording and workforce optimisation, what differentiates us and makes us the partner of choice for our customers is our position as a truly independent technology integrator.

We work with all major manufacturers in our industry so we can always put forward the best solution for our clients’ specific needs.

“Moreover, with extensive sector-specific experience, including trading floors, emergency services, NATS and call centres, our firm has the internal knowledge, resource and innovation for effective implementation, deployment and support of 3rd party solutions, as well as the development of own complementary solutions to address unmet needs.”

Specifically in the financial market, since the subprime crisis, financial institutions have been experiencing a tightening regulatory framework that aims, among other things, to establish transparency in market conduct. One of the channels that is most scrutinised (and most susceptible to non-compliance) is the telephone, and, as expected, many regulations concern this critical communication channel.

Richard explains how his firm is working to take advantage of the opportunities this challenge presents.

“Our compliance portfolio addresses all the issues associated with testing, recording, storing and retrieving 100% of critical interactions, with solutions like call recording, speech analytics, legacy call retrieval and replay and automated testing and extraction.

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“Wordwatch, our own product that granted us a place in the Technology Innovation Awards 2016, was developed with the financial institutions’ compliance needs in mind, to enable them to manage their audio files in a highly secure and efficient way, from a single point of access.”

As his concluding comment, Richard outlines his predictions for the future of the technology market and how his firm will be working to ensure it stays ahead of these developments.

“In the future, we believe that major technological developments will be directed towards the need for increased security, compliance, process optimisation and improved business insight.

“With the increasing need to keep historical records of communications for compliance purposes, issues related to integrity, compatibility, end-of-support and end-of-life are ranking high on the agendas of our customers who look to manage their audio files and related systems in a simpler yet more secure and efficient manner. Wordwatch has been developed to meet this need and we continue to invest in additional functionalities to ensure we can accommodate our customers’ demands.

“Finally, Robotic Process Automation is also starting to find its place in the market, with Automated Testing and Monitoring of voice technologies gaining traction as organisations look into how they can ensure their infrastructure is fully functioning, whilst containing costs and eliminating error.”

Best Event Management Software Company Company: Centium Software Name: Alec Sonenthal Email: info@centiumsoftware.com Web Address: www.eventsair.com Telephone: 61 7 3341 8320

For over 25 years, Centium Software has been producing state-of-the-art meeting technology. Director of Technology, Alec Sonenthal, speaks to us about how the Centium Software has been an industry leader in event management technology committed to client success.

Technology from Centium Software is used by meeting planners and organisers in all event industries, including corporate events, incentive events, association events, world government events and global sporting events.

Alec tells us about their industry-leading meeting management platform and what they deliver to clients.

“Our clients include professional conference organisers (PCOs), corporate planners, nonprofit planners, government planners and travel organisations. Our flagship product, EventsAIR provides organisers a comprehensive, cloudbased platform for managing all aspects of events and meetings. This includes the management of travel, accommodation, registration, functions, exhibitions, speakers, onsite check-in, mobile apps, accounting, budgeting and much more.”

“Every client has unique needs and requirements, and our team assists each new client with customised training and implementation. We offer web-based and live instructor led training for all clients. Being cloud-based we are constantly updating the platform and creating new functionality.”

“Centium Software is committed to our clients’ success, as evidenced by the hundreds of clients who have been with us for over a dozen years. As an employee owned company, we focus on providing leading edge technology, designed for the needs and requirements of today’s meeting planners. Our team consists of meeting experts who walk-the-walk and fully understand the challenges and needs of today’s rapidly changing meetings industry.”

Alec describes how a shift to cloud-based design has affected the software and technology industry and how Centium Software has coped

with this evolving technology landscape.

“Other providers of event management solutions rely on web-based designs that are more than ten years old and are not nearly as secure or robust as current, cloud-based technology. This shift to the cloud has opened up numerous new approaches to how we can design technology and deploy it to our clients.”

“Cloud-based technology has allowed Centium Software to completely re-think and reengineer how event planners can manage their events. Our technology is app-based, providing a far superior level of security and ease of installation. This new architecture has allowed Centium Software to create a new paradigm in how meetings technology is deployed and licensed. For the first time, meeting planners can license a comprehensive and powerful technology for a flat monthly fee as opposed to the overpriced approach of charging perperson registration fees that are exorbitantly priced to license.”

live polling, exhibitor management, group management, speaker/abstract management and much more. Most of these advanced apps are included at no additional charge to our clients, including our mobile attendee apps and mobile organiser apps.”

Along with 25 years of experience, Centium Software’s method to licensing makes them stand out in the sector. Alec explains, “Our approach to licensing is also ground-breaking, where we offer licenses with unlimited registrations for a flat monthly fee. This is different from most of our competitors that charge per-person registration fees, lock clients into multi-year contracts and use technology that is decades old and highly insecure in design.”

Centium Software is committed to continue innovating and leading the industry well into the future. Alec explains how helping students through an education program is vital to the future of the industry.

The entire development team is constantly evaluating trends and technology in the meetings industry.

Centium Software constantly holds Innovation Lab sessions with clients, speaks to industry groups around the globe and is focused on providing cutting-edge solutions. Company size and structure allows them to constantly innovate new solutions and bring them to clients in months, rather than years. Alec tells us about EventsAIR, a leading cloud-based event management system.

“We support our future event organisers by sponsoring thousands of students studying event management at over 35 universities and institutions around the globe with the Rising Star education program. This cutting-edge education program allows students to learn how real-world event technology works, and we extend certification to all students who complete the Rising Star program. We also provide thousands of dollars in scholarships each year to students all around the globe.”

“EventsAIR’s collection of advanced services and tools allows our clients to provide specialised and powerful tools to expand traditional event services. Our App Store includes dozens of apps, including tools for self-check in, onsite management, exhibitor appointments, audience

As a final thought, Alec declares that the company is proud of what they have achieved since their inception. “We are proud to specialise in event management. And we’re pleased that our products are proven and trusted all over the world.”

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Best Managed Support Service Provider & Recognised Leaders in Financial Technology Company: CJC Ltd Name: Peter Williams Email: peter.williams@cjcit.com Web Address: www.cjcit.com Address: 31-41 Worship Street London, EC2A 2DX Telephone: 0203 328 7600

Established in 1999, CJC are a capital markets focused technical and commercial managed services and consultancy provider. Their 24/7, 365 days a year services are delivered from offices in London, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore by industry leading experts and experienced practitioners. Senior Technical Director, Peter Williams at CJC discusses the company’s objectives and culture which has been key to their success.

CJC provides a variety of services include 24/7 remote monitoring and management of real time market data platforms, commercial vendor management, audit support, data analytics SaaS, PC over IP managed desktops and bespoke consultancy for both technical and commercial requirements. The company works with a global client base as well as market data vendors, exchanges and technology providers.

ability for our technical and commercial practices to work in tandem gives us a unique offering as most of our competitors do one or other.”

Peter, and the rest of the CJC staff guarantee that clients receive the best possible outcome through an organised process and they speak to other experts in the industry to see what CJC can do to improve their own services.

“The ramifications of Brexit are not yet fully understood and in time, this could have a number of wide ranging effects. Beyond that, the increasing role regulators are playing in the industry represents the number one challenge.

How will firms cope with the additional demands being put upon them from regulators?”

“We take a structured approach and set up a delivery team formed of the relevant SME’s to ensure optimal results. The delivery team strike a balance between bringing our experience to the table and listening to a client’s individual requirements. By doing this we are able to provide solutions that are tailored to clients whilst still benefiting from our expertise.”

“It’s our goal to be the number one provider of managed services in capital markets IT. To achieve this, we are constantly looking at ways to improve what we do but more importantly we regularly speak to people in our industry to see what their issues are so that we can develop solutions. It’s a never ending, iterative process but absolutely necessary. Ideally, we end up in a position where we are ready with a solution almost before the client realises they have a problem.”

Like in any other industry, there are challenges in the technology sector which are making business difficult for companies. Peter tells us that the impact of Brexit and pressure from regulators are a test for CJC.

Another challenge for technology companies is staying on top of new and emerging trends in the industry. However, some of CJC’s top engineers and developers have set up their own, dedicated ‘Innovations Lab’ to make sure the firm are working well in a fast moving area. Peter tells us, “their role is to investigate new technologies and techniques and look at the viability of adopting them in our work. We challenge them to push our services and technology stack forward and deliver technical and operational benefits both internally

CJC are focused on capital markets technology and commercial management. This is the core reason why CJC stands out from their competitors, as Peter explains. “We do not dilute our services and prefer to work with strategic partners who are the best crop of SME’s when asked to provide services outside of our scope. We believe in doing what we do better than anyone else and to do that we must maintain this focus. CJC also believes the

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and most importantly for clients.”

According to Peter, the key tenets of CJC culture are cooperation and knowledge sharing, support of individuals by the group and support of the group by the individual, and also not being afraid to challenge the status quo. CJC ensure their staff understand the work culture of the company.

“Our global engineering team is among the best in the world with literally hundreds of man-years experience across a wide variety of technologies.

One of the main roles that this team performs is escalation support and cross training for our global operations team. Beyond individual training, we operate clear processes and procedures to ensure that staff perform tasks in a consistent way. All staff feed into the creation and evolution of these processes as any efficiencies we gain can be fed back into improving service.”

CJC have grown to over 120 staff worldwide, and they are currently looking at further expansion to new offices and territories next year. In addition, they are launching a private cloud service where they can deliver a number of capital markets focused SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and ITaaS products backed by their global managed services team.

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Best Workflow Solutions Software: Complis® - UK & Most Innovative Tech SME - East Midlands Company: Complis® Name: Lee Eyre Technical Director Address: Corby Enterprise Centre London Road, Priors Hall, Corby Northamptonshire, NN17 5EU Email: solutions@complisoft.com Website: www.complisoft.co.uk Phone: 03330 888 185

Established in 2010 Complisoft Limited is a privately owned software SME based in Corby, Northamptonshire.

We invited Technical Director Lee Eyre to tell us more.

Complisoft provides national and international businesses with an innovative online solution to support marketing, procurement and business process outsourcing (BPO) known as Complis®.

Our software solution allows organisations to significantly reduce costs, quickly deploy multichannel marketing campaigns, and maximise the value of their brands. Complis® is used globally and by companies of all sizes right up to multi-billion dollar corporations and supports multi-language and multi-currency transactions. We work with our clients to understand their requirements and how our technology can be used to help them and how we can streamline their existing business processes to make them more efficient and reduce transaction costs.

Complis® has seamlessly integrated all the following technologies into a single cloud based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution: • Centralised Brand Toolkit • Digital Asset Management (DAM) • Web2Print Online Artwork Creation • Artwork and Spend Approval Workflows • Online Ordering • Customer Relationship Management • Supply Chain Management • Contract Management and Tendering • Estimating and Request for Quotations • Project Management • Stock Control, Warehousing and Fulfilment • Invoicing • Real-time Reporting • Customisable User Interface

In order to better support them, we always involve the clients in the “look and feel”, mirroring their existing corporate brands, so that our system feels like their own.

This approach helps us to achieve our mission: to provide our customers with a fully integrated technology platform that saves them time and money by improving their business processes and automating repetitive tasks.

What differentiates Complis® from other firms is that our solution is all in one. Our technology is a single software solution rather than a number of modules or different applications loosely bolted together. Our approach means that we deliver accurate realtime information to all users, with greater efficiency, no duplication, and a far more intelligent and streamline system.

Our culture is to help our customers. If we can save them time or money, or do something faster or better for them, we do. We are client focused, everything we do supports our clients and their businesses. We thrive to innovate, whilst reminding ourselves that our customers’ requirements are what drive our solution forward.

Our software is one of the most advanced procurement systems in the world and provides an integrated end-to-end workflow. Complis® is able to measure supplier performance automatically, bench-marking against SLAs and KPIs and comparing against other suppliers. Our ability to provide real-time management information reporting means that our customers have full visibility and control over their entire business, from anywhere and at any time.

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As a young business we are recruiting slowly but steadily as our business grows. We do not hire skills, we hire like-minded people who want to do a good job and build something they can be proud of to join our family. If you have the right mind-set you can learn skills and working with technology you have to learn new skills on a daily basis.

Our future plans are to increase awareness and use of Complis® as a solution, especially in those markets where we have excellent case studies and experience. We are also looking to expand into new areas which would benefit from our technology and service offering. Our technology could work in almost any industry anywhere in the world, so we have a lot of work to do.

Complis® is constantly adding new features and will always continue to do so. As technology and the way we communicate change, the tools we need to do business also change, so we are always looking at new ways and new features to help our customers, even to do things they don’t know they need yet.

Ultimately, we see the Technology Innovations Awards as an important step for our business to gain recognition for what we have achieved and help us spread the word. As we grow as a business we will continue to invest; which will be a benefit to all of our customers.

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Best IoT Company - UK Company: Concirrus Ltd Address: The Leathermarket, 17 Leathermarket Street, London, SE1 3HN Phone: +44 (0) 203 540 5974 Email: info@concirrus.com Website: http://concirrus.com/

Concirrus is a fintech organisation leading the IoT revolution for companies worldwide. We invited CEO and Co-Founder Andy Yeoman to tell us more.

The future poses an exciting challenge for Concirrus. As a fintech company in the insurance sector, one of our greatest challenges is seeking to revolutionise an industry that has changed little in the last 300 years. We speak to many senior personnel within insurance companies and, by their own admission, change within the industry has been somewhat resisted.

But our prediction, supported by many, is that in 5 years’ time there will be two types of insurer; those that have adopted the Internet of Things (IoT) and those that used to exist.

Why is this? Well the answer is simple but profound: since insurance began the premise of it was that risks were calculated based on ‘declared information’ i.e. this is how I live, how I drive, etc. With the internet of things that behaviour, those risks, and the ‘declarations’ can be validated, observed, contextualised and measured in real-time. The only gaiting factor is how the industry will react but there’s little doubt that this is a ‘when’ not ‘if’ scenario.

However, all is not rosy for the new ‘connected pioneers’ as the growing number of devices and sensors are generating unprecedented volumes of information that need to be processed, understood, and assessed. It requires a fundamentally different approach to insurance from a fundamentally different type of vendor. Get it right and insurers can make more intelligent decisions, lowering risk exposure as a result. In short, the advent of IoT offers insurers massive opportunities for progress and greater future stability, not to mention the ability to provide fairer, more efficient products for their customers.

Take marine insurance as an example.

Currently, large ships and their cargo are insured by a syndicate (typically out of institutions such as Lloyd’s of London) and a static written

policy will be produced. The initial decision to partake in the underwriting of that ship is an educated gamble. Once it starts out on its voyage the insurer loses sight of it. In other words, contextual information sources (weather, warzones, historical voyage data, engine diagnostics, GPS and V-SAT to name a few) are rarely used and never pulled together into one ‘connected policy’.

Crucially, insurers have no means of establishing relationships with the myriad different hardware manufacturers whose data they need to ingest and understand.

This is our offering and our point of difference.

Concirrus brings the world’s information to life in a way that is accessible and useful to insurers.

By integrating the Concirrus platform into their business we allow insurers to revolutionise the way that they think and act, reducing risk in everything that they do.

We ingest live information from sensors and devices, combining it with existing data systems and using machine learning and predictive analytics to translate it into actionable decisions.

In short, we provide Intelligent Insurance.

This represents a fundamental shift in the industry and benefits insurers in three key ways; firstly, it reduces the amount of risk in their decision making. With less risky policies comes less pay-out and a more stable return on investment. Secondly, it allows insurers to make more efficient decisions. With large volumes of information easily accessible via a simple dashboard, executives are more empowered and this allows the organisation to run in a more efficacious manner. And lastly, our technology offers the prospect of stability in a volatile future. Insurers on both sides of the Atlantic have yet to make the first move, but those early

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into the game will reap the benefits of a more prosperous period of growth.

Winning the award for Best IoT Company UK is a great honour for us at Concirrus. With IoT underpinning so many revolutionary movements, and in so many industries, it is wonderful to receive recognition for our work thus far, and this pushes us towards a more ambitious future. It represents our journey so far and the success we have had with our past and current customers, from airport security systems through to connected young driver insurance.

But our current work with major, global insurance companies means that the biggest breakthroughs are yet to come.

If we were to pick one factor that contributes to our success and our organisational strength, it would be the healthy mix of skills and personality types within our company. As well as the technical and developer capabilities, we employ a range of skill sets, from business strategy and insurance industry experts, through to creative and design specialists. This gives us an edge and it allows us to develop products that truly answer the needs of our customers, providing technology that solves real world, human problems.

The London (and UK) tech scene is vibrant, and fintech is no exception. Brexit or no Brexit, we are excited about the prospect of what the future holds for small British tech firms. Companies like DeepMind are a shining example of what we can achieve and the advantages that lean agility can offer us when compared to incumbent tech giants. This advantage is likely to work in our favour as we are able to offer a more bespoke solution to our customers, answering their business needs and pioneering a new way forward.

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Best Corporate Wellness Platform Company: CoreHealth Technologies Inc. Name: Anne Marie Kirby, CEO & Health Revolutionary Email: annemarie.kirby@corehealth.global Web Address: https://corehealth.global Address: Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada Telephone: 1-866-396-2573

CoreHealth Technologies Inc. is the leading corporate wellness platform trusted by more than 1000 global organizations, ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises. We invited CEO Anne Marie Kirby to talk us through the firm and the wellness technology they provide.

CoreHealth Technologies has been developing their corporate wellness platform for over 10 years, with a focus on ensuring that their technological infrastructure is current with the latest and greatest innovations.

“Organizations trust CoreHealth because we provide the technology only and leave the health and wellness program services to our customers, making sure that their ideas and innovations are safe, secure and protected.”

The firm’s flagship product, the CoreHealth Corporate Wellness Platform, offers users one central place to access all corporate wellness programs including: health assessments, biometric management, content and education, challenges, self-help programs, health coaching programs, incentives, surveys, conversations and much more.

Anne Marie highlights that being exclusively a technology provider is unique in the industry and is especially valued by customers.

Another key service is their CoreHealth Wellness Network, a vast library of content and components (including devices, resources, content, analytics, services and more) from wellness visionaries that customers can access to develop their wellness programs. With over 140 unique wellness initiatives available, customers can mix and match or use their own ideas. Each component integrates seamlessly into the CoreHealth Corporate Wellness Platform for a rich, adaptable user experience.

Anne Marie talks us through the firm’s work and the techniques it employs to support its customers which include: corporate wellness providers, insurers and their wellness divisions, employee assistance providers, group benefits brokers, HR consulting firms and health coaching companies.

“At CoreHealth, we believe that developing the best employee wellness programs is all about giving wellness providers the right code, design and access to the latest innovations. With the most customization, integrations and reliability of any software in its class, CoreHealth’s powerful platform lets users focus on growing great companies.”

“In the past, our target markets were both wellness providers and large corporate clients (that provide wellness programs to their workforce); however, we found that this model meant we were competing with our ideal customers, the wellness providers.

This created a potential conflict of interest. We wanted to first and foremost help our ideal customers, the wellness providers, be as successful as possible so they can continue to grow their client-base which, in turn, benefits us too. We believe this business model represents a true ‘win-win’ partnership. As a result, when we are asked to present proposals, if it’s not the right fit (because they are looking for wellness services too), we happily forward to our wellness provider customers.”

In order to continue developing and keeping pace with the ever-evolving wellness industry, Anne Marie emphasises the need for a collaborative approach which encompasses both the firm’s staff and its customers.

“Both our customers and our team are integral to ongoing success and help us stay ahead of emerging developments. We listen carefully to customer requests while spending at least 50% of our resources keeping our platform and infrastructure up-to-date. Our development team is constantly researching trends and new innovations while our Client Services and Support teams keep the ‘pulse’ on our customer requirements which drive future feature development.”

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Security is also vital for the platform, and as such, the firm works tirelessly to ensure that their technology is secure and always cutting edge.

“Because our platform hosts personal health information (PHI), privacy and security is top priority. Since we service wellness providers around the world, our internal IT team is constantly working to ensure data is compliant with global privacy standards.”

Looking to the future, Anne Marie explained that the firm is looking into a number of exciting developments which will help expand the platform and provide invigorating opportunities for growth.

“We work closely with researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO) to innovate new wellness ideas and solutions.

We also continue to monitor and stay on top of evolutions such as Apps to APIs (APIs will enable the next generation of mobile applications and replace tens of thousands of Apps with a few elegant implementations) and the evolution of Internet information. Soon the Internet will tell us what we need to know instead of us having to search for it. A great example is Google Drive which volunteers information about the traffic on your commute as you drive out of your carpark.”

CoreHealth is truly a global leader in corporate wellness technology helping wellness providers deliver the most fun, engaging and successful programs possible.

“Organizations trust CoreHealth because we focus on our core expertise, the technology, and they are able to focus on theirs, providing wellness programs. We’re not here to compete but rather to partner for growth. We allow wellness providers to go fast, wide and deep with their wellness programs and help them find their competitive advantage. Together we build high performance, technology-fuelled wellness enterprises.”

Best for Smart Commodity Data Management Software Company: DataGenic Ltd Name: Richard Quigley Web Address: www.datagenicgroup.com Address: Cheapside House, London, EC2V 6BJ Telephone: +44 203 814 8500

DataGenic is the leading global provider of on-premise and in-cloud smart commodity data management software, delivering intelligent analytics, data content and proven business value.

A multi-award winning platform with a focus on product innovation and support excellence, DataGenic is proud to be recognised by their clients and industry participants as the global leader in commodity data management and decision analytics. The company’s flexible solutions are deployed at Tier 1 enterprise clients as well as amongst the SME community.

The innovative offering includes a data-agnostic multi-commodity data management platform, business process workflow, rules-based data quality management, plus unfettered forward curves construction; all within an intelligent decision framework.

Richard Quigley, Chief Executive Officer speaks to us about the underlying principles of DataGenic’s strategy and how they have helped in the success of the DataGenic.

“Our focus is on servicing energy and commodity market participants. We have remained true to this focus from the outset.

The key pillars to our approach have been anticipating, and adapting to the constantly changing market conditions and requirements, both from a technical and functional perspective, as well as adapting our service level requirements accordingly.

Our flexible commercial and technical entry points ensure that we can reach all market participants, irrespective of company size or location. Furthermore, we have an unwavering commitment to further develop our cloud based/zero IT footprint offering, build upon our technical partnerships that deliver demonstrable value to our clients, and to become the #1 trusted software provider for all trading and risk based commodity data within an organisation.”

DataGenic maintains a cross section of clients, including utilities, integrated oil companies, commodity trading houses and commercial and industrial players. Each client has its own idiosyncrasies regarding how they operate their business and derive market value. For certain companies, a pre-configured ‘off the shelf’ solution is more than sufficient, whereas for

others a bespoke approach may be required to recreate and enhance their internal processes.

DataGenic has witnessed many changes in this ever evolving industry, not least the adoption of the cloud which has gained more momentum, through cost savings, ease of operation, improved scalability and more robust security.

Another progressive area that will have a dramatic impact on the industry is Big Data.

This has already led to ground breaking developments, such as preventative maintenance, more informed trading decisions, improved logistics and a sharper lens on risk indicators. However, this element of the industry remains in its nascent stage to a certain extent with an abundance of possibilities ahead.

Such industry changes can present challenges as well as opportunities for the DataGenic’s business. Unquestionably, there have been some subtle yet striking lessons learned along the 16 year journey, which Richard summed up, “Ensure you set expectations, and, on occasion, learn to say no to clients. Otherwise, the risk of under delivering is increased. Also, foster a culture of honesty with clients, staff and partners, no matter how uncomfortable the immediate conversation. Explaining the options available with the associated risks, enables the counterparty to make an informed decision and avoid issues and disappointment further down the line.”

With one of the highest client retention ratios in the industry, DataGenic has built a solid reputation in the marketplace that offer some very quick wins whilst providing significant long-term benefits. As Richard explains “Clients quickly realise the inherent advantages of working with DataGenic when looking at several factors. Firstly, DataGenic has data agnostic highly interactive technology with functional flexibility, supplied by the largest aggregated hub of end of day data in the market. In addition to this our suite of commodity data management solutions offer in memory real-time curve building and

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the ability to simultaneously communicate with multiple downstream systems. Such capabilities are underpinned by some of the most comprehensive service level agreement in the industry.”

Richard has ambitious plans for the future of DataGenic. He aims to consolidate their position as the leader in Commodity Data Management.

“Our aspirations are to provide an intelligent decision making platform which offers a holistic 360-degree predictive analysis and view of their data in real-time, including structured and unstructured data. To mirror our European exploits, concerted success in the Americas is also something we are striving to achieve.”

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TransitionManager provides an empowering view spanning all IT silos, orchestrates IT evolution and facilitates business resiliency in the constant changing environment of modern IT. CV Technology Innovator Awards 2016 l 37

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Recognised Leaders in Mission Critical Systems & Software - USA & Most Innovative Social Networking App: milSuite Company: Data Systems Analysts, Inc. Name: Frances R. Pierce, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board Email: piercef@dsainc.com Web Address: www.dsainc.com Address: 8 Neshaminy Interplex Drive Trevose, PA 19053 Telephone: 215/245-4800

Data Systems Analysts (DSA) is an employee owned professional services provider. We invited President, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Frances Pierce to talk us through the firm and the wide range of solutions it offers.

Founded in 1963, DSA has deep expertise and comprehensive understanding of the operational, security, and collaboration challenges that its customers must address. The firm was founded by a team of engineers who, while working for RCA Corporation, developed the software for one of the largest wide area data communications networks in the U.S. Frances outlines how the firm has grown since it was established and provides an overview of the services it now provides.

“Since its inception, DSA has played an important role in supporting the U.S. Federal Government. We work directly with the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy, U.S. Armed Services, Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Information System Agency (DISA) and several Intelligence Community organizations.

“Our solutions encompass program and knowledge management, business process engineering and security, and our services include cyber security, software development, SharePoint solutions, data analytics, and systems engineering and integration.

“DSA is recognized by the U.S. Army as an award-winning leader in Knowledge Management expertise. We understand how to analyze, architect, implement and integrate secure COTS collaboration suites that transform the work environment into a collaboration culture. We recognize that the concepts and principles of Collaboration and Knowledge Management are crucial to the successful future of an organization as they are today.

Global access to information and planning tools is vital to enterprise members who travel or are dispersed, yet need to stay connected.

Implementing this new channel for decisionmaking, group interaction, and system support enhances team performance and significantly reduces travel and communications cost, which is ultimately what draws clients to our firm.”

The company’s business philosophy has always boiled down to having relationships of trust with customers and employees, which has enabled it to enjoy client relationships spanning as many as 50 years. Fran explains how the firm’s entire ethos is geared towards enhancing client loyalty and supporting customers in order to facilitate this.

“Relationships are built on successful delivery, integrity, and mutual trust. Decades of experience in delivering solutions in heavily regulated environments also sets the company apart. Loyal customers return with repeat business, and new customers are attracted due to innovative technology solutions and the company’s reputation for service.

“The company’s leadership inspires this same dedication and loyalty in the company’s employees. We are rightfully proud of the strong work ethic and collaborative culture that drives the company. Capitalizing on DSA’s in-depth knowledge of the industry, we are uniquely positioned as a recognized leader in the field of secure information sharing with an outstanding reputation for integrity and client satisfaction.

This sustained entrepreneurship has fuelled the company’s continued growth.

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“To further leverage DSA’s position in the Defense and Intelligence marketplaces, the company’s leaders created the DSA Federal Advisory Board (FAB) in 2004. The vast experience and insights of the eight industry luminaries serving on the board has stimulated still greater success for the company.”

In recent years the business has shifted its role from a subcontractor to larger companies in the industry to prime contractor managing large teams of subcontractor companies in support of customers’ missions. DSA has an expanded presence in key markets, and extended operations to six regional offices with over 250 employees.

Moving forward, Fran makes it clear that the firm is not resting on its laurels despite the phenomenal success it has achieved in recent years and is eager to grow and expand in order to better support a wider client base.

“DSA is keenly focused on growth and serving our customers. We are actively pursuing contracts that will extend DSA’s presence into new areas of the country. We strategically analyze opportunities that allow us to provide expertise and expand our customer base. With this in mind, we support our customer’s mission, whatever it may be.

“Our ultimate goal for the future is to continue DSA’s history of innovation by focusing on cyber security, enterprise-wide solutions, cloud services and mobile applications.”

Best Authentication Technology Company – UK & CV Excellence Award for Cybersecurity - UK Distributed Management Systems Ltd Stockclough Lane, Blackburn, Lancashire, BB2 5JR, United Kingdom Web: www.casque.co.uk Email: info@casque.co.uk Tel: 44 1254 208419

Identity Assurance - The Next Generation Dr. Basil Philipsz, the founder of Distributed Management Systems (DMS), a privately owned company based in Lancashire UK, talks to us about the success of the company and their new product called CASQUE SNR. The new CASQUE product is the second generation of authentication technology which has previously been used by G4S, O2 Airwave and UK’s Ministry of Defence.

As the inventor, product designer and main driving force behind the success of Distributed Management Systems (DMS), Dr. Basil Philipsz explains how DMS has overcome the current challenges with the cybersecurity industry.

Requiring remote users to “have” something (other than knowledge of their passwords) is regarded as essential for sensitive online applications. There is no shortage of product choices that are available in this multi-factor authentication market - expected to reach 9.60 Billion USD by 2020, at an estimated CAGR of 17.7% from 2015 to 2020, according to MarketsandMarkets.com. Techniques that underpin these products are varied: - time based dongles like SecurID; biometrics that utilise some human “fingerprint” like iris pattern; software cryptography like Public Private Key Infrastructure (PKI); out of band communication (sending SMS messages).

However, confidence in these current generation technologies has been undermined by exploiting flaws in their foundation architecture. If a manufacturer embeds a key, then compromise within is damaging, as illustrated in the debacle with SecurID’s Headquarters in 2011. If a biometric template is copied and a compromise in security occurs, recovery can be difficult. PKI has been employed in several guises including smartcards and software tokens. If someone knows the private key and it is compromised, then the whole system fails. Also, this may be discovered as factorisation algorithms can be implemented using quantum computing. The validation of certificates is a perennial problem with fake certificates and neglected revocation lookups providing good hacker opportunities. There are two vulnerabilities using SMS messaging to reveal one-off password smartphones: - Firstly, they are not secure and

may be infected with malware, and also the actual communication is not secure as witnessed by the large revenues of companies who sell IMSI catchers to perform man-in-the-middle spying.

NIST, the US National Institute of Standards, recent 2016 publication “Digital Authentication Guideline” https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html (NIST DAG) is an excellent resource describing what should be the determining characteristics of robustness in the various approaches. Biometrics are not tolerated! Out of band communication “is deprecated, and may no longer be allowed in future releases of this guidance”. Aside from the flaws in methodology, the human factor (greed, revenge, ideology) makes breaches by privileged, malevolent “insiders” especially difficult to prevent.

Distributed Management Systems, winner of the Best Authentication Technology Company UK & CV Excellence Award for Cybersecurity has successfully navigated these turbid waters by producing four innovations that power their CASQUE SNR product and one of the inventions “Scalable Authentication System” was granted a US Patent (No 9,369,464) this year. Dr. Basil Philipsz, says “The safety of current authentication technologies is based on keeping fixed keys secret.

Any compromise may remain undetected, difficult to recover and create significant reputation loss. We change keys dynamically and invisibly, removing fixed targets and so become immune to insider attacks, token clones and manufacturer reveal.”

CASQUE SNR is fully self-contained with no third party IP dependencies. The product has its own challenge/response protocol which is cryptographically realised using standard algorithms and provides key generation and key

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management. Each CASQUE SNR token contains a secure, EAL5+ rated processor. There are two types: - “Optical” with its own rechargeable battery and display and “Smartcard” with both contact and wireless Near-Field Communication (NFC) capability. The optical token is truly client-less whereas the Smartcard requires a client player.

Alternatively, the challenge can be presented as a QR code on any screen and “snapped” by an Android smartphone using the CASQUE SNR NFC token.

In the NIST DAG document’s terms, CASQUE SNR fulfils the description of a “Multi-factor cryptographic hardware device able to address assurance requirements at Level 3” - the highest security assurance level. CESG, the UK National Technical Authority for Information Assurance, has certified CASQUE SNR under its CAPS scheme and CASQUE SNR can be suitable for use at secret and above.

“It is important to have painless deployment options and we were delighted to have been chosen by Pulse Secure (the market leader in mobile VPN) as one of their worldwide technology partners. We work out of the box with Pulse Connect Secure TLS VPN Gateway. Our recent development allows the CASQUE SNR server to act as an identity provider for any web server that implements Open ID Connect”, says Basil Philipsz.

CASQUE SNR is relied upon 24/7 by the UK’s Ministry of Defence and is also NATO approved.

“We want to broadcast the message that you can have military strength security at commercial prices so there should be no justification for accepting yesterday’s technologies”, says Dr Philipsz.

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Best Safety Information Management System – Xilo Company: EARA Technologies Inc. Name: Grenville B. H. Lock Email: grenville_lock@earatech.com Web Address: www.earatech.com Address: Grenville B. H. Lock Telephone: 403.398.8615 x401

EARA Technologies was founded in 2002 as a software development company specializing in health and safety supporting effective return to work programmes. We caught up with Grenville Lock to learn more about this creative firm and the solutions it offers.

EARA Technologies launched its signature, award winning product Xilo in 2004. Grenville provides us with an overview of the product and how it is revolutionising the health and safety market.

“Xilo is a SaaS Health Safety Information Management solution that allows organizations to achieve excellence in a wide range of areas including building a health and safety culture within the organization; document and content management; return to work and incident investigation.

“Our mission is to spread the word and have Xilo make a difference in as many ways, places and organizations around the globe.”

This innovative solution, according to Grenville, is what sets the firm apart from its competitors.

“It is not our vast expertise in software development (platforms, frameworks, languages, etc.) that differentiates EARA Technologies and our flagship Xilo. It is how we seek to understand the challenges of people, business and industry and how we then apply our expertise to help solve or minimize issues holistically. It is our understanding of the value of information within an organization, it’s value across organizational silos and how ensuring it is simple and easy to create, input or upload information; delegate management (maintenance thereof) of information both within and across organizational siloes; reference and or relate this information both within and across organizational silos and conveniently provide appropriate access to stakeholders (both internal and external).

“We believe that you enable better decisions and outcomes with timely and appropriate access to pertinent information. Decision makers can only make decisions based on the information they have available (Business Operations, Production, Human Resources, Executives, Team Leads / Supervisors, Workers Compensation Adjudicators / Case Managers, Non-Occ Insurers, etc.) and having the right information available not only reduces the human and financial costs of injury and illness but enhances overall productivity (and thus the bottom line).

“Fundamentally, technology can be a very powerful enabler. Xilo makes it simple and easy to create, maintain, and share information from any device anywhere you are connected and the sky is the limit on enablement.”

Looking to the future, Grenville emphasises that the company’s focus is firmly set on continuing to offer the very highest quality services through a collaborative approach.

“Moving forward, we are keen to undertake more collaborations and work closely with our clients and industry peers to ensure that we continue to offer the highest possible quality service and solutions. Listening is the key to adapting to the ever changing marketplace and we will continue with this approach in the future.”

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Best Skin Care & Beauty Product Manufacturers & Award for Innovation in Enterprise Managed Technology Services Company: The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. Name: Rhonda Vetere, Chief Technology Officer Email: Rhondamvetere@gmail.com Web Address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhondavetere Telephone: +1 631 531 1347

Estée Lauder Companies The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is the global leader in prestige beauty. We invited ELC’s Chief Technology Officer Rhonda Vetere to provide us with insight into the Company and its innovative work.

The Estée Lauder Companies was founded in 1946 by Mrs. Estée Lauder, a visionary businesswoman. The group now offers more than 25 prestige beauty brands, which are available in over 150 countries and territories. Vetere explains the Company’s drive towards success and how it has achieved the enviable position it is in today.

“The Estée Lauder Companies mission is ‘Bringing the best to everyone we touch,’” said Vetere.

“Our High-Touch core values that Mrs. Lauder established in 1946 – creativity, entrepreneurship, integrity – remain at the heart of The Estée Lauder Companies. Our High-Touch technology service reflects these values and allows us to connect to our consumers in a personal way” As Chief Technology Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies, Vetere leads a global team that delivers a diverse range of global information services to the group’s brands and functions.

She explains her role in more detail and how she supports the integration of technology into the Company’s practices.

“The Estée Lauder Companies follows a 10-year strategic Compass to ensure that we remain a sustainable high-growth company. We retain a deep portfolio of quality brands, products, and services that consumers cherish. Our products are unique and high-performance, with long-term appeal and enduring quality, supported by a robust pipeline of new ideas and technologies.

“Ultimately, we are truly a global company that serves consumers around the world with products and services that are tailored to the needs of local markets. We have some of the most creative and innovative people and we continuously aspire to preserve our values.”

“To foster our success, we must balance providing robust, scalable, and efficient traditional IT services with the ever-increasing demand for emerging technologies,” offers Vetere.

“Fundamentally, our achievements are a result of close collaboration and guidance from our global senior leadership to ensure ongoing alignment of the IT Strategy with our brands’ evolving strategies.

It goes without saying that each day technology becomes increasingly integrated with our brands, our functions, our partners, and our consumers.

Our successful innovation reflects our focus on the consumer journey and how technology can enable new ways for customers to shop, explore and interact with our Company. “One of our most promising avenues is the recent inauguration of our global Innovation Lab. In partnership with our brands, we collaboratively fast track ideation and implementation of concepts to differentiate The Estée Lauder Companies’ products and services for our consumers.”

In addition, Vetere explains the Company’s approach to continued success and how it innovates and supports the growth of its brands.

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Most Innovative Integrated Business Planning Company Company: Exceedra Software Ltd Name: Richard Nicholas, CoFounder Email: richard.nicholas@exceedra. com Web Address: www.exceedra.com Address: Southbank House, Black Prince Road, London, SE1 7SJ Telephone: +44 (0) 844 556 1242

With offices in the UK, US and Australia, Exceedra has rapidly expanded to bring integrated business solutions to companies around the globe. We caught up with co-founder, Richard Nicholas to talk about the company’s success.

Exceedra is a global provider of Integrated Business Planning and Insight solutions to consumer goods companies. By simplifying commercial, financial and supply chain processes, Exceedra enable clients to improve their performance in Trade Promotion Management, Customer Business Planning, Joint Business planning and Sales and Operational Planning.

The end to end solution increases visibility and empowers cross- functional teams to maximise revenue and margin opportunities while actively managing risks. Exceedra customers include: ACH Foods, Bayer, Birds Eye, Cloetta, Dyson, McKee Foods, Omega Pharma (Perrigo), Pladis, Seventh Generation, Valeo Foods and Weetabix.

Exceedra’s strategy is to be the leader in their chosen markets (EMEA and USA). They are highly customer focused and major on the complete team delivering value to all of their clients. Richard Nicholas, co-founder chats to us about how they work with clients to get the best results.

“Our approach is centred on delivering business value through the implementation of our software solutions. Our clients are from the consumer goods industry .These companies typically spend between 10% and 30% of revenue on promotions delivered via the retailers.

Therefore, a company with £100M revenue could be spending £20M on promotions. Improving the return on investment of this spend by just 5%, will result in a possible return of £1M/year. In addition to financial gains there will also be greater visibility within the enterprise and improved forecast accuracy. This allows management to make better decisions - reducing supply costs and increasing market share.

“Each client has unique needs. We invest in understanding those needs and help them implement best practice. Our clients are looking to optimise the use of their budgets, improve forecast accuracy, reduce supply chain costs and increase the level of integration across teams.

At the same time they have to recognise that all of their customers are unique and different.

Exceedra takes a consultative approach to fully understand the current level of maturity, identify where the biggest opportunities for improvement are and then work closely with the client to create a way forward that is achievable, sustainable and effective. ” When asked about the changes to the software and technology industry Richard referenced the adoption of newer and alternative approaches.

“Over the past twelve months we have seen IT functions move increasingly towards hosted/ cloud based solutions that can also support mobile technology. Exceedra’s solutions support these developments and we are very well placed to provide the high service levels expected. We continually evaluate how we can balance ease of use with a functionally rich platform.

requirements can be met. Exceedra’s ability to deploy different modules in each market ensures that the system can be aligned to the requirements and capabilities of the Client organisation.”

Richard explains how Exceedra has learnt that growing an effective team with plenty of experience has been the key to becoming a successful business.

“In addition to developing a very broad and functionally rich Integrated Business Planning (IBP) solution, we have assembled a team with extensive industry knowledge and experience.

Exceedra’s approach continues to be to keep processes as simple as possible and our powerful combination of software and people enables us to effectively challenge unnecessary complexity.”

Exceedra is able to serve all of our Clients to a high standard but recognize there is no room for complacency. They will continue to grow organically but plan to expand their global reach through an alliance of suitably qualified and relevant partners.

“Organisations expect high levels of integration and increasingly require the ability to deploy on a global basis - both of which are supported by the Exceedra platform. The key challenge is that each market will be at different levels of maturity in terms of their relationship with the retail partners and internal capability.

“Our size and corporate structure enables us to be both flexible and customer focused which is highly regarded by our clients and industry experts alike. Our ability to fully understand the challenges Clients are facing and then support them with a platform that offers full integration and market leading breadth of functionality, is unique in the market.

Exceedra has to support multiple languages/ currencies and be able to interface with all the major ERP systems and data sources.

Additionally it has to support local variation to a global framework so that specific market

“Exceedra is fully focused on becoming recognised globally as the leading provider of systems to support Integrated Business Planning and Revenue Management – we are well on our way to delivering that goal.”

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Most Innovative Software Development Engineers: ‘Falafel Software Inc’ Company: Falafel Software Inc /MeWatt Corporation Address: 100 Enterprise Way Suite C240, Scotts Valley, Ca 95066 Phone: 831-462-0457 Fax: 831-480-4902 Email: info@falafel.com Website: http://falafel.com/

Falafel Software Inc Falafel Software Inc., an 8 time Microsoft Gold Certified partner, has been providing custom software development, consultation, and training services worldwide for over ten years. We profile the firm and examine the secrets behind its success.

Established in 2003, Falafel Software, Inc. provides the highest quality software development, mobile solutions, consultation, and training services available. Starting initially with consulting and training, Falafel Software found itself expanding rapidly on the excellence of its engineers and the incredible sense of teamwork exhibited by everyone in the company.

This common mutual respect for each other’s talents has been a major asset for Falafel, causing extraordinary growth, and a level of quality that very few other IT companies can match. Employees include best-selling authors, industry speakers, technology decision makers, and former Microsoft and Borland engineers.

All of Falafel engineers are Microsoft Certified Professionals, Certified Application Developers, or Most Valuable Professionals.

The firm’s team of Microsoft Certified Professionals will exceed clients’ expectations when no matter which of the myriad of services that clients choose. Whether they need help moving to the cloud, a suite of mobile

applications, or assistance with any of the firm’s partner’s technology, the Falafel family willing and able to help.

Fundamentally the firm is in a strong position to support clients with all aspects of their technology and provide the very highest standards of service. Founder Lino Tadros is a renewed industry expert and, prior to founding Falafel, Lino was a member of the development team at Borland for Delphi and C++Builder. Lino has been awarded Microsoft MVP status fourteen years in a row for his numerous contributions to the C# community and is an expert in .NET, LINQ, ASP.NET, MVC, XAML, Windows Phone and Web Services.

Lino is an industry renowned speaker and has given numerous presentations on 5 different continents since 1994. He also currently sits on the Board of Directors of four Silicon Valley corporations.

This vast industry experience is drawn on when working on every project and is key to the firm’s success.

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Best Mobile Food Industry Platform: foosye® - USA Company: foosye® Name: Chris Wellington CEO Email: chris.wellington@ foosye.com Web: www.foosye.com Address: 139 W Main Street, Garner, NC 27526 USA Phone: +1 919-636-6017

Foosye® is the market-maker for the food truck industry. We invited Chris Wellington, the firm’s CEO, to learn more about the firm and how it took a gap in the market and created the global platform that has led it to its current success.

As the food truck industry’s champion, Foosye® support each user and customer segment on one global, data-sharing platform. Chris talks us through the firm’s service offering and how it aims to support users through its specialist knowledge and unique positioning of their market.

“Here at Foosye® we understand our market and the challenges it faces. Most people assume food trucks, push carts, hot dog stands and your neighbourhood ice cream truck just show up and are ready to serve. What most people do not comprehend is the intense amount of preparation involved, and the regulations to comply with, for this loosely tied ‘industry on wheels.’

“For example, a two-hour lunch service may require as much as six additional hours. These hours involve; shopping, food preparation, staffing, loading, gas, ice, maintenance, travel to the location, checkin and set-up, servicing customers, tearing down, travel back, unloading, cleaning, waste disposal, truck storing, accounting and sales reconciliation.

But time is also needed to search for and secure future business, and the process repeats all over again.

“In addition, many unforeseen occurrences can and do happen. Tires go flat, engines fail and other equipment ceases to operate. So a ‘just show up and serve day’ has now become much more. A food truck is the quintessential business example in which more work happens behinds the scenes than during the food service times.”

“As such, our end focus is the birth of a food truck’s cloud based total Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution: marketing, scheduling, payments, ordering, staff management, customer loyalty,

communications, maintenance, supplies, data management, accounting, location effectiveness, predictive business analytics and more.”

The firm’s clients range from those who buy from, sell to, hire, market, build, service and repair, inspect, investing in, or “just love a food truck.” Chris outlines the services it provides to these clients to ensure that they receive the most innovative solutions possible.

“Eating from a food truck is an experience in and of itself. Enhancing this experience is such a key priority that it was built into the very first line of code with real-time engagement through continuously evolving customer loyalty programs.”

“Overall our mission is simple, to eliminate the Drive, Park and Pray™ business model, as it is not a sustainable model for any business. To achieve this, we have taken the entire mobile food vendor ecosystem and built a highly innovative platform on which a loosely tied industry can now become a global giant.”

Chris is quick to highlight the hard work of his staff, which he believes is vital to the success of the firm, and is keen to focus on the fact that everyone at the company, even himself, is held to the highest possible standard.

“The foundation of foosye® was built from day one on High Performance Work Place (HPWP) principles and practices. The team at foosye® are all selected from their internal peer referrals or through the vast network of our founding leadership team. This is the standard by which we uphold our team’s accountability, from the current student interns to myself as CEO.”

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“Our primary practice is a master-mind group of thought leaders, always pushing the envelope and each other for “what can be achieved next.”

By being open to listening and learning from others, we are able to dissect feedback and the ‘impossible’ to distil it down to the key components of innovation, relevance and forward thinking. It is this collaborative approach and dedication to supporting both our staff and clients that sets us apart.”

Looking into the future, Chris is determined to emphasize his firm’s optimism as it aims to forge ahead with additional IP and trademarks, product innovations, and more; all leading to global brand recognition of foosye® as the mobile food industry leader.

“Moving forward, we are excited about both the immediate future and items on the horizon. In September we will be showcased at the CED Tech Venture Conference, where the company will announce the release of a major product.

Immediately following will be the translation and development into five major languages for a global launch as well as two additional products which are currently being commercially tested.”

“In addition foosye® has recently completed our first market acquisition and secured a 6,000 sq. ft. building to accommodate our global company headquarters in Garner, NC. We are looking forward to taking advantage of the opportunities these developments will bring in the months and years to come.”

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Best for Home Energy Management Products Company: Green Energy Options Ltd Website: http://www.geotogether.com/

Green Energy Options specialise in creating products and services that help clients to see, control and automate home energy. We invited Simon Anderson, the firm’s Director and Chief Strategy Officer, to talk us through the energy revolution and how his firm intends to be at the forefront of this latest industry development.

An energy revolution is about to start in the UK. Over the next five years, smart meters will be installed in 27 million homes across the country.

It is an impressive figure, but what makes this truly revolutionary is that the government putting consumers at the heart of the programme, and energy management at the heart of the home.

Instead of energy being out of sight, and therefore out of mind, for the first time ever residents will be able to see their energy use data in a number of formats – via an energy display, energy apps, web portals - and be able to get live access to meter data. This last element is particularly significant as real-time data has the potential to automate other energy devices.

Green Energy Options (geo) has been involved in this revolution from the start. Our mission is to make energy smarter for domestic consumers.

Ten years ago we started developing and trialling our first energy feedback and control systems, the results of which helped influence the government’s decision on mandating energy feedback. A key challenge of this initiative was to understand how we could present this information to people who hadn’t seen it before in an easily understandable format. These were the days before smart phones, which forced us to build very simple, cost-effective monitoring devices. And it’s this simplicity and accessibility that carries through in our products and services to this day.

One of our earliest innovations was a speedometer-style display, which has helped thousands of customers reduce their energy usage. This is a format that is familiar to many but instead of speed, ours is designed to show how much energy the home is guzzling. One customer used this to realise that the flickering light on their oven was not a faulty light but a faulty oven that was switching on and off constantly. Another customer noticed that he was constantly using a minimum of 180 Watts.

After an extensive search, he realised that he had left the lights on in his loft when he put the Christmas decorations away six months earlier – and that this had cost him £90- he will not be making that mistake again. These examples highlight how our monitoring devices can deliver value simply by making it visible. And both cases could happen at any time showing the enduring value that such displays offer.

Today we are the largest supplier of energy monitors and local access devices for the smart metering programme. We have also taken further steps to make energy smarter; for example, we have developed Cosy, a marketleading mobile smart thermostat and Solo, an advanced solar monitoring device. Thanks to all these innovations, we are now a profitable medium-sized business with a compound annual growth rate of over 80%.

The smart meter rollout lays the foundation for the next stage of the energy management revolution.

When the data collected by smart meters can be used to control and automate energy in the home, we will really start to reap the benefits of this smart technology. The terms ‘smart home’ and the Internet of Things (IoT) are widely used to cover all manner of elements from entertainment to security systems. At geo, our focus is on the smart energy element of the smart home. This is different from other smart home elements – this smart energy element relates more to the fixtures and fittings in a home, some of which are in out of the way places where the internet rarely reaches. This is where our specialist knowledge comes in – this is what we call the Internet of Energy.

Our vision is of the Hybrid Home. Much like a hybrid car, it combines traditional and modern ways of powering a home in order to deliver lower energy costs and a better living experience. The technology works in the

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background, meaning that people can live their normal lives without worrying about managing their energy – the system does that for them.

The Hybrid Home integrates smart metering, solar generation, energy storage, electric vehicle charging, heating and the control of other major energy consuming appliances. Our element in this vision is Topaz, an integrated Energy Management System (iEMS): think of this as a combination of the engine management system, engine settings and the dashboard in a car.

The core proposition is using battery storage to power the home with off-peak electricity plus solar if available. Based on the properties we currently monitor, we’ve calculated that this could amount to potential savings of a third without solar and two-thirds with solar.

The driving principle of the Hybrid Home is simplicity.

It is unrealistic to expect people to integrate the various elements themselves – managing multiple components that are using separate web services, apps and possibly IoT platforms could prove to be complex, and the average consumer will struggle to manage this successfully. Our experience shows that people are engaged initially, play with controlling a few elements then get bored and want us to take the problem away from them – Topaz is designed to do just that.

Ultimately we are delighted to receive this award for Best for Home Energy Management Products as it recognises our innovation, progress and potential in this field. This is especially timely as we are celebrating our tenth year in business.

We started out with basic energy monitoring systems but have since matured into an integrated home energy management business.

With the smart meter rollout opening up our Internet of Energy services to the masses, we are looking forward to what the next ten years will bring for our smarter energy mission.

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Best Healthcare IT Company - UK & CV Innovation Award for Cybersecurity - UK Company: Imprivata Name: Mark Clark Email: sales@imprivata.com Web Address: www.imprivata.com Address: European Headquarters 6-9 The Square Stockley Park Uxbridge, England UB11 1FW Phone: +44 (0)208 744 6500

Imprivata Inc Imprivata is the market leader in providing healthcare organisations globally with a security and identity platform that delivers authentication management, fast access to patient information, secure communications and positive patient identification. We profile this dynamic company and explore the secrets behind its success.

Innovative security solutions from Imprivata are used by 100 NHS trusts across primary and acute care in England and Wales; all trusts in Scotland and 3 out of 5 regions in Northern Ireland. Imprivata is trusted by healthcare organisations globally and proudly has a 99% customer retention rate.

Improving health outcomes through digitisation and increasing productivity has been Imprivata’s primary mission since inception. This is achieved through removing barriers and ensuring healthcare professionals can focus on patient care. This enables them to harness the benefits of technology whilst removing the complexity.

Over the last decade, healthcare has transitioned from a work place that is predominantly paperbased to one that is gradually becoming digital.

This evolutionary shift has delivered many benefits for patients but it has also highlighted the need to ensure electronic patient health records are kept secure at all times.

“Healthcare organisations go through extraordinary measures to put IT security systems in place in order to protect patient health information. However, these systems can create barriers such as complex passwords and security policies that impede workflow, delay access to records and impact the quality of patient care,” commented Mark Clark, VP International Sales at Imprivata. “Ultimately, clinicians elect to go into medicine to focus on patients, not to battle each day with IT systems.

Imprivata security solutions simplifies healthcare IT to enable clinicians to focus on patient care.”

Imprivata develops identity and access management, communication and collaboration, and clinical workflow solutions that remove the barriers to electronic medical records created by security and regulatory compliance requirements.

The products are designed to enable healthcare providers to ACT: Access, Communicate and

Transact patient information securely and conveniently.

The product portfolio includes Imprivata PatientSecure®, Imprivata OneSign®, and Imprivata Confirm ID®. These solutions provide fast-access to both applications and devices, streamlining workflows and resulting in both cost savings and efficiency gains. Imprivata solutions have been proven to save clinicians 45 minutes per shift on average when accessing patient health records, enabling them to dedicate this time to patient care.

The solution is particularly valuable for nursing staff that on average login to systems up to 40 times per shift.

Delivering a security solution is more than just about deploying a technology. When undertaking a new project, the Imprivata team work closely with customers to understand their requirements.

Clark comments; “Before each implementation we conduct a workflow study to understand how the solution can best support the organisation in achieving its objectives. Following implementation, we conduct a further study to validate that the implementation delivered the expected results.

We find this closed loop approach ensures that customers are maximizing the value of the solution.”

Customers and technology partners are fully trained on the solution and ongoing operations are supported by regular contact calls to the customer.

All of this is underpinned by the Imprivata technical support centre that provides 24x7x365 support.

What differentiates Imprivata is in-depth knowledge of the healthcare sector drawn from more than ten years experience in providing security solutions to a global customer base of over 1600 hospitals.

More than 5 million clinicians rely on Imprivata technology every working day to securely and conveniently access patient data. The Imprivata solution integrates with a wide range of medical

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and technology systems from the likes of Cerner, McKesson, Citrix and VMware. This deep level of integration ensures that adoption and deployment is smooth and seamless.

“Innovation is at the very heart of what we do at Imprivata, we make huge investments in R&D and employ only those with passion, integrity and the courage of their convictions,” commented Clark.

“To be given this prestigious award is fantastic recognition for the global Imprivata team, who work cohesively and across borders, with a single vision of enabling the path towards digital transformation in healthcare.”

As Imprivata looks towards the future the company continues to develop new capabilities and expand its focus on improving and securing the patient experience. Concern over the protection of patient data has soared in recent months following a spate of cyber attacks.

To mitigate the risks, Imprivata has recently launched PatientSecure, a solution that accurately retrieves a patient’s medical record through their palm vein patterns. The solution creates a 1:1 match between patients’ identities and their medical records, avoiding traditional patient identifiers like social security numbers and vastly reducing the risk of a stolen identity being misused.

Clark concludes by expressing his excitement for the future of the firm: “Imprivata has enjoyed strong growth and we are excited about future innovation that we can deliver to our customers. Healthcare is becoming more mobile and increasingly focused on prevention and chronic condition management.

We firmly believe that Imprivata’s solutions are uniquely placed to support the changing market requirements and we look forward to continuing to deliver innovation that has a significant and positive impact on improving healthcare delivery.”

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Best in Enterprise Success Planning 2016 Company: Improved Apps Limited Name: Paul Field CEO Email: info@improvedapps.com Web Address: www.improvedapps.com Address: Improved Apps Ltd, Quatro House, Lyon Way, Frimley Road, Camberley, Surrey GU16 7ER Telephone: +44 1276 804 800

Improved Apps provide solutions that facilitate success for their customers. They aim to maximise the effectiveness of enterprise applications and drive up the proficiency of all users.

We spoke to CEO, Paul Field, to gain an insight into the business and how it supports its clients in the field of Enterprise Success Planning (ESP).

Improved Apps is dedicated to driving adoption of Salesforce CRM and custom Salesforce applications as well as applications built on and for the Salesforce platform.

Paul outlines Improved Apps’ solutions and how they address some fundamental needs of today’s enterprises.

“Improved Apps furnish rich, functional solutions that address key customer business needs. Our focus is on releasing the business advantage inherent in our customers’ bought and built apps through our easy to deploy and user-friendly solutions.

We have an international customer base that scales from small start-ups to global corporations, all of whom have recognised the need to improve their return on investment from Salesforce CRM and other applications that operate on the Salesforce platform.

Our customers use our 100% native Salesforce solutions Improved Help and Improved Noticeboard to empower their users. These tools enable our customers to target individual users with clear and concise information where it’s needed - embedded in the heart of Salesforce.

Customer Success lies at the heart of everything we do. From the first discussion to the ‘go-live’ we are focused on understanding the intended benefits and on creating a plan that will deliver. Every business is unique so the solution that is implemented will be unique – but that does not mean that it needs to be complex or prolonged. We provide as much or as little support as required and focus on quick wins and sustainable ROI. Overall, it is all about enabling organisations to provide the right information, in the right place, at the

right time, for the right person. Sharing knowledge brings shared success: as such our focus is on enterprise success and delivering innovative and user-friendly solutions that enable organisations and their people to provide world class customer service.”

“In the constantly changing world of technology and market requirements, we balance our strategy and roadmap through maintaining a customer-centric view of everything we do, coupled with ‘horizonwatching’ for emerging technologies and trends.

Working in such a fast paced, competitive market, it is vital for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Paul explains how Improved Apps marks itself out as the best option for clients through its use of Enterprise Success Planning (ESP).

Technology continues to develop at a rapid pace, in a world where doing more with less is paramount for survival, let alone success. The industry challenge for providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS) - often something of a ‘fashion’ industry – is to make sure that technology solutions actually deliver genuine benefit.

“Improved Apps is unique in its ability to embed solutions directly in the applications they serve and to deliver the right knowledge to users based on the context that faces them. We are the leaders in the area of Enterprise Success Planning and provide tools and techniques to support our customers in the alignment of their processes, people and technology, to deliver optimal customer service.

This represents the biggest challenge for enterprises using SaaS and the biggest opportunity for Improved Apps comes from our focus on ensuring that enterprises reap the rewards from their applications. Our challenge will be to spread this capability to more enterprise users, partners and customers, across a broader range of applications.”

Enterprise Success Planning represents the next generation of capability to provide insight and tools to meet strategic objectives through applications.

It has been designed to ensure that businesses are able to understand what is happening within their organisation, identify behaviours that produce positive or negative results and promulgate approaches, support and guidance that will achieve a better return on their assets. ESP does this by providing analysis around the big data created by actual behaviour, processes and outcomes. Based on this analysis, ESP is then able to provide direction and information within the applications to maximise the chances for success.”

Evolution is another constant challenge to businesses operating in the technological space, and, as Paul explains, a challenge which Improved Apps works hard to overcome.

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Moving forward, Paul expressed his delight at Improved Apps winning the award, Best in Enterprise Success Planning, as well as his excitement at the developments and opportunities that the future holds for the company.

“Recognition is vital for a growing business like Improved Apps: Recognition from our customers that we are doing a great job for them, recognition from our prospects that we can provide them with a valuable solution to their challenges and recognition from the industry that we are leading the way with our technology and approach.

The coming year is a terrifically exciting period for Improved Apps – everything is accelerating – our size and market-share, our development and the speed of delivery. I am looking forward to working with clients (both existing and new) to build upon their success in the future.”

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Best Cybersecurity Consultancy - UK Company: IRM Security Name: Sean Arrowsmith, Sales Director Email: hello@irmsecurity.com Web Address: https://irmsecurity.com/ Address: Cheltenham House, Clarence Street, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3JR Telephone: 01242 225 200

Information Risk Management Plc IRM provides both industry leading consultancy services and cyber threat management software. We caught up with Sean Arrowsmith, Sales Director at IRM, who outlines how far the firm has come since inception.

IRM was founded over 17 years ago, and has grown from a small consultancy to work with more than 750 companies, including some of the largest organisations in sectors such as financial services and retail. Sean explains how the firm has expanded its service offering since it was founded in order to better service clients.

“Here at IRM we pride ourselves on thinking differently about cyber security. We have over 17 years of experience in cyber across both the private and public sectors, and we have pulled that together to create a platform that helps leading organisations manage the increasing threat they face, from criminal gangs to insider data theft.

“Our range of services covers all aspects of information security from PCI compliance to boardlevel strategy, mobile application testing to red teaming. Meanwhile, SYNERGi is our SaaS cyber security management platform, which enables security heads see, track, understand and manage cyber security across their whole organisation.

“The depth and breadth of experience is what sets us apart from most of the information security industry. IRM was founded over 17 years ago and has grown from a small consultancy into a dominant leader in the field.

“In that time, we have focused on long-term strategic partnerships, and many of our large customers have been with us 5-10 years. They stay with us because we’ve become a trusted partner counted on for reliable advice.

“We have also built an unparalleled network of connections with intelligence services, putting us at the forefront of knowledge for new threats. This includes partnerships with organisations like CESG, the IT arm of GCHQ.” The information security landscape is changing rapidly, especially in light of the media attention

given to several high profile data breaches. As such, Sean states that IRM is committed to supporting clients in bettering their cyber security and ensuring that they are prepared for any form of attack.

“Our mission is to help our clients make distinctive, permanent and substantial improvements to their cyber security posture in times of growing threat.

In achieving this, we also aim to build a great company, which through its thought leadership and innovative solutions attracts, excites, and retains both exceptional people and its customers.

We ensure that everything we do is the result of careful planning and preparation, built on unrivalled knowledge of the cyber security landscape.”

Currently it is a fascinating time to be in the information security industry, as the market continues to evolve and generate exciting new opportunities. Sean outlines how IRM intends to take advantage of these.

“Looking ahead, a key focus for us is SYNERGi, our cloud-based cyber security management platform, which aims to cut through the complexity of the cyber landscape with a single to track, understand and manage threats. We are working to integrate with even more technology vendors so that it can pull in more information from their technology to create a single point of reference for businesses.

“On the consulting side of IRM, we are working to help our customers proactively deal with the changes required ahead of the EU GDPR coming into law. We have recently teamed up with a major law firm for additional insight on the legal side of things.

“Additionally, we are working to enhance our red teaming – simulating an attack to find security flaws.

We are adding more attack vectors and generally creating an even more realistic simulation of a real cyberattack in order to better prepare our clients.”

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Best IT Contract Consulting Service - USA Company: ITStaff® Email: Info@ITStaff.com Web Address: http://www.ITStaff.com Address: United States of America Telephone: (877) 676-7681

ITStaff® ITStaff® is an information technology services company, dedicated to providing high quality contract and contract-to-hire staffing in support of the software development life cycle (SDLC). We caught up with Mark Norris to gain an insight into the firm and the services it provides.

Established in 2009, ITStaff® provides IT contract and contract-to-hire staffing focused on positions IT managers typically require when assembling teams for software development projects. These skills include Project Managers, Business and Systems Analysts, Architects, Modelers, Software Developers and Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers. The firm is currently supporting clients in the area of Big Data with resources such as Data Scientists and Data Analysts, and are starting to see more opportunities for resources needed in the Internet of Things (IoT) projects.

Clients for the firm’s services are in a wide array of industries that include healthcare, technology, retail, insurance and finance.

Mark outlines the firm’s mission, and how the company strives to achieve this from the very start of every project it works on.

“Our mission is to make the lives of our client’s easier, not harder. We realize how busy these managers are. Many are spending the better part of their day in meetings and they cannot afford to have their time wasted on unqualified candidates. Our process garners trust with these managers. Once they work with us, they see how we operate and they understand that we do what we say we will do and they appreciate that. We don’t oversell and we don’t try to force-fit someone into a position they are not qualified for”.

“From the very beginning of any project, we aim to support our clients by delivering the very best service on the market, and that starts with our industry leading guarantee. If the professionals we provide do not hit the mark, we believe in taking that burden off of the manager through our guarantee program. And the end result is that we have never had any of our clients have the need to take us up on it, which we take great pride in. We believe that we have been able to accomplish this because of:

a) The experience of our sales and recruiting team; b) The process we go through to make sure we understand what the manager is asking for; and c) The due diligence we put into thoroughly screening our candidates for the role they’re being asked to perform.

“Fundamentally we know that it is always a risk for a manager to make a change. We’re always conscientious about the work we do, but especially so with new managers we’re engaging with. It’s all about earning their trust and mutual respect. When we’re provided an opportunity with a new client, it’s imperative that we make that manager look good to his or her supervisor for making a sound decision.

It’s on us to make that manager’s job easier, not harder and we back up everything we say and do.”

Looking to the future, Mark makes it clear that the firm is keen to grow organically in order to secure the company’s reputation for providing quality services.

“Moving forward, we are keen to obtain managed growth where we can maintain control of quality and the things that have allowed us to be recognized positively by our clients and professional staff alike. We would rather be known as the best company to work with rather than the biggest company to work with”.

“We are honored and grateful to have been recognized for the 2016 Technology Innovator Award. We consider this award to be a testament to our company’s dedication towards excellence in customer service to our clients and to the professionals who represent our company day-in and day-out by making our client’s IT projects a success. It also speaks volumes to the dedication of our sales and recruiting team and the passion they put forth in delivering quality service levels in an honest and ethical manner.”

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Best New Small Business Accounting Service 2016 & CV Innovation Award for Financial Services Technology Company: KPMG Small Business Accounting Name: Dan Roche Email: dan.roche@kpmg.co.uk Web Address: www.kpmgsmallbusiness.co.uk Address: 15 Canada Square, London E14 5GL

KPMG Small Business Accounting is a full service accountancy division of KPMG offering the high level of service which is the foundation of the firm’s success. We invited Dan Roche to talk us through the business and its drive for excellence in everything it does.

KPMG Small Business Accounting has been built around an innovative online platform, which gives clients access to a financial calendar and key financial information. To ensure clients get the most from the technology, from day one, they get their own dedicated, UK-based KPMG accountant, who really understands the small business sector.

Our strategy is to provide an innovative, cost-effective accounting service to small businesses, to help save them time and improve their efficiency. We maintain this by recalling the reason why we entered this market, and ensuring the service underpins this.

We understand that the more hours small business owners put into growing their companies, the better their chances of success.

Yet what many small business founders don’t realise is just how much precious time can be absorbed by accounting and financial admin.

Particularly those tasks – like bookkeeping, payroll administration and cash-flow analysis – that could be managed by their accountant, but either aren’t on offer or cost an arm and a leg.

99.9% of the private sector – and are responsible for 60% of all private sector jobs – the complete accounting service they need to help their businesses thrive and make UK plc a success.

Since inception we have been perfecting our flagship product, the KPMG Small Business Accounting service which incorporates all of the services and technology outlined above.

There are two packages available – a ‘light’ service, starting at just £125 a month, and a more extensive package (which includes bookkeeping) for around £250.

Within the wider market our competitors are the accountants who have not yet embraced technology advancements for the benefit of their clients.

The result? They settle for a service that’s good enough: one that covers the basics – the tax, VAT and annual returns – but little more.

At KPMG, we don’t believe in ‘good enough’; we don’t think small businesses should receive a mediocre service, because of their size, or pay through the nose when they want more.

That’s why we launched KPMG Small Business Accounting: to give those SMEs that comprise

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Currently they are providing a service that is just about ‘good enough’ for small businesses, but it could be so much better.

As such we believe that it is our use of technology, plus the wrap-around services, at a highly competitive price point, is what sets us apart.

Moving forward we are dedicated to continuing to champion technology as a disruptive force for good in the accounting sector.

Ultimately, the small business market is dynamic. Therefore, to continue providing the best quality service and value for money, it is vital that we evolve alongside it, and this will be our focus in the future.

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Best App Development Company 2016 - UK Company: Locassa Ltd Website: http://locassa.com/

Locassa Ltd Locassa Ltd craft unique mobile-focused applications for the world’s biggest brands. We invited CEO Simon Lee to tell us more.

Locassa Ltd are the UK’s most trusted mobile agency, specialising in offering native app development. Simon explains how the firm produces quality content which meets the needs and exceeds the expectations of its clients.

“Having worked with the likes of Canon, The Times, The Sun, the MOD, Luzozade, CMC Markets and Universal Music, we understand the need for a proven delivery process and level of detail that ensures the products we create uphold the quality of the brands we create them for.

“Our team of creative designers and developers are passionate about their work and specialise in translating our clients’ ideas into thought provoking and well executed software products, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved within mobile. We are passionate about the work we do, the team we work within and the culture that we belong to.

“What sets us apart is that we come at this industry with the product and customer in mind not just the business; most of our competitors are in this space purely for the business. We find by putting the product and customer experience at the forefront, we end up producing products that are beautiful to look at and to use. We are honest and helpful with clients and simplify the complex process of app development down into a process that is easy to follow and understand.

“Ultimately we believe that amazing mobile products are born out of an attention to detail that only the most passionate individuals pay heed to. It is in the combination of these small details, which gives rise to a product that would otherwise be lifeless without them. We are creating such products for the worlds most recognised brands.”

the team loves what they do and that passion and enthusiasm is great for our clients. This amazing recruitment process has shifted from recruiting for ‘job positions’ to recruiting for ‘amazing people’. The process consists of several stages starting with a group recruitment day where I present the company and the team, then the candidates present themselves in a group environment. This is followed up with 1-to-1interviews for those who really get our company culture.”

As his final comment Simon expressed his excitement about the future for the firm.

“Currently we are in a strong period of growth and are adding new members to the team every month, 5 in July alone. We are also working on some really exciting projects across several key verticals including gaming, healthcare, food and drink and art, all of which will provide us with great opportunities for more growth in the coming months.

“The market is an exciting place to be, with the big new thing emerging at the moment is VR, especially now some big players like Facebook, HTC and Sony have entered the market.

As such now is a really great time to be in our industry, as a truly new way to interact with data is created, which will enable the industry to take its next leaps forward.”

The backbone of any major company is always its staff. Locassa have a very collaborative and open culture, ensuring that every member of the team has a voice and can contribute to their overall direction and product line, as Simon states.

“By focusing our recruitment on people and not job roles we ensure that every member of

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Award for Innovation in Learning Technology 2016 - London Company: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Name: Peter Bryant Web Address: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lti

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is one of the foremost social science universities in the world. We invited President and Director Professor Craig Calhoun and Peter Bryant from the Learning Technology and Innovation team to talk us through this remarkable organisation.

LSE is located in the centre of London, working dynamically to enhance the teaching and learning of its students with technology.

Speaking of the school as a whole, Craig was keen to emphasise his pride in its dedication to supporting students and helping them enter the workplace with the skills they need to thrive.

“LSE is a remarkable institution. It is top-ranked, intellectually innovative, and full of brilliant people. Since its foundation the School has been devoted to understanding major social issues and to grasping the course of social change. Its research shapes and leads public debate.”

The Learning Technology and Innovation team is part of the School’s Information Management and Technology Division. Peter explains the work that the department undertakes and how it aims to ensure that the school supports both staff and students.

“Our department’s purpose is to enhance teaching, learning and the student experience through technology. We support innovative approaches to education through grants, projects, technology and expertise. We work with departments and academics to identify, pilot and roll out new approaches to teaching and learning with technology.

“We work collaboratively with both students and staff to understand what they are trying to achieve through their courses and programmes.

Once we have this understanding we provide a safe environment to experiment and pilot innovation, where expertise and support are shared and where rigorous evaluation and research informs decision making.

“It is critical for us to ensure that innovation is not a procession of ‘shiny new things’ or simply changing the colour of the website. Innovation is about process, about how and why the academic does their teaching and learning.

We help the School to interrogate where education with technology might go in five or ten years’ time, supported by horizon scanning, pedagogical research and agile design informed thinking.”

The mission of Learning Technology and Innovation is to enhance teaching and learning at the London School of Economics through use of innovative pedagogy and technology.

Peter outlines how the department achieves this ambitious aim.

“Our aims are achieved through an integrated approach to engaging with faculty and other professional services at the School. We provide large and small grants, support innovative projects at course and programme level, lead initiatives in the School around teaching and learning spaces and blended learning and engage in providing expertise across a number of technology related fields such as e-learning, copyright, open education and digital literacy.

“Collaboration is also vital, and as such we work with colleagues across the School to promote the integration and use of technology in teaching and learning by supporting key technologies, through staff development, advice and guidance, research and networking.”

Technology in higher education is a contested space. There are great tensions as to whether technology replicates, replaces or transforms practices. There are also passionate debates

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around the efficacy of using technology as part of teaching and learning in the modern university. Learning Technology and Innovation are passionately engaged in those debates, leading the case for innovation in the ways learners experience higher education, as Peter explains.

“Here at Learning Technology and Innovation we advocate for pedagogy and teaching first and see if technology can help facilitate that.

This is the way we take forward projects in innovative media making and digital storytelling and gamification, by putting the teaching and learning intention front and centre.”

Looking to the future, Peter stressed that despite the challenges the industry faces his department and the school as a whole will continue to support students as best they can.

“The future of higher education is a very complex one. With changes arising from Brexit, the relationships we have with other universities and with innovations coming from Europe and the rest of the world become critical. LTI are working on a number of projects that look to enabling the embedding of creative and playful learning through technology. We are also into our second year of work to support students to become co-producers and co-creators of content and knowledge through making and sharing of media. The potentials arising from social media (outside of Facebook and Twitter alone) are yet to be realised by many institutions and we want to be at the forefront of this development.”

Best Mobile Recruitment Solution 2016 Company: Loop Name: Megan Colins Email: megan.colins@loopworks.com Web Address: www.loopworks.com Address: Brighton Office: Office 5, 3rd Floor, Vantage Point, New England Street, Brighton, BN1 4GW Chicago Office: 660 W Lake Street, Suite 350, Chicago, IL 60661 Telephone: United Kingdom: 0800 808 5516 United States: 888-848-9002 Australia: 03 8400 4459

Loop Megan Colins, Global Head of Operations of Loop, the company responsible for creating the leading mobile recruitment platform, chats to us about how they have adapted to industry changes in a fast paced environment.

Loop is the leading mobile recruitment and employee engagement platform allowing for companies to engage with their candidates and employees direct to their mobile device of choice.

Megan Colins gives us an insight into how Loop operates, starting with an outline of their company and leading to their ongoing business strategy.

“We made the strategic business decision to develop a full suite of mobile products that can be configured to support all aspects of mobile recruiting and related candidate processes to replace online recruiting processes; this includes: careers sites, Talent Community registration, mobile application and pre-screen processes, employee referral and event pages.

“In conjunction with the platform’s ability to recognise the device type and render the mobile experience, it fully leverages the immediacy of mobile to drive your recruiting efficiency.

Organisations leverage our platform to drive recruiter productivity to support their own initiatives in mobilising candidate marketing, ongoing candidate communication, associate redeployment, candidate availability and status management, assignment updates, interview feedback, pre-screening and referral programs.”

The core element to the Loop platform is the establishment of candidate preferences and associating the candidate record with their mobile number. The Loop team is focused on building cost efficient, highly saleable tools to “opt-in” and engage candidates via the mobile channel, supporting both smart phone and feature phone users. The platform is designed to give clients a single vendor to support operational goals across multiple business lines and to optimise the candidates experience on mobile phones

and tablets. This approach is designed to allow clients to interact and engage the candidate directly on their primary device of choice.

“We work with a wide breadth of clients across multiple industry verticals. These include franchise, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, staffing and RPO. Our approach focuses a large amount of effort in developing toolsets to drive recruiter productivity and connect candidates to the brand using text and mobile web. When undertaking new clients, we consult with the organisation to understand their overall objectives. Having an understanding of what they hope to achieve, gives our team a clear view as to how the Loop platform can be leveraged to alleviate the issues.

In a rapidly moving industry, the cycle time for software products and services is much quicker, with innovation happening at a faster rate with Loop’s vendors than larger technology firms.

“After a long period of discussing how to engage candidates and employees more effectively, we are seeing firms releasing budgets and actively investing in our type of mobile based technology to actually make it happen. Nowadays, the cycle time to effect change is far faster now, we can add features and services that operate globally in weeks rather than months which can sometimes be a challenge.”

According to Megan, Loop has learnt to use feedback from clients to improve their customer experience. “Turning feedback into action.

Putting customer and employee/candidate input into every stage of product development or release cycle is the most important part of your business if you want to scale.

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“Other significant aspects of business that Loop has followed is to learn from your mistakes, closely follow adoption rates and ensure you have open lines of communication for blue sky discussions with client and tech partners.”

Loop provides a dynamic, two-way SMS messaging tool to initiate dialogue and to gather candidate data and preferences. This messaging service can support a wide variety of candidate engagement and recruiter productivity tools, including job alerts, Talent Community registration, automatic status management and shift availability and reminders.

“Our SMS capability makes our mobile apply processes unique by delivering messages to candidates if they need to ‘save [an application] for later’ or if they drop off the process for any reason.

These SMS messages serve a unique link to the candidate to bring them back into the process, where they left off. We are currently integrated with over 900 mobile carriers, worldwide, with client services in over 180 countries – allowing organisations to reach candidates virtually anywhere, anytime.”

In the near future, Megan explains how Loop plans to shift their focus to more on developing their platform. These solutions will be taken directly to the market in the coming months.

“We have spent years in the industry offering customised solutions to our clients. Loop has invested significant time and resources into taking elements of these solutions, and consolidated them into what we believe to be a turn-key solution to ensuring organisations can build and maintain talent by engaging candidates with relevant content, direct to their mobile device of choice.”

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Most Trusted Targeted Mobile Advertising Company - USA Company: Majority Strategies Name: Brett Buerck Email: brett@majoritystrategies.com Web Address: www.majoritystrategies.com Address: 12854 Kenan Drive, Suite 145 Jacksonville, Florida 32258 Telephone: 904-567-2008

Majority Strategies is a full-service influence marketing firm specializing in direct mail and targeted mobile advertising. We invited Brett Buerck to provide us with a unique insight into the company and the services it provides.

Majority Strategies is a full-service, in-house firm with a large team of full-time professional copywriters, project managers, and graphic designers well-versed in the art of delivering highly-engaging creative with tight turns.

The firm has worked with the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican state party Victory committees in more than 35 states.

Other clients include trade and professional associations such as the National Association of Realtors and Associated Builders and Contractors, National Rifle Association, American College of Radiology, as well as corporations like Wal-Mart and Bank One. Brett outlines the strategies it employs which have led to the firm’s success.

“In the past two decades, Majority Strategies has created countless targeted mobile ads and over 2 billion pieces of mail for more than 2,500 campaigns and clients in all 50 states seeking every office imaginable – from the Courthouse to the White House. A commitment to customer service, a company-wide competitive drive and a motto of #WePlaytoWin have contributed to our success.

“Majority Strategies set out to change the political advertising landscape, shifting toward bright, vibrant and strong images and humor to cut through the clutter of the mailbox and mobile screen. Majority Strategies creates each piece of direct mail and mobile ad with two basic ideas

in mind: one, the recipient doesn’t want to pay attention to the ad, and two, the right creative will make it so they have to. Coupled with precise data targeting and 1st party proprietary data, Majority Strategies does that by using a unique brand of creativity honed over two decades of experience.”

Operating in such a highly competitive industry can be a challenge, but as Brett emphasizes, differentiation is crucial.

“Majority Strategies is a mobile-first tech company with the world’s first vertically integrated mobile ad platform that allows us to deliver faster bid responses, verified ad delivery, higher engagement rates – all for lower costs.

As a firm we offer superior targeting, in-house creative development, extensive and premium app inventory options and detailed reporting of successful deliveries to humans, not bots.

We can ensure where ads appear, provide a full suite of custom creative, including video creation, and offer superior targeting through custom list-based targeting, geofencing and geofarming.

“The company has been proven to generate more click-throughs than anyone else on mobile and successfully deliver 2.5 times as many ads for the same dollar spend. After constructing a one-mile wide geofence for a startup menswear store’s pop-up shop in San Francisco, CA, Majority Strategies delivered nearly 3 million impressions that resulted in a 672% increase in sales for the company. Working with former Speaker John Boehner during the 2014 primary

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election, Majority Strategies’ targeted mobile advertising resulted in a 408% improvement in favorable opinion amongst the target audience as well as a 14.66% increase in turnout and 1.2% increase in percentage of the vote in targeted versus non-targeted precincts.”

Looking to the future, Brett enthuses that the firm is at an exciting stage of growth, with a number of opportunities on the horizon which will pave the way for additional success.

“Today, we are leaders in the political advertising industry, focused on campaigns and elections.

We are taking our proven model in this industry and extending our focus into policy, influence marketing and brand advertising.

“We will need to continue to educate our clients that eyes are shifting away from TV to mobile screens while battling the fraud and abuse that have broken people’s trust. We must also educate our clients about the prevalent use of apps, the importance of the user experience and the value of a targeting plan that combines multiple mediums, not solely digital.”

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Digital Supplier of the Year 2016 - UK & CV Innovation Award: ESB Agile Company: Meritec Limited Name: Haydn Howard Email: haydn.howard@meritec.co.uk Web Address: www.meritec.co.uk Address: Meritec House, Acorn Business Park, Skipton, North Yorkshire, BD23 2UE Telephone: 01756 797766

Meritec is an established and highly respected professional and digital services company based in Skipton, North Yorkshire. Haydn Howard provides an absorbing overview of the company and the services it offers.

Meritec are highly skilled in project initiation and management with a total focus on meeting customers’ needs. Haydn highlights how this is achieved.

“Meritec Limited are experts in Digital Innovation.

Our mission is to dramatically reduce our customers’ operating costs through modern IT services and solutions that do exactly what’s needed in the most effective way. We provide digital solutions using our unique software platform, ESB Agile, that rapidly generates smart business applications through the automation of business rules and variable parameters. Solutions already exist for many public service areas and these can be readily localised. Our MDS solutions and services are securely hosted from UK tier 3 datacentres, whilst applications management and migration/ conversion are our forte.

“Our customers are spread far and wide throughout the UK and include the majority of local authorities as well as a range of large companies. To these clients we supply a range of innovative digital solutions.

“We adopt an agile approach to ensure that we fulfil requirements most effectively and deliver earliest benefits. Above all we work in partnership with our customers to help them achieve their visions.”

This client focus impacts upon every aspect of the business, including the internal culture, as Haydn explains.

“Our culture is shaped by our client centric approach. Our attitude and approach are driven by conforming with our customers’ requirements in the most effective way. Meritec prides itself on our strong relationships with our customers. We are friendly and easy to do business with and our core value is to exceed our customers’ expectations.

“We have extensive experience of our customer’s needs. Many of our staff have worked in or with customer organisations for many years. Our team and partnership approaches ensures this knowledge and understanding is exploited in our service delivery.

“As such we seek staff who are passionate about working with our customers to deliver the best possible outcomes. They must also be innovative thinkers and have an agile approach to building and deploying digital solutions.

“We are fortunate in having many contacts and high quality agents who know what we are looking for and scout for the best on our behalf. We ensure that candidates fully understand the exciting opportunity of working in a highly motivated and right-minded organisation.”

In addition to supporting clients, the firm also offers an innovative platform. Haydn talks us through this service.

“We are not only digital experts but we own and supply a powerful digital platform. At its heart is an agile rapid deployment tool that is ideally suited to the digital space. It has many components that are essential for digital working, especially mobile applications. Moreover, we have developed a wide range of digital processes that can be readily deployed and localised for clients.”

Moving forward, Haydn explains how the firm is keen is keen to adapt and expand in order to continue fulfilling client requirements.

“Our aim is to scale rapidly to deliver into our market the substantial benefits of digital innovation. We are continuously developing advanced digital solutions to reach all parts of our customers’ business.”

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Best Energy Conservation Technology: ‘MeWatt Corporation’ Company: MeWatt Corporation Address: 100 Enterprise Way Suite C240, Scotts Valley, Ca 95066 Phone: 831-462-0457 Fax: 831-480-4902 Email: info@mewatt.com Website: http://mewatt.com/

MeWatt™ is a revolutionary ‘appliance to mobile’ device that provides near real-time energy monitoring and analysis of home appliances’ energy usage. We profile the firm and explore the services it offers.

MeWatt™ is simple and fast to install, simply plug the device into your wall outlet, plug in your appliance, and connect the device to your home WiFi and the firm will integrate it, allowing the device to continuously collect and analyze the energy usage of appliances, providing clients with actionable recommendations and alerts so that they can take control of their home’s energy consumption, reduce their carbon footprint, and save ultimately money.

Actionable alerts and messages give the information clients need to make smart decisions about how and when to use their appliances so that they can reduce your carbon footprint. Clients can install MeWatt™ on one appliance, or a group of appliances in their home – bringing them closer to their goal of establishing a greener home. We even help keep clients informed about their phantom energy usage which can account for up to 20% of their home’s total energy usage.

In addition, the firm’s smart software is constantly analyzing the data and making smart recommendations to help clients save money. Clients can turn appliances on and off from anywhere and even pre-set appliance schedules, and the firm even make recommendations on when it is time to upgrade to a new appliance, allowing clients to make the most of this innovative technology.

Ultimately what sets the technology apart is that the MeWatt™ is simple to install, ensuring that clients can have it ready to use in less than five minutes. This speed of installation, ease of use and superior client service is what sets the firm apart and will be its continued focus going forward.

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Best for Industrial Internet Communications Equipment - USA Company: MultiTech Name: Stefan Lindvall Email: sbrown@multitech.com Web Address: www.multitech.com Address: 2205 Woodale Dr., Mounds View, MN 55112, USA Telephone: +1 763 785 3500

Multi Tech Systems Inc MultiTech designs, develops and manufactures communications equipment for the industrial internet of things. We interviewed CEO, Stefan Lindvall to find out about how the firm is supporting their clients by helping them become more connected.

MultiTech specialises in connecting physical assets to business processes to deliver enhanced value.

Stefan explains how the firm achieves this and supports clients with all of their IoT needs.

“The Internet of Things is creating new customer experiences and unparalleled economic value, while improving quality of life for countless people around the globe. By providing products and services to connect “things” to the Internet, MultiTech delivers deeper understanding to businesses, governments, organizations and individuals, which will in turn transform the way we live and work.

“Our commitment to quality and service excellence means clients can count on MultiTech products and people to address their needs, while our history of innovation ensures they can stay ahead of the latest technology with a partner who will be there for the life of their solution. We have a great team who share a renewed commitment to become leaders in the space; whether in innovation or engineering, customer service or operations, and they are always happy to assist our clients and support them with all of their connectivity needs.”

The firm’s mission is to make connected technology easy to adopt and use by focusing on customer needs, developing innovative solutions, outpacing market change, leveraging best-in-class processes, and empowering our team to achieve and grow.

Stefan explains how the firm endeavours to achieve this from the very start of every project.

“When we start working with a new client, the first order of business for MultiTech is to listen carefully to what our customers are trying to achieve and what business problem they seek to address by adopting MultiTech technology.

“By understanding the customer’s business needs, we are best able to link them to the right solution which is likely to include not only MultiTech hardware, but potentially engineering services, which we can provide through our subsidiary

Connected Development and device management tools we provide to help manage the device throughout its entire lifecycle. In addition, we frequently work with partners for network services and even application platform. By maintaining relationships with complementary suppliers across the value chain, we are able to guide customers through their entire deployment. Our service and technical support team is with our customers every step of the way and has earned us a reputation for being easy to do business with.

“In addition, we have a dedicated organization within engineering that is focused entirely on innovation. They are charged with staying abreast of what’s possible and following new technologies as they become available for us to leverage and build into our products. Perhaps even more important is, again, understanding what the customers are trying to achieve for their businesses and maintaining relationships with other members of the ecosystem with whom we can brainstorm new, interesting solutions. It is very gratifying to delight a customer with a new type solution they might not have even considered – and to bring that solution to market with help from our partners.”

Overall Stefan is optimistic about the future, both for MultiTech and the wider IoT market.

“Moving forward, we expect continued growth and profitability to drive continuing innovation. We will continue to reinvest in our products, facilities, equipment and, most importantly, people.

“Within the wider technology market we expect ongoing developments in RF technology and will be right there, as we have for the past 40+ years, delivering a broad choice of connectivity options to our customers. As for just how far and deep the Internet of Things will become, there are countless industry analysts and blue-chip companies willing to prognosticate; what is important is that as our customers imagine new and exciting applications, we will be there to enable them.”

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Most Innovative Hybrid IT Device: UBook Company: NAJMTEK Email: contact@najmtek.com Web Address: www.najmtek.com Address: 410 Pierce Street – Suite 310 – HOUSTON, TX 77002 Telephone: 713-357-9523

NAJMTEK has created a powerfully dynamic hardware and software tool that surpasses today’s devices to deliver a more advanced set of functionalities and experiences. We invited Sophie Ennadi to talk us through this revolutionary solution.

NAJMTEK has created the UBook, a Universal noteBOOK, YOUR notebook. With UBook, a collaborative and intuitive interaction is created between and among users and devices.

This unique suite includes highly functional and adaptive hardware, an operating system, an SDK (Software Development Kit) for programs / apps, and a dedicated online store. Sophie talks us through the firm’s process in creating this revolutionary technology.

“With versatility of the hardware, the operating system and the SDK, the UBook can be transformed from one virtual machine to another with a simple touch of a button. It can be turned into an ultrasound machine, an EKG machine, a diagramming or designing tool, a notepad or most any other business or personal tool imaginable.

The only limitation is the user’s imagination. This is exactly what Sophie Ennadi, CEO of Najmtek, had in mind when she and her husband developed the Ubook, which is perhaps the most innovative and diverse laptop of the future.

“Our process involved first analysing the real need of our customer, and then we try to find the best solution. In our case, as told, UBook is a Universal NoteBook. No more keyboard, but a multi-touch input screen, that make everything possible. It is all about software.

touch screen keyboard into one of the 140 language keyboards the Ubook offers, free of cost, with the simple touch of a button.

Even if we are a software company also, we are not able to develop for everyone as many areas are too specific. So to make sure we can address all our client’s need, we’ll provide them with a free Software Development Kit (SDK). So in case they cannot find the right application on our store, they can develop it by themselves, and then share it or not, for free or not, on the store.

The possibilities for what the user can do with the Ubook are thus definitely endless!”

Strategy Analytics predicts that by 2020, the average person will own 4.3 internet-connected devices.

Users are spending increasing amounts of money on multiple technology devices because there is no product that offers everything they need. In addition, society is becoming more and more fast-paced, with people constantly multitasking. Sophie explains where the UBook fits into this.

“Our mission is to change the way users interact with their technology as they will participate in, and

The replacement of the traditional keyboard with a multi-touch, multi-functional screen on the Ubook increases user’s potential: one can view stock options on the top screen while simultaneously buying or selling shares on the bottom screen, view two Internet screens at once without the need to purchase an additional monitor, and even view videos on the top screen while typing notes on the bottom screen. In addition, the UBook is also a multi-language device, and users can convert the

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contribute to the world while being custodians of the planet. As such, when creating the UBook, we wanted to build a technology that worked well with these changing lifestyles by providing a device that meets all user’s needs, without the necessity of purchasing additional devices or having to go back and forth between their phone, laptop, computer, tablet, etc.

“The Ubook saves time, money, and raw materials in a world where technology is only continuing to rise.

The UBook’s features bring clients more flexibility and optimal mobility in only one single device.”

Looking ahead, Sophie explains the firm’s future plans.

“Our future includes obtaining the funding to bring this device on the market. It included also to implement specific apps and fonts for dyslexic, and to work with school district in the framework of one device per child. However, as it is a Universal Notebook, it can be used by anybody, and we will not have this issue of language barrier anymore.

Finally, we will set our online store and free SDK, and make it available before the launch of the device so people can start to develop what they need.

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Most Innovative Signal Control Platform: NetNumber TITAN Company: NetNumber, Inc Email: sales@netnumber. com Website: http://netnumber. com/products/titan/

NetNumber was founded on innovations in addressing and routing technologies. Kim Gibbons talks us through the company and its revolutionary solution.

Innovation is the heart and soul of NetNumber.

Nearly two decades ago, the telecom industry was in a panic as vendors declared “voice would be free” and phone numbers would disappear. The Plain Old Telephone System (PSTN) and the SS7/ C7 signaling network on which it was built were declared destined to disappear -- to be replaced by IP, or Internet Protocol.

NetNumber founder Douglas Ranalli believed this migration from legacy to next-generation networks would not happen overnight, and would not be as easy as some vendors stated. He founded NetNumber in 1999 with the goal of simplifying the migration of SS7/C7 signaling to next-generation signaling while enabling carriers to continue to use telephone numbers to identify subscribers.

Doug had the foresight to define a software platform that could accommodate the signaling and routing protocols of the day, and be robust and flexible enough to accommodate protocols that had not yet been defined. Today, NetNumber TITAN provides a common, virtualized infrastructure for all signaling control, routing policy enforcement and subscriber database services in the network.

The company’s ground-breaking work has expanded to focus on four pillars of innovation which radically simplify signaling and routing control in a telecom operator’s core network. Such simplicity enables the operator to more quickly introduce new revenue-generating services while also reducing OPEX and CAPEX investments.

These pillars of innovation are: 1. One common platform with multi-protocol interfaces. NetNumber TITAN provides a Centralized Signaling and Routing Control (CSRC) platform for all signaling control services -- ENUM/DNS, SIP, DIAMETER, RADIUS, SS7/ C7 and SIGTRAN. TITAN supports the most comprehensive suite of signaling protocols in the industry.

2. Flexible signaling interworking. With the slow transition to next-generation network architectures, most telecom operators will need to provision, operate and manage their converged networks for the next 15-20 years.

TITAN enables the smooth interworking

between legacy and emerging signaling management services and protocols. While many vendors are choosing to end-of-life their signaling products for legacy protocols, NetNumber is committed to supporting the transition to next-generation networks.

3. Distributed, in-memory database. NetNumber is the only vendor to integrate a scalable and distributed, in-memory database into its CSRC platform. This enables TITAN to serve as a central point of provisioning for the subscriber data with real-time distribution of the data to a constellation of geographically distributed edge servers. TITAN is highly scalable, and can support any size subscriber base to support any size network.

4. Programmable logic interface. As the network evolves with new services such as WebRTC or BSS services, telecom operators need the flexibility that comes with customizing logic interfaces. The TITAN service logic can be modified in the field to support locally defined logic requirements without waiting for a new software release. The result is a dramatic acceleration of introduction of new functionality into the network.

Today, the telecom industry is in a panic around security. Operators are concerned with protecting their SS7 signaling networks, noting repeated incidents and the impact of such incidents on the operator’s brand and reputation. Concerns about the security risks of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks are also growing, as operators seek solutions to ensure quality of service, prevent network failures, and block malicious attacks.

The security of the telecom operator’s signaling network is at risk today due to several factors, including new operators requiring mobile roaming interconnection and the use of femtocells with direct signaling access. With up to 20-30 billion network connected devices, applications and sensors predicted by 2020, the Internet of Things (IoT) represents a critical challenge for operators in terms of signaling and security. The very high level of authentication and registration events, signaling traffic bursts, unpredictable effects of these unmanaged devices, complex network 60 l CV Technology Innovator Awards 2016

interconnection scenarios, and possible hostile hacker attacks all pose real threats to networks supporting IoT traffic. Telecom operators need a new, highly secure signaling architecture protected by a robust multi-protocol signaling firewall.

Recently, NetNumber announced the industry’s most comprehensive multi-protocol signaling firewall on its TITAN CSRC platform. Building on last year’s delivery of the NetNumber SS7 Firewall application, NetNumber is now providing the same level of firewall capabilities for all signaling protocols including the addition of Diameter, SIP, HTTP and DNS/ENUM. As these firewall applications can be combined seamlessly with other NetNumber applications such as an STP, DSC, HSS or HLR on the same TITAN platform, telecom operators have an unprecedented level of multi-protocol signaling protection, flexibility and operational uniformity in a platform that can reduce OPEX and CAPEX costs and improve efficiency.

A comprehensive monitoring function completes the NetNumber Multi-Protocol Signaling Firewall to offload data to external systems for big data analytics, reporting, statistics and other auxiliary functions used by telecom operators to build a complete next-generation signaling protection capabilities in today’s complex and geo-dispersed networks.

NetNumber is playing a leading role in the GSMA Fraud and Security Group (FASG) to standardize the requirements for signaling firewall solutions. The requirements in the resulting document focus on two aspects to be supported by a Signalling Firewall solution: • The specification of rules in a vendor-agnostic and human readable ‘pseudo-code’ to provide operators the same type of protection for vulnerabilities irrespective of the vendor of the firewall solution.

• The generation of standardized content and formats of logging data that support the exchange of information between operators about threats and new vulnerabilities.

The firm expects to announce additional innovations in signaling security in the coming months, and overall has an exciting future ahead of it.

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Best for Life Science Verification Services & Most Innovative Enterprise Validation & Quality Management System: ValidationMaster™ Company: OnShore Technology Group, Inc. Name: Valarie King-Bailey, CEO Email: vkbailey@onshoretech.com Web Address: www.onshoretech.com Address: 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 220 Chicago, Illinois 60611 Telephone: 312.321.6400

OnShore Technology Group, Inc OnShore Technology Group is a global independent validation and verification services and solutions company. We spoke to CEO Valarie King-Bailey to gain an insight into the company and how its quest for excellence has led the firm to its current success.

Established in 2004, OnShore Technology Group is dedicated to the development and delivery of innovative IV&V products and professional services for life sciences, government, and other highly regulated industries. These products and services support equipment and process, and site/ facility validation although the firm’s key focus is on enterprise computer systems validation.

Valarie outlines the firm’s mission and the techniques employed by the firm to achieve this.

“Our mission and vision is to become the global leader of innovative, intelligent, and high performance IV&V solutions that ensure sustained software quality and compliance. To achieve this mission, we will continue drive our services and solutions beyond the basic rudiments of regulatory compliance to a higher level of mastery. Our tagline is ‘Mastering Regulatory Compliance’. A key step we are taking currently is to establish a working group that examines current technical and regulatory challenges and target our services towards innovative market solutions.

“We strongly believe that in today’s global competitive environment, innovation is essential for survival, and as such we have been working tirelessly to produce the products and services that our clients need. We developed the first Enterprise Validation Management and Quality system known as ValidationMaster™. In addition, we recognized the void in the market for a solution that automated the validation testing process and provided a 360-degree solution to support the validation process. ValidationMaster™ addresses these challenges and delivers a comprehensive market offering to help companies ensure efficiency and sustained compliance.”

Working in a highly competitive environment, offering unique and creative products such as ValidationMaster™ is crucial, according to Valarie.

“OnShore Technology Group’s unique approach to IV&V leveraging ValidationMaster™ is a key differentiator. There is no product on the market that delivers a comprehensive feature set like ValidationMaster™. It is a highly competitive solution that is a key differentiator for us.

“When I ask clients why they select OnShore, the most frequent response is experience. Our team members have an average of 18 years of experience in IV&V. We are experts in compliance and understand how to ensure software quality in enterprise technology.

Although many companies site experience as a key differentiator, what makes us unique is our ability to apply our experience to deliver an innovative solution for IV&V that solves a problem for validation engineers that has lingered for decades.”

Looking ahead, Valarie outlines the firm’s exciting growth plans and how these will impact on both the group’s clients and the group itself.

“OnShore Technology Group is currently in a growth phase, and we are pleased with the market acceptance and momentum of ValidationMaster™.

Our plans for the future are to take the ValidationMaster™ to the next level. Our focus will be to enhance our cloud and mobile offerings to help clients deliver greater efficiencies. We are also working with regulators and industry forums to keep our finger on the pulse of compliance.

“Alongside this, we are keen to create key partnerships to accentuate our offerings. We are looking to strengthen existing partnerships as well as forge new ones that are compatible with our offerings. We are the developers of the FDA Validation Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics AX, and are also working with BatchMaster to develop a Toolkit for their solution as well as others. Overall these developments will provide us with exciting opportunities which we look forward to taking advantage of these.”

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Award for Innovation in Open Source Business Management Software - UK

Company: OpusVL Website: http://opusvl.com Address: Drury House, Drury Lane, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV21 3DE, United Kingdom Phone: 01788 298450

Formed in 1999 for the purpose of implementing professional Free & Open Source software, OpusVL provide solutions to organisations in both the private and public sector with the aim of improving efficiency and strengthening their competitive advantage. Lauren Westley provides us with an overview of the firm and the services it provides.

OpusVL are proud to have been selected for the 2016 technology innovator awards with Corporate Magazine, under the category of innovation in Open Source Business Management Software. We have been working hard to help support and grow the Open Source marketplace and we appreciate the recognition of our efforts through this award, especially as our nomination was a surprise.

In recent times, the public sector has called for Open source and Open standards to be considered for any software project, as this is free from vendor lock in and the source code is ‘proof read’ by hundreds or even thousands of developers.

History shows that the public sector has frequently invested in creating software but once built, has to pay again for licenses, then other departments also have to pay again, and the software and know-how is then owned by an external private company. We have challenged this and supported a ‘custodian’ model for the acquisition of Free and Open Source technology for the public sector, a model which has been adopted in the Code 4 Health project. (link http://www.itproportal.com/2016/06/06/flexibaseand-code4health-the-wider-implications/ The appetite for the benefits driven by implementing Open Source is found across the private sector.

In particular, finance, retail, distribution, logistics, hospitality and leisure companies have sought our services. We have found that when customers approach us, they generally have one of 5 challenges: a need for automation, wrestling with disjointed systems and data, struggling to keep up with an evolving industry, existing technology that cannot support their growth, and a desire to reduce operating costs.

The digital workspace of our customer is at the core of efficient operations and if it’s working correctly, we believe it shouldn’t even be on your mind.

OpusVL’s innovative approach is built around delivering scalable solutions to enable interoperability and customisation, eliminating cumbersome workarounds and wasted time. We typically meet 80% of software requirements with free, out-of-the-box open source applications that do not have license costs. Therefore the majority of the budget is available to be invested on the remaining user specific requirements.

Our engagement approach has evolved over 17 years of project delivery and focuses on a successful outcome for our customer. This is achieved by first clarifying the business need through analysis of our clients business and critical processes, then determining the optimal plan of implementation. Followed by the delivery of appropriate Open Source solutions, concluding with on-boarding the organisation and an orderly change management activity, while ensuring ongoing support and maintenance are catered for.

Throughout the process, we manage a technology roadmap, detailing the priority of each section of the project so immediate items are fully specified whilst enabling the delivery team to share the future plans for the client. It is through this mature process that we have been successful in the delivery of innovation and value for our customers which in turn supports their success.

Our ethos is based on working in partnership with the customer throughout the life cycle of the project to ensure an appropriate solution, that is tailored around the unique and often complex needs of the clients business. Software is the enabler that helps you carry out your business functions, but it’s the process of implementation itself that is primarily important for the client to realise the benefits.

We operate an open culture, which gives our team of designers, technical architects and project

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managers the space to analyse and evaluate scenarios, solve issues and contribute to the wider community as a by-product. Staff regularly engage with and actively contribute to the Open Source communities either at a code level or delivering talks and thought leadership around their specialist skills.

Our employees are involved with teaching coding clubs in schools (Link http://blogs.opusvl.com/ opusvl/Boughton-Lee-Junior-School-taste-ofraspberry-pi and regularly share free and Open Source innovations such as govstrap.io which combines the government digital services theme with bootstrap, to enable responsively designed government websites to be deployed in a matter of minutes, therefore eliminating the need to hire costly website designers. (link govstrap.io Looking forward, our clients are demanding more efficient interaction between technology and users.

They expect security by default and are becoming more uncomfortable with the feeling of being locked in to a particular vendor. The promise of cloud is becoming laced with the fear that the client is not in control of their data or having their applications “switched off” without warning.

Fewer companies are prepared to maintain the use of spreadsheets for every-day data management yet business systems to replace these are required to offer a similar level of flexibility by the modern day business owner. Accessibility of data across any device has become standard in recent times, and the tools now must evolve to provide real-time collaboration to enable increasing efficiency of processing information, and more productive use of resource.

This award has further strengthened our leadership in professional Open Source delivery at a time when open technology has become an everyday requirement for almost all organisations.

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Best Islamic Core Banking System Provider Company: Path Solutions Name: Mohammed Kateeb Designation: Group Chairman & CEO Web Address: www.path-solutions.com

Powering Islamic Financial Markets

In a Q&A with the Group Chairman & CEO of Path Solutions, Mohammed Kateeb provides a compelling insight into the firm’s role as innovator, in shaping the future of Islamic financial services, by empowering this industry with cutting-edge innovative software solutions.

First of all, how does it feel to have been given your award? What do you believe are the reasons behind your success?

Since the firm’s inception in 1992, Path Solutions has strived to win every possible industry award as it is our scorecard on how the firm is performing to serve our clients. Being awarded the Technology Innovator Award 2016 reinforces our beliefs, strengthens our commitment and encourages us to continue the journey towards excellence. It also validates the firm’s innovator role in shaping the future of the Islamic financial services industry by empowering this industry with cutting-edge innovative software solutions. I, on behalf of the firm, would like to thank the distinguished jury for recognising the efforts of Path Solutions.

Please give us a brief overview of your company, your clients and the services you offer?

In short, Path Solutions is a leading information technology solutions provider offering a broad, deep spectrum of Sharia-compliant integrated software solutions and services to the Islamic financial marketplace.

Path Solutions has built a leadership position by continuously innovating in differentiated, missioncritical software solutions to stay at the forefront of the Islamic financial services industry. The firm’s team of qualified professionals and complementary solution partners, have an unparalleled ability to address regulatory and Sharia compliance requirements, at both international and regional levels. Armed with deep industry expertise and field-tested best practices, the team here strives to provide the highest quality services to our clients all over the world.

Today, Path Solutions enjoys a strong presence across the Middle East, GCC, Africa, Asia Pacific and United Kingdom in more than 34 countries worldwide with over 100 Islamic financial institutions using its cutting-edge banking systems. This strengthens the firm’s position as a leader in the Islamic financial services marketplace, indeed such

a strong market share is a testament to our ability to maintain a technology advantage.

When undertaking a new project, what steps does your firm take to ensure the clients receives the best possible outcome?

Our aim is to ensure all our clients are attended and provided with the best services. With such a unique mix of resource pool, we are capable of taking care of all business consulting, project management and implementation, training, and support needed by our clients. The client IT department and the project team here strive towards synergic relationships, working as one team with an honest and transparent approach, in order to obtain greater client satisfaction and convenience for both institutions.

What differentiates your firm from your competitors and marks you out as the best possible option for your clients?

Path Solutions is the only IT company globally that has sought in 2008 the AAOIFI certification for its end-to-end Islamic software system, to ensure its compliance with the Islamic law. In 2014, following a rigorous and phased approach project that entailed examination sessions with unprecedented collaboration between Path Solutions and Deloitte’s Islamic finance and Sharia professionals, the Deloitte Islamic Finance Knowledge Center reported no exceptions on the compliance of the company’s Islamic core banking system with Sharia principles, and the AAOIFI accounting standards.

Committed to excellence and guided by the highest standards of business ethics, Path Solutions annually invests around 25% of its revenue in R&D, significantly more than its industry peers with a dedicated team of over 300 software engineering professionals creating high value enterprise software solutions to the Islamic financial marketplace.

Working within the fast paced technology industry, what techniques do you employ to stay ahead of emerging developments?

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Vast opportunities for growth are emerging in this fast paced environment. Those who can stay ahead of the rapid pace of change, anticipate client needs, and take the lead in developing innovative strategies for the future will likely be tomorrow’s winners.

Agility is a key factor in change. The speed of change requires organisations to be nimble and flexible. Path Solutions has the foresight to spot change on the horizon, anticipate what comes next, and take the lead in developing future software solutions to address evolving market demands.

On the other hand, we are very proud of what we have achieved so far; it is a great success story. Very few companies in the technology segment in our region were able to achieve that. Besides being the benchmark to many research companies when it comes to Islamic finance technology providers, the firm’s success is demonstrated by a significant market share and the high level of client satisfaction.

What does the future hold for your firm? Do you have any future plans or projects you would like to impart?

The Islamic finance segment just like its conventional counterpart is going through a revolution of disrupting factors that will change this industry forever. Path Solutions will continue to align itself with the different needs of its clients, and will continue to be a true technology partner to all, and of course the technology leader in this segment.

The firm will increase the breadth of the solutions by providing more innovative modules in areas we don’t currently cover, and more solutions to new businesses and new business models.

Finally, Path Solutions will continue to focus on increasing the depth of its solutions and provide richer features for an efficient and more engaging customer experience. We will invest more into advancing the firm’s technology platform, digitalising our clients’ businesses, social media, mobility and cloud support.

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Best Force-Sensing HMI/MMI Solutions Company - UK & CV Innovation Award: QTC® SP Sensors Company: Peratech Email: solutions@peratech.com Web: www.peratech.com Address: The Old Repeater Station, Brompton-onSwale, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom, DL10 7JH Phone: +44 (0) 1748 813 670

Peratech Holdco Limited Peratech is a team of passionate technologists, engineers, scientists, and problem solvers on a mission to leverage its patented QTC® sensing-technologies to create world-class, mass-producible, innovative solutions that materially improve the human-machine user experiences. We caught up with CEO Jon Stark to learn more about the firm and the solutions it provides.

Peratech is a privately held company based in Richmond, North Yorkshire that provides 3D force-touch solutions for next-generation, humanmachine interfaces to some of the most exciting and innovative companies in the automotive, industrial controls, smart home, white goods, and consumer electronics markets.

Jon gave us an overview of the firm’s target market and how the company’s innovative solutions fit in.

“The tactile/touch-solutions industry has been dominated by capacitive-sensing technologies since the advent of the smartphone, and, most especially, the iPhone. Capacitive-sensing solutions interpolate “touch” by sampling and filtering disturbances in an electromagnetic field created by the capacitive sensor. The limitations with capacitive sensing are that capacitive sensing does not directly measure force, so any “touch actions” need very clever, power-hungry software to be detected.

“The industry has known that it needs to provide a better tactile-sensing solution than capacitive sensing alone does, but, to date, there have not been viable mass-market alternatives. Peratech QTC®-based solutions are now coming to market because our base technology directly measures force, and the feedback we’ve received is that QTC®-based solutions are meeting the customer requirements in ways that capacitive and other touch solutions have not.

Jon illustrates how Peratech single-point sensors also perform well when subjected to mechanical, electrical, and environmental testing.

“For example, customers need to know how our sensors will perform when subjected to really high or low temperatures -- minus 40° C up to 100° C. Customers need to know how the sensors will actually perform when placed behind a

display, battery, or other component that gives off lots of electro-magnetic noise? It is our sensor performance under conditions like these that we believe make QTC®-based force-sensing a better option for HMI (Human-Machine Interfaces) going forward.”

Offering innovative, reliable solutions means that the firm has to work hard to stay ahead of emerging industry developments, according to Jon. “We stay ahead of new trends by knowing that we can never rest on our laurels. We are fortunate in that we are working with a technology that is just at the beginning of its development cycle. We are developing new QTC®-based particles that, in the future, will work in a number of ink systems for highvolume, large area printing, 3-dimensional printing, both in conventional and digital production lines.

“In addition, we also know that our solutions will not make a global impact unless we enable others to innovate with our materials and solutions. This is why we are continually developing new ways to prototype with our solutions. We are developing new sources of feedback in the engineering and innovation communities to continually improve our QTC®-based technologies for current and emerging needs. Again, luckily, we’re not at the boundary of our technology the way capacitive sensing is. Our ability to leverage quantum tunneling is just getting started.”

Going forward, Jon outlines the firm’s plans for growth and its aims to keep up with the everevolving industry it operates in.

“To meet the increased demand for a new generation of force sensing solutions that outperform legacy technologies, we are focused first on expanding the applications and solutions across a number of markets and industries.

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“In the near term, we will be offering a more complete, cost-effective, force touch solution with embedded graphics for HMI in the smart home, white goods, and even industrial controls markets.

“Longer term, we see a future need to miniaturise our solutions and provide higher sensing-resolution.

“Within the wider industry, we foresee a continual push for digital processing and other solutions to address high-value manufacturing needs. We see the need for electroactive ink systems to work on the desktop as well as on the factory floor, and, as such, we are developing our materials to meet those emerging needs.”

Jon summed up the key to Peratech’s ongoing success as being its new business model of delivering a Rapid Development Service for customers with complete product-integration support going from concept to delivering costeffective, high-quality, durable, reliable, mass producible solutions. “We formed a solutions engineering team with expertise in mechanical integration, electronics system design, embedded electronics, embedded algorithms/software development, and mass-production process engineering. The team improved prototype design, production, and testing efficiencies that have dropped our development prices by a factor of 10, and shortened our prototype delivery times from 3 months to 4 weeks. In 2016, we have added embedded software development tools for customers of all sizes to design and prototype user experiences with 3D Force Touch.”

Jon concluded, “It is this team of scientists, engineers, and problem solvers that embraced our mission and built a solution worthy of this award.

The honour goes to them.”

Best Technical Outsourcing Company 2016 - Europe - Outcome based outsourcing; a way of life for Qcom Company: Qcom Outsourcing Ltd., Text Supplied by: Neil Anderson, Managing Director.

Email: Neil.Anderson@qcom.co.uk Web Address: www.qcom.co.uk Address: 3 Hampton Park, Wassage Way, Hampton Lovett Industrial Estate, Droitwich, WR9 0NX.

Qcom Outsourcing Ltd. Qcom has worked within the technology industry for 40 years, starting out as a manufacturer of electronic communications equipment. Today, Qcom is a leading provider of outsourced technical support to OEMs and their channel, offering solutions across a wide range of technologies throughout the UK, Europe and beyond.

As a business, Qcom has recently adopted the new descriptor of ‘Business Improvement Outsourcing’ (BIO) - a change that has prompted some to ask: “What’s in a name?” However, this development is much more than a mere exercise in etymology; rather it reflects the dynamic in the way that our outsourced relationships are established and developed.

For more than a decade, Qcom has sought to help manufacturers and resellers of an ever growing range of technical products to support their equipment more effectively. Simply put, we have been about helping such businesses to improve one (usually more) of four aspects of their service model: • To improve quality of service • To save money • To extend the range of service supply • To extend the scope of service supply Increasingly, Qcom has developed an outsourcing methodology that is based on a long term view.

While the financials can be a quick gain for everybody, when we’re pitching for business we’re always on the lookout for other drivers so that we can help our ‘would be’ hosts in more holistic ways.

For example, how might they sell more technology or more consumables? How can we better service their products? How can they increase service revenues by having a better serviced product? How can they extend the range of what they do either geographically or by time of day? How might they improve the soft aspects of product service in a way that is experienced by the end user? We look for these features before the relationship begins but perhaps more importantly we’re always looking for them so that the improvement due to outsourcing continues over the medium to long term.

A lot of course is down to methodology. We follow a life cycle model which has now become part of BS11000. At the heart of everything lies a

relationship management plan – essentially an operational procedures manual that clearly sets out what the successful outcomes of outsourcing are, ensuring that what we’re delivering is what the client is expecting. Outcome based outsourcing has become something of a buzzword in the industry, but at Qcom it is a way of life.

A big barrier for many who are unfamiliar with outsourcing though, is that they have to cross a Rubicon. Rightly, many will think that customer service is core to their business success but some wrongly conclude that they must own it for themselves. We would argue that whilst they should never abdicate, precisely because customer service is so core, it is best to seek a partner who can do it better. It is counter intuitive to some extent and whilst it can be difficult to start the journey, more and more technical companies are doing so.

We have already referred to the fact that technological products have life cycles – first they emerge, they then grow, consolidate and mature in their markets. During each of these four phases, the reasons for outsourcing will be different. In the beginning all product knowledge is in house, but the problem is often how do you cover a wide area geographically? The knowledge is deep but narrow. The solution is to train up external people and having worked for a whole series of emerging technology products Qcom’s experience is universally positive provided that the hosts training programme is comprehensive. We have yet to find a product where an outsourced engineer can’t equal an in house man.

The ongoing relationship is of course vital to successful outsourcing. I often get asked, ‘What’s the one thing we need to do as the outsourcing company to make sure this works on the ground?’

My answer is always the same. You have to have senior management buy in to the process from the host company and secondly you need a

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dedicated project manager to sift out the devil in the detail – not only for ‘Go Live’, but on an on-going basis too. Outsourcing fails when the contract is signed and the host sits back. You’ve got to continue communicating, feeding back and refining.

Changes need to be factored in and the process must evolve in order to move on. One of the trends in outsourcing that we have championed is that hosts shouldn’t outsource entire functions – there needs to be an experienced core staff at the host who can manage the relationship once the Rubicon is crossed.

What is emerging from all this is that BIO (Business Improvement Outsourcing) is not so much transactional as relational. It is about a strategic partnership, dedicated to achieving specific outcomes rather than a means to cut costs. Rather than growing tired, a good relationship should get stronger and deeper and Qcom’s desire is always to be seen as a strategic partner in a relationship dedicated to business improvement. In practice, outsourcer and outsource have become intertwined.

In summary, BIO has three critical attributes. It is at one and the same time dynamic, long term and mutually beneficial. It is not about the host losing control, rather it is about a relationship of shared responsibility, one in which Qcom has to be permanently focused on the need to deliver on the objectives that have been specified and agreed with the host.

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Best Software Testing Company 2016 & Recognised Leader in Software Testing Outsourcing Company: QualiTest Group Email: qualitestuk@qualitest.co.uk Web Address: www.qualitestgroup.com Address: 2440 The Quadrant, Aztec West, Almondsbury, Bristol, BS32 4AQ, UK Telephone: +44 (0) 845 869 6070

QualiTest is the world’s second largest pure play QA and software testing company. We invited QualiTest to talk us through the company and its service offering.

QualiTest is honoured to receive Corporate Vision’s 2016 Technology Innovator Award for Best Software Testing Company 2016 & Recognised Leader in Software Testing Outsourcing. We believe that our success comes from our deep understanding of technological trends and regulations in each of the industries we serve and our ability to make testers available anywhere in the world.

As a business we design and deliver contextualized solutions that leverage deep industry-specific understanding with technology-specific competencies and unique testing-focused assets.

We deliver results by combining customer-centric business models, critical thinking and the ability to gain a profound comprehension of partners’ goals and challenges.

Our vision is to become the world’s largest pure play software testing and business assurance partner. Our mission is to enable our partners to deploy software they trust by creating QualiTesters who align with business context and deliver the best software testing and business assurance solutions in the world.

Purely focused on testing, we differentiate ourselves in the market by providing a superior customer service experience. This is enabled by expertise in testing, industry knowledge and a stronger emphasis on clients’ business context through thought leadership, innovation, flexibility and our commitment to test beyond the obvious.

QualiTest was recognised for the second year in a row as the only Visionary pure play QA and Testing Service Company in the “Gartner Magic Quadrant” and recently received the Frost & Sullivan 2016 Global Software Testing Services Customer Value Leadership Award.

numerous projects. We use templates to convert this into reusable IP through developing new service offerings and benchmarking projects against each other while focusing on continuous improvement. We continually absorb emerging competencies like NFV, IoT and A.I. in testing.

Meanwhile, our Special Interest Groups produce assets, templates and IP. Assets include test accelerators for efficiency, environment simulation, test data sets, test data management and COTS test tool enhancement.

We promote a strong tester mind-set through significant investments in ongoing training and mentoring. To provide such a level of expertise, QualiTest augments our test engineer team with experts who have specific vertical industry knowledge from previous work experience. Our approach includes creating the best software testing teams in the world, combining expert users, excellent engineers and strong managers.

QualiTest seeks and engages potential partners with whom we can create synergy, including tool vendors and other services providers. For example, we have recently partnered with BluGem for roaming testing and joined Ixia’s (a traffic simulator for telecom, IoT and NFV) Global Solution Provider Program.

Approach QualiTest’s Right-Shore approach and global offices and test centres enable us to deliver the right combination of on-shore, off-shore, on-site and crowd testing services through our own Business Assurance by QualiTest

Knowledge and Expertise QualiTest’s services are spread across 20 verticals of which we have industry specific strategy and assets that focus on Healthcare IT, Medical Devices, Telecom, Banking, Insurance, Network Equipment, Media and Entertainment, Retail, Aerospace and Defence, Government, Utilities and Education. Beyond industries, we hold a comprehensive portfolio of testing competencies such as Big Data, Mobile Test Automation, Managed Crowd Testing, Web Services Testing, Risk Management, Agile and DevOps.

capabilities as well as through partners, offering many options for customers that address their unique needs and constraints. We perform delivery for customers in North America, Europe, Israel, India and South America. QualiTest designs a solution tailored to customers’ needs and requirements as we strive to understand the desired outcome and apply it toward structuring engagements on customer-defined key performance indicators (KPI), establishing a continuous improvement baseline known as ‘Results Based Testing’. These contractual KPIs help us maximize customer satisfaction by reaching customers’ efficiency objectives and drive improvement. With over 70% of our business being delivered through a Managed Testing Service (MTS) model and some form of a Service-Level Agreement (SLA), our engagements always strive to align with our customer goals in a measurable fashion.

Our business assurance solutions focus on evaluating the impact of quality on the business results. Part of the solution includes client/user success assurance, user experience testing, digital positioning reviews, quality health checks, production systems monitoring and more.

Growth and the Future Cyber-security, increased NFV, greater connectivity and niche industry regulations all drive the need for more testing and test coverage. Meanwhile, competition is pushing companies to improve time-to-market by experimenting with new flexible solutions. The mind-set shift to seek external help with one’s proprietary work is difficult, offset by the value of an unbiased third-party performing risk mitigation. QualiTest has ample room for growth filling this role in the marketplace, leveraged by key differentiators such as our expertise and ability to provide tailored solutions for industry / technology specific needs, right-shore capabilities, customer-defined KPI’s, strong partnerships and our commitment to new technologies.

Our strategy is based on robust organic growth supplemented with strategic mergers and acquisitions, funded via our strong financial position.

Historically, our high growth rate demonstrates our ability to retain customers whilst adding new ones and migrate regional accounts to their global parents. QualiTest intends to continue developing our key differentiators by further expanding industry knowledge in the various segments of the industries and technologies covered, as well as increasing our focus on business assurance and expanding into new industry verticals.

QualiTest’s Knowledge and Innovation team of fully dedicated testing veterans gather information, expertise and experience through QualiTest’s 66 l CV Technology Innovator Awards 2016

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Most Renowned for Innovation in Cell Technology 2016 & Development of Advanced 3D Tissue Models using Alvetex Company: ReproCELL Europe Name: Stefan Przyborski, Chief Scientific Officer, ReproCELL Europe & Professor of Cell Technology, Durham University Email: stefanprzyborski@reprocell-europe.com; stefan.przyborski@durham.ac.uk Web: www.reprocell-europe.com Address: ReproCELL Europe, NETPark, Sedgefield TS21 3FD, UK; Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK Telephone: +44(0) 7540706321

ReproCELL Europe specialises in the development of innovative technologies to build human tissues from cultured cells for the benefit of research and discovery and ultimately therapeutic applications. We invited the man behind their 3D culture technology, Chief Scientific Officer Professor Stefan Przyborski, to provide an in depth overview of the firm and its service offering.

Stefan Przyborski is the Professor of Cell Technology at Durham University and is an expert on cell differentiation and the formation of tissue structure and function. To overcome the limitations of conventional cell culture methods, he researched and developed technology to enable three dimensional (3D) growth of cultured mammalian cells in the laboratory. He founded Reinnervate Limited as a spin out company from Durham University in 2002 as a vehicle to develop and commercialise this technology.

Conventional cell culture methods primarily enable the growth of cells as flat two dimensional mono layers. This severely restricts the ability to recreate the appropriate structure and function of cells and can potentially influence the outcome of the data produced. Alvetex technology was developed to enable scientists to recreate the more natural 3D cell structure of cells in a robust and routine manner, and to produce human tissue-like in vitro models that more accurately reflect the structure and function of their native counterparts. The data generated from the study of such 3D models is of significant value enabling scientists to more precisely simulate the cellular and molecular processes in real tissues and enhance the predictive accuracy of drug action.

Professor Przyborski developed the Alvetex series of products based on underpinning research at Durham University. Alvetex is a porous polystyrene membrane that enables cultured cells to retain their natural 3D architecture and prevent cells from flattening as in conventional cell culture. The maintenance of the natural 3D shape of cells is essential for normal function and the spatial arrangement of different cell types as found in real tissues. A primary focus and application of Alvetex technology is the construction of more sophisticated and complex tissue models including layers of multiple cell types. Essentially such technology is being used to recreate the natural anatomy and structure of human tissues for use in the research laboratory. These human tissue models will dramatically impact the ability to: advance the research and drug discovery process; improve efficiency and reduce research costs overall; and reduce and replace the need to use animals in research.

Alvetex is sold to cell biologists and researchers using cell culture methods in academic, government, and industry laboratories. This is a global market opportunity relevant to any scientist using mammalian cell culture. Alvetex is firmly embedded in the product portfolio offered by ReproCELL that also includes stem cell technology, specialised media and reagents, and contract research services. Stefan talks us through the technology in more detail.

“The areas we have focused on were developed initially when the concept was conceived and Alvetex was invented. The innovation involves a combination of multiple aspects in the design of the product, including developing porous membrane technology to support 3D cell growth and the development of a reproducible and robust manufacturing process. A technology was created that could be used routinely in the laboratory alongside conventional cell culture methods, and develops a product without shelf-life, warehousing, or shipping issues. The format of Alvetex also needed to satisfy industry formats that are compatible with a broad range of analytical and robotic platforms.”

“We are continually developing Alvetex technology and demonstrating its use for the construction of a range of different 3D tissue models and new applications. We are a high tech business, developing and selling products into a high tech space. Scientists use our technology, and we support our products through interaction with scientists hence why our company has a strong scientific culture and maintains a highly skilled and qualified scientific team. This is important in developing new applications for our technologies and providing support for our clients when using Alvetex products.”

“Additionally, we have invested heavily in demonstrating the application and use of our products in multiple areas of cell culture, including cancer, liver, neuroscience, skin biology, stem cell science, and general tissue development.

This information is actively promoted to our customer base through our website, exhibitions and presentations, and published materials. This wealth of information has proven to be successful CV Technology Innovator Awards 2016 l 67

in the acquisition of customers from many different disciplines in cell biology. This sets us apart from our competitors who provide significantly less information about the utility of their products.”

Several flagship applications of Alvetex technology have been achieved as the technology becomes recognised and established in the scientific community. For example, Alvetex underpins the construction of a skin tissue model heavily sponsored by a major corporate company. Alvetex has also made its way onto the International Space Station and is part of a major research programme to investigate the effect of zero gravity conditions on the formation of bone in space.

“Our customers have purchased and applied Alvetex technology to advance their research in many ways. Already within its relatively short period of product life, there are now well over fifty peer reviewed independent scientific publications resulting from our customer base, reporting a diverse range of applications for Alvetex technology.

As a consequence of this intense activity, there is a significant growth in 3D cell culture using scaffoldbased technologies. Our sales are increasing alongside this growth in the sector” Stefan adds.

Ultimately, the Technology Innovator Award reflects the many years of work and significant investment dedicated to the development and application of 3D cell culture technology. The more recent application of such products to the development of advanced in vitro models of human tissues opens up new opportunities for the development of bespoke assays and contract research service offering. It has always been the ambition of the inventor of Alvetex, Professor Stefan Przyborski, to change the way researchers perform cell culture and offer new more advanced solutions to studying cells and tissues in the laboratory. Alvetex is an example of a game changing technology driven from the beginning by Professor Przyborski and his research at Durham University and the subsequent commercialisation of his invention by Reinnervate and now ReproCELL Europe.

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Most Innovative Fintech Firm - UK & Best Money Management Platform: Moneyinfo Company: Sammedia Limited Name: Oliver Jenkins (Marketing Manager) or Sim Sangha (Business Development Director) Email: oliver.jenkins@sammedia.com or sim.sangha@sammedia.com Web Address: http://www.sammedia.com/ Address: Forward House, Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, B95 5AA Telephone: 03303 600300

Sammedia Limited, a private FinTech firm based in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire are changing the way we will access financial advice.

Business Development Director, Sim Sangha tells us more.

Sammedia are taking advice online. We help financial adviser firms deliver their services more efficiently through mobile technology enabling them to advise more people for less cost. Our aim is to solve the ‘advice gap’ that has been created by regulation where millions of people need access to financial advice but cannot afford it.

advice can be automated from your data, taking into account your personal situation. The term our industry uses for this is ‘robo-advice’ but with our technology, the robo bit is normally backed up by a human at the end of the phone for reassurance that any decisions you are making are right given your individual circumstances.

Our product moneyinfo, enables people to bring all of their finances together in one place. This includes their pensions, investments, savings, banking, credit cards, property, mortgages and insurances all stored in one place and organised alongside all the associated paperwork. Think of it like an electronic financial filing cabinet accessible on any device and whenever required.

The financial advice industry is going through a transformation, particularly in terms of interacting digitally with end customers. It is one of the last industries to digitize and Sammedia is identified as one of the key fintech enablers in showing businesses how they can deliver large parts of their existing services via the web and on mobile devices.

We not only help businesses meet their clients’ digital expectations, we also help reduce business overheads by removing costly processes and helping firms clean up their back office data so it can be accessed and updated in real-time on any device.

We work with advisers in financial advice, wealth management and the workplace bringing investments, savings and employee benefits together with a client’s personal finances. If you can organise all of your finances together then providing advice to you is far easier. What’s more some of this

We all like Apple, Amazon, Uber and contactless payments because they are convenient and make

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our lives easier. We don’t like automated queuing systems, having to remember multiple logins and passwords and lots of paperwork. Our client portal technology reinvents how FS businesses connect with their clients and delivers a more convenient, simpler experience. We are creating choice for consumers to choose how and when they are serviced and access advice when required. We want advice to be accessible to everyone when they need it to ensure they get better financial outcomes.

Our product helps people make better decisions for repaying debt, saving for retirement, insuring their family and planning for life’s unexpected events.

Great technology makes your life easier by changing the way you access services; for examples just think of Amazon, Uber, Google etc. We are doing this for financial services by bringing all of your finances into one place, under a single login on any device.

For more information about how you will access financial advice in the future, just search online for: moneyinfo

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Most Innovative Call Centre Technology Solution 2016 Company: Semafone Limited Name: Tim Critchley - CEO Website: www.semafone.com Phone: 0845 543 0822

Semafone was originally established to tackle the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance challenges faced by the contact centre industry. Tim Critchley explains why in the world of big business, brand reputation is king, and clients need to avoid letting their lack of data security damage their reputation Here at Semafone we are dedicated to helping companies protect their brand reputation by ensuring your customers’ sensitive data is secured to the highest standard.

Servicing clients across a number of sectors including financial services, media, retail, utilities, travel and tourism, healthcare, membership societies and the public sector, Semafone’s solution removes sensitive card payment data, banking and customer ID information from the contact centre environment. This ensures our clients are not exposed to the risk of data theft – after all, you can’t hack what you don’t hold.

With more and more data breaches hitting news headlines, c-level executives would be wise to take note of American business magnate Warren Buffet’s sage words – “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it”. They would also do well to consider that the average cost of a data breach to a company in 2015 was estimated at £2.37 million.

Much of this figure can be attributed to the damage to brand reputation, with falling share prices, regulatory fines, lawsuit pay outs and employee redundancies also playing a part.

If your customers don’t trust you to handle their data securely, they’re unlikely to want to do business with you. In fact, Semafone’s own research found that 86% of consumers would shun a brand following a data breach. Winning back customer trust, and in the worst case scenario, building a new customer base from scratch, can be a costly process. Companies are starting to recognise the inherent challenges of protecting their brand reputation; a recent survey by the British Retail Consortium revealed that three-quarters of retailers said a negative brand reputation was a ‘high’ or ‘very

high’ threat to business. In the financial services sector, the stakes are even higher. With such strict industry regulations, companies don’t even need to suffer a physical data breach to lose customer trust.

Simply being condemned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is enough to see people question their loyalty to a brand.

But any business that takes sensitive customer information over the phone, whether this be banking information, payment card details or dates of birth, needs to be on their guard. Most security professionals consider external threats – hackers or cyber criminals - to be the greatest risk to data protection. But this means they often overlook the danger of internal threats in the form of company employees.

Research from Experian Data Breach Resolution and the Ponemon Institute found that 55% of survey respondents had suffered a “security incident” that could be attributed to a malicious or negligent employee. But while security professionals are aware of the threat posed by internal staff, most feel that their organisation is not adequately addressing the problem.

It is true that not all employees are searching for an opportunity to act fraudulently and steal data.

Often breaches stem from innocent and careless mistakes. But you can’t afford to put your company at risk by allowing employees easy access to sensitive data.

When it comes to protecting brand reputation, it is becoming harder for businesses to hide from or to sweep a data breach under the carpet. Legislation is starting to catch up with the realities of data security - the new European General Data Protection

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Regulation (EU GDPR) will require companies to declare data breaches within 72 hours. Thanks to this, your customers will have greater transparency into your security processes and the steps you’re taking to protect their data. Any breach of the regulations will also see companies fined 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greatest.

You only need to look as far as the Target data breach in the US to see how badly a crisis can be handled, and the damage a data breach can have on a brand. The retailer announced in late 2013 that the security breach had cost the company $290 million and severely damaged brand loyalty. In the fall out, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was forced to resign.

More recently, Morgan Stanley in the US was fined $1 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which found the financial services giant had failed to sufficiently protect customer data. The case saw a former broker of the firm transfer the data of approximately 730,000 customer accounts to his own private server. This server was then hacked by a third-party, who posted the data on the internet with the offer to sell even larger quantities. While Morgan Stanley was penalised, and the broker himself was banned from working in the securities industry for at least five years, the damage had already been done.

Fundamentally, when the success of a business relies on the loyalty and brand advocacy of its customers, it is integral that customers know their data is in safe hands. C-level executives and the companies they lead cannot afford to drop the ball when it comes to securing sensitive customer information and safeguarding against a breach.

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Best Portfolio Analytics Software Solutions Company & Award for Innovation in Asset Management Technology Company: StatPro Name: Neil Smyth Email: neil.smyth@statpro.com Web Address: www.statpro.com Address: Mansel Court, Mansel Road, Wimbledon, London, SW19 4AA Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8410 8747

StatPro Group plc StatPro combines powerful performance and risk analytics to create a single cloud-based platform. We spoke to Neil Smyth to learn more.

StatPro is a global provider of award winning portfolio analytics solutions for the investment community. The Group’s cloud-based platform provides vital analysis of portfolio performance, attribution, risk and compliance. This multi-asset class analytics platform helps StatPro’s clients increase assets under management, improve client service, meet tough regulations and reduce costs.

The Group’s integrated and global data coverage includes over 3.2 million securities such as equities, bonds, mutual funds, FX rates, futures, options, OTCs, sector classifications and much else besides.

StatPro also covers most families of benchmarks including MSCI, FTSE, Russell, NASDAQ and the open source Freedom Index.

Neil highlights the firm’s growth in recent years and how it is using this to continue innovating and creating unique solutions.

“StatPro has grown its annualized recurring revenue from less than £1 million in 1999 to around £32 million today (including Investor Analytics on a pro forma basis). The Group has operations in Europe, North America, South Africa, Asia and Australia, with hundreds of clients in 38 countries around the world. Approximately 80% of recurring revenues are generated outside the UK. StatPro Group plc shares are listed on AIM.

As the finance industry continues to grow, it faces a number of challenges and opportunities. In particular, the asset management industry is under pressure to handle more data, more often and with complete transparency. The demand for data (especially risk) to report to both regulator and investor has changed. The drive from regulators is now about moving towards standardization and straight-through-processing and thus making businesses more efficient, competitive and reactive, as well as safer from risk in all its forms. The proliferation of financial instruments being traded and the increase in data and data types that go along with that adds to the compliance challenge.

In addition, the standard requirement today is of pretty much daily data on any number of facets for investor and regulator. Furthermore, demand for greater transparency in risk and performance is one of the biggest drivers of change within the asset management industry. The ability to leverage data quickly and in an accurate manner is becoming a competitive differentiator in the industry.

As such StatPro is dedicated to supporting clients in this ever evolving market. Neil showcases the latest projects the firm has coming up which will ensure clients are up to date with the latest market developments.

“Fundamentally our belief in making things simple and putting this at the heart of everything we do differentiates us in the market place. Our industry expertise, coupled with our technology sets us apart from competitors. Many traditional software applications are complex, expensive and underperform. New technology allows for a fresh approach to the client’s workflow, requirements and goals. Our cloud-based Software as a Service helps our clients exceed these goals.

“Additionally, we believe that only the right technology in partnership with industry knowledge and experience can deliver true value. This is why we dedicate so much of our time and resources to new technology and understanding how it can enhance our solutions and ultimately benefit our clients.”

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Looking to the future, we will continue to develop our cloud-based platform to ensure that we’re delivering a truly scalable and functionally rich solution to our clients. We are launching StatPro Revolution Performance in Q3 2016 and this extension to the Revolution platform brings unparalleled power and simplicity to the performance measurement process for asset managers of all sizes.

“We continue to integrate the Investor Analytics risk product into the Revolution platform after the acquisition of this New York-based cloud vendor in January 2016. The combination of StatPro’s historical risk model and extensive asset coverage with IAs Monte-Carlo and factor based risk analytics makes for a very powerful risk offering within the platform. We also continue to migrate clients from our on-premise and hosted StatPro Seven product to the cloud-based Revolution platform, as we add more and more functionality bringing complete performance and risk management into a single system.”

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Most Advanced Independent Consultancy - Brighton & Hove

Strategic Partners

Company: Strategic Management Partners Name: Clive Bonny MD Address: 58 Nevill Road, Rottingdean, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 7HG Phone: UK 01273 308865, mobile UK 07973 799153 BC_Layout 1 06/01/2011 Email: Clive@consult-smp.com Web: www.consult-smp.com

21:36 Pa

Strategic Management Partners is an independent Cliveconsultancy Bonnyproviding strategic planning advice, training, coaching and support to large and small organisations across a wide range of sectors to provide proven tele: 01273 308865 process improvements. Clive Bonny, the firm’s Managing Director, talks us through the company and its mobile: 07973 799 153 service offering. email: clive@consult-smp.com www.consult-smp.com

Strategic Management Partners was founded in 1990, and since inception has gone from strength to strength. Clive outlines the firm’s offering and talks us through its latest projects.

“Here at Strategic Management Partners we operate in high growth sectors including technology, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, leisure, construction, social enterprises and government.

After each project our customers advise us on their future needs. This drives our professional development to widen our service portfolio.

“As a result our work has broadened from skills training and process improvements into innovation management, intellectual property protection, dispute mediation, and Responsible Business Standards. More recently we launched a due diligence Check-Invest service for Crowd Fund investors and fund-raisers. This reduces investment risks and improves invest-ability. Last year over £3 Billion pounds was raised in alternative finance. Check-Invest ensures safer investments by shareholders and sustainability for start-up enterprises.”

To ensure the success of every project, Clive explains that the firm operates a strategy which is focused on ensuring an outcome which meets the needs of the client.

“All our projects have clearly defined deliverables and client outcomes are measured regularly during delivery with all involved stakeholders. This ensures we stay on track and allows us to manage change as work-plans often need to evolve. Our website shows the results of dozens of projects with case studies approved by clients.

“Besides immediate outcomes we also measure Windmill Downs, 58ofNevill Road, impacts and the wider effects change.

This is an Rottingdean, East Sussex BN2 7HG important issue for shareholder investments and for social enterprises. One of our supported charities, an outdoor environmental education centre Beacon SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS Hub Brighton, is forecasting a throughput of 3000 WHEN VALUES SUSTAIN VALUE persons per year. The social and environmental impacts will include more jobs for young people, higher earnings, improved use of community resources, more local trade, and increased revenues from tourism.”

What makes the firm attractive to smaller clients, according to Clive, is its collaboration with various financing partners.

“Our alliance partners include grant funding bodies who contribute towards our client project costs, from 25% to 100%. This is especially attractive for small firms, social enterprises and start-ups who otherwise cannot afford high quality consultancy support. We are very transparent regarding how we work, and project processes and outcomes are clearly described on our website. We also share much of our knowledge through authoring and publishing low cost pocket-books on topics such as managing sales, marketing communications, career development, even how to become a management consultant. These are published as e-books internationally in Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Most people prefer professional advisors to share know-how before charging for it. This it makes it easier for people to trust our capabilities.

“Overall the firm’s mission is reflected in our motto “Success Breeds Success when Values Sustain Value”. Our aim is to improve the quality of life

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inside and outside organisations. We do this by focusing on shared values to sustain what makes people successful. Before we propose any change we diagnose needs using a behavioural technique called “Appreciative Enquiry”. This motivates our clients towards the positive impacts of change.”

As a concluding comment Clive is keen to highlight some of the firm’s upcoming projects and the exciting opportunities they will offer.

“Looking forward I see great opportunities with our innovation projects. One of our new UK product launches is a range of herbal health-care drinks called www.SlimRoast.co.uk. These boost energy, immune systems, and help manage weight.

Sugar-free natural health supplements are a high growth market. We are currently giving distributors websites and marketing support to work from home on a profit-share basis. The need to supplement family incomes is growing, and we are improving community health at the same time. Employers are now putting these drinks into staff kitchens and canteens as a thank-you as they raise performance at work and reduce absence.

“In addition, we are also helping launch an off-grid carbon zero Eco-Lodge called Passiv Pod which will boost eco-tourism. The design can convert into a school class-room to enhance student learning in a healthy natural environmental setting.

Population increases have caused over-crowding in classrooms, off-grid classrooms are easier to install, and educating the next generation about sustainable resource management is vital.”

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Best Retail Data Analytics Company & Recognised Leaders in POS Solutions Company: Sysrepublic Name: Phil Biggs Email: Philip.biggs@sysrepublic.com Web Address: http://sysrepublic.com Address: 20-24 Kirby Street London EC18TS Telephone: +44 (0)20 7430 0715

Sysrepublic is a retail data analytics firm offering a range of solutions to clients globally. We interviewed Phil Biggs, one of the original Sysrepublic founders to learn more about the firm and its innovative solutions.

Sysrepublic was founded by a team of highly successful IT data analytic and retail experts in 2002, and is a global retail analytics leader. The company’s first solution, Real Time Integrator (RTI) was launched in 2002 in the UK, setting the stage for their 2008 US market expansion and the release of the Secure™ data platform.

we give them the opportunity to meet in strategic sessions with our client service and delivery teams to put the requirements in business context and ensure everyone is on the same page with not just the data we are bringing into a solution – but why and how it will create cost efficiencies in the business.”

Today the company leverages RTI’s proprietary integration technology and Secure’s robust analytics capability to provide a comprehensive view of user actions and process inefficiencies across a variety of retail risk areas including: point-of-sale, supply chain, finance, pharmacy, returns, and human resources.

These solutions help companies reduce risk and increase profits.

Clients are not the only ones who are vital to the success of the company, and Phil is keen to highlight the contribution of the firm’s dedicated and professional workforce.

Retailers using RTI and Secure come from 4 continents, over 15 verticals, and range in annual revenues from £280 million to £330 billion.

Sysrepublic processed a record setting 23 billion transactions in 2015, and the company now has offices in Los Angeles, London and Warsaw. In 2016 Sysrepublic was acquired by Appriss and merged with another solution provider, The Retail Equation, to create a new retail business unit at Appriss.

Phil explains the firm’s dedication to client service and how this has bought the firm to its current level of success.

“At Sysrepublic everything we do has always had to pass one fundamental test: Does this create value?

Whether it be value for customers, our employees or the community at large, creating value through data is our focus.

“The key factor that always set Sysrepublic apart is this dedication to the client experience. Before we begin any implementation we have not only taken standard requirements from the customer but

“Here at Sysrepublic, not only do we listen to our customers when we design, but we listen to our employees. We consider them to be one of our most valuable resources in terms of staying ahead of the curve.

“Fundamentally the Sysrepublic client service team, for example, are all highly qualified experts from the retail arena who have, in most cases, sat in a job role similar to that of our customer before joining our team. They understand what our clients need – and we give them an enormous amount of empowerment to achieve it.”

Phil finishes by outlining how recent changes to the firm’s corporate structure have provided exciting opportunities for growth and expansion, which the company is keen to take advantage of over the years to come.

“As of this year Sysrepublic is now an Appriss company. As part of that acquisition we are merging with another solution provider, The Retail Equation, to create a new retail business unit at Appriss. The technologies of the two companies are highly complementary and we are very excited about the opportunities the acquisition will bring for our customers and employees both.”

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Recognised Leaders in Brand Protection Solutions - USA & Most Innovative Authentication Technology: UniSecure™ Company: Systech International For inquiries: Sales@ SystechOne.com Web: systechone.com Address: One Research Way, Princeton, NJ USA 08540 Phone: +1 800 847 7435

Systech International is the global technology leader in anti-counterfeiting, product safety, consumer and brand protection. We caught up with Jim Lee, Senior Vice President of Product Management, to learn more about the firm and the solutions it offers.

Systech unifies and optimizes authentication, enterprise serialization and track-and-trace technologies to ensure regulatory compliance, mitigate risk, and drive efficiency and profitability. For 30 years, Systech’s innovation has led best practices for key brands representing industries across pharmaceutical, food and beverage, CPG, contract manufacturers and packagers, machine processors, supply chain logistics companies, and more.

In his opening comments, Jim outlines the strategy that the firm adopts in order to support clients.

“Our business strategy is to deliver a brand protection solution that meets the needs across all industries to protect products in the supply chain.

There also are solutions designed specifically for the various industries we serve. This is enabled by our brand protection platform that has been designed to be easily configured to meet the needs of industries, product design, and production requirements.” Jim says. He also adds, “We leverage best of breed hardware and certified business partners to deliver a complete all-in-one solution as needed. We focus on removing complexity through simplicity and configurability.”

“This strategy is particularly vital as we serve a wide variety of clients in many industries where brand and product security is paramount, including pharmaceutical, food and beverage, consumer good, retail, health and beauty, contract manufacturers and packagers, machine processors, and supply chain logistics, among others,” Jim says.

With thousands of implementations across the globe, Systech is the world’s most trusted brand protection expert and its patented UniSeries™ suite is an industry reference. As a cross-level, all-encompassing enterprise platform, UniSeries offers all the capabilities required for brands across their lifecycle, from manufacturing to retail, to serialize and trackand-trace products throughout the supply chain, meeting with regulatory compliance requirements, all while providing the capability to authenticate.

In additional, the firm offers Systech UniSecure™ to enable protection against the counterfeiting and

illicit diversion that have developed over the years due to internationalization, outsourcing, e-tailing and the expansion of international trade zones have created new complexities throughout the supply chain Systech UniSecure™ is revolutionary and the only proven, non-additive product authentication solution that cannot be reverse-engineered – no matter how cleaver the counterfeiter. UniSecure leverages existing print marks and packaging to create a unique signature that cannot be duplicated.

The ability to uniquely identify and authenticate individual products is the only path for you to mitigate these risks and drive value through brand, product, and patient protection programs. The probability of successful UniSignature™ duplication is calculated to be less than one in one quintillion or 1018. This product has multiple patents pending as well as patents already granted.

Another of the firm’s flagship products is its UniTrace™ compliance solution. Leading brands around the world are faced with complex serialization and track and trace challenges in response to varied regional legislation. The most critical part of a compliance solution is the ability to provide transparency of serialization data within the ecosystem of supply chain trading partners and regulatory bodies.

“Customers can take advantage of complete transparency across their entire supply chain because UniTrace™ is an enterprise, secure cloud-based platform solution that provides the functionality and flexibility to track and trace product while meeting unique cross-border compliance requirements,” Jim says. He also adds, “UniTrace future-proofs your serialization strategy by providing the capability to add and adapt to the latest in regulatory changes.”

UniTrace’s primary function is to enable clients to achieve regulatory compliance by driving tangible benefits from the platform, and monitoring product diversion and enabling brand protection through authentication. Managed through an intuitive, simple to use web-based interface, UniTrace provides comprehensive serial number management and complete end-to-

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end visibility, from point of manufacture to point of dispensation, combined with the ability to link with master data systems. Flexible, rules-based processing allows for simplified configuration and implementation. Standards-based GS1/EPCIS communication protocols promote easy integration and interoperability with one or many serialization production lines and facilitates transparency with trading partners.”

Ultimately, Jim believes that it is the combination of all of these innovative products that sets Systech apart in the marketplace.

The Systech platform delivers brand protection that ranges from basic serialization to full traceability to authentication of products. “While we have competitors across the industries we serve, we do not have a competitor that delivers an end-toend solution enabling the customer a choice of options that meet their specific brand protection requirements,” Jim adds.

Looking to the future, Jim makes it clear that a vigilant approach is needed in the fight against counterfeiting. “Counterfeiting is a serious issue that impacts every person in the world and a revolutionary approach is needed,” he says. The Systech UniSecure technology is unique, being the only non-additive solution that can derive a unique fingerprint by analysing an existing print mark. This allows the technology to provide authentication capability for any product anywhere in the world.

Jim concludes, “Fundamentally, our technology has evolved over the last two years and we fully expect that it will continue to evolve, with broad adoption and integration in key supply chain platforms and processes making is more seamless, delivering information to the consumer and connecting all parties involved. We expect that Systech brand protection and authentication technology will become the defacto industry standard that enables product authentication and consumer engagement using a B2Me model embedding the technology, delivering benefits of authentication without any extra work.”

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Best Building Custom Technology Solutions Provider & Recognised Leader in Independent Software Testing Company: Tavant Technologies Inc. Name: Vibhor Mishra Email: vibhor.mishra@ tavant.com Web: www.tavant.com Address: Tavant Technologies, Inc., 3965 Freedom Circle, Suite 750, Santa Clara, CA 95054 US Telephone: 1-866-9-828268

Tavant Technologies Inc Tavant Technologies, headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, is a specialized IT solutions and services provider.

Vibhor Mishra talks us through the company and gives us a fascinating insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

Tavant is a privately-owned company with subsidiaries in Canada, UK and India focusing on the development of applications for customers in the agriculture, manufacturing, ebusiness, media and entertainment, and financial services markets.

Vibhor elaborates on the firm’s service offering, as well as explaining the firm’s dedication to transparency and supporting their clients throughout the project.

“When it comes to building professional and successful relationships, transparency is of utmost importance. Tavant Open Kitchen (TOK) is a project portal (one stop shop) to view complete information about the project. This is available at all times and is easily accessible. Information is categorized and stored in a way with focus on ease of use and comprehension.

“Our customers are given complete unrestricted access to their projects at all times, with the ability to track progress and health of their projects. This level of openness allows customers to know the health of their project, collaborate with us and eliminate endless rounds of discussions based on perceptions.

“Our transparency and dedication to supporting clients has led us to work across the business landscape, and we now offer a variety of services such as application development and maintenance; business intelligence and data-warehousing services; independent software testing; mobility; enterprise content management and hosting and managed services.

“Fundamentally, Tavant differentiates itself in IT services with strong domain expertise in chosen micro-verticals in consumer lending, capital markets, manufacturing and media. Its strength lies in providing clients with various solutions lies in coupling robust core technologies with the highly

flexible Tavant services model. Tavant is not tied to a specific, monolithic system product. It has the unique ability to bring together its own underlying technology components and third party services and surround those components and services with client driven customizations (e.g. additional workout templates, workflow and custom role-permission structures). This approach ensures that clients take advantage of available world-class technology and support and protect established, proprietary, differentiating business processes.”

One key area the firm focuses on to ensure it always provides clients with the highest possible level of service, according to Vibhor, is employee development.

“As a firm Tavant has invested heavily in the learning and development activities for employees in recent years. Tavant has one philosophy - we have a strong sense of pride in our technology excellence, and hence, we believe that the best training possible, is “By Tavantians, for Tavantians.”

Tavant emphasizes on Identifying, Developing, and Monitoring Talent. “Continuous learning” is part of their philosophy. Every employee has to complete 25 hours of training in a year. It includes 15 hours technical training, five hours of domain training and five hours of soft skill training.”

One key project Vibhor was keen to highlight was the firm’s unique mortgage solution Tavant FinConnect.

“Tavant has a game-changing solution for the mortgage industry - Tavant FinConnect. Tavant FinConnect is a modern mortgage data and services hub that connects the internal and external systems of the mortgage ecosystem to enable a digital mortgage experience. Tavant FinConnect addresses the inefficiencies in the loan application lifecycle and enables lenders, servicers and their business partners to reimagine the home purchase

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and refinance experience. FinConnect is an integration platform and a comprehensive fabric of connectivity to myriad sources of data and services that simplifies the whole borrower journey through the mortgage process. It provides the lender with the most up-to-date and consistent data about the borrower directly from the source, resulting in a borrower experience that is seamless, touchless, transparent, and digital.”

As a final comment, Vibhor outlines how the firm’s growth in recent years has set it up for a promising future.

“We have been consistently growing at 30-40% for the last few years, which positions Tavant as one of the fastest-growing mid-sized global technology companies. This has been possible by our inherently strong technology capabilities, expertise in the industries we operate in and our ability to attract and develop some of the best talent in the technology space.

“Tavant has maintained its leadership position in the Financial Services space and works with some of the most respected Consumer Lending and Capital Markets clients in North America and APAC Regions. The company delivers complex technology solutions that impact their business strategy. Specific investments have been made to expand Tavant’s footprint in Media & Entertainment, eBusiness, Analytics, Mobility & Independent Software Testing. Tavant has also expanded its geographic footprint to Canada and has recently signed its first client in Japan, thereby consolidating our APAC market presence.”

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Best Automated Inventory Solutions Company - Wisconsin Company: Terso Solutions, Inc Name: Joe Pleshek, President & CEO Email: joe.pleshek@tersosolutions.com (or Becky Snyder – Marketing Communications Specialist – becky.snyder@tersosolutions.com) Web Address: http://www.tersosolutions.com Address: 5540 Research Park Drive, Madison, WI 53711 Telephone: 866.782.7055

Terso Solutions, Inc Terso Solutions provides automated inventory management solutions for tracking high-value medical and scientific products in the healthcare and life science fields. Terso Solutions President and CEO Joe Pleshek talks us through the company’s solutions offerings.

Terso’s mission is to provide leading RAIN RFID solutions that enable their customers to better manage their supply chains. Terso is committed to the development of cutting-edge technology and finding the best possible way to solve a supply chain issue. “We employ smart, creative, and hard-working individuals who continuously strive to find innovative solutions for our partners. Each use case is different, and we work effortlessly to determine the individual needs and goal of every customer.” Says Joe. To date, Terso has deployed over 1,600 RAIN RFID-enabled sensors worldwide. “We are committed to providing solutions that enable our customers to better manage their supply chain. We are also determined to provide uncompromising service and technical leadership.” Joe describes. To that end, Terso believes in developing automated inventory management solutions that will provide the best possible end result for customers. Terso Solutions has developed a wide range of inventory management solutions to meet the needs of the healthcare and life sciences industries, including RFID-enabled ambient cabinets, refrigerators, freezers, mobile cases, handheld readers, and stockrooms.

As deployments across the globe grow, Joe credits a lot of the company’s success to longterm partner relationships and a hardworking team of employees. “To achieve the success we have seen thus far, we continue to insist on taking an ethical approach with each customer, one that sets up our relationship for long-term growth. It is crucial that as a team we work to bring value to our client’s each day. We work to find the best way possible to close all gaps.

And most importantly, we are committed to providing exceptional service and leadership.

And because of this, we have achieved some of the highest standards in the industry, and have

established strong partnerships with a variety of partners.”

data to make proactive decisions to drive supply chain optimization and efficiencies.”

As the adoption of RFID technology grows, so does the competition and the need to remain innovative in the marketplace. “Fundamentally Terso’s main competitor is the status quo. We work in the marketplace to erase manual efforts in counting inventory and managing highvalue medical and lab products. We automate these processes and remove margins of error, eliminate risk of expired product, and allow staff to do their jobs better.” Joe explains.

Joe believes that with this in mind, as well as the company’s dedication to staff and partners, Terso will continue to evolve as a company and is poised for continual growth. Joe explains “we will continue to evolve with technology and work in an agile way. Our development of new and innovative solutions drive value and create new, creative ways for customers to better manage their supply chain.”

In regards to how the company works to stay ahead of industry changes and provide fresh, new ideas, Joe believes that “as RFID technology continues to evolve, it is important to remain agile and creative. Technology is becoming increasingly adopted in the healthcare and life science markets, specifically to provide a seamless way to conduct everyday business. The adoption of technology solutions is a big change for many, and it becomes increasingly important to address this when developing new solutions.”

Working in such a dynamic and evolving industry, Terso is committed to working hard to stay ahead of the market by continually evolving and innovating. As to where the industry may be headed, Joe believes the adoption and innovation of technology will play a large role in the world of RFID and healthcare. “Within the wider technology industry, I believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to explode as a technology trend and will transform the healthcare and life science markets.

Internet connected devices and sensors will automatically provide real-time data on the location and condition of people and “things” that work together in the supply chain. Software algorithms will enable companies to analyze this

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Best for Anti-Money Laundering Checks 2016 Company: Veriphy Ltd Name: George Ford Email: support@veriphy.com Web Address: www.veriphy.com

Veriphy is a specialist at creating innovative solutions to support clients with anti-money laundering and security checks. We speak to George Ford to find out more about the firm and the services it provides.

Veriphy was created over nine years ago to assist firms in the regulated sector to comply with statutory obligations through innovative use of technology.

From our core AML product, we began adding additional checks such as credit screens and company reports from the very best data providers.

The idea is to offer as many tools to our clients from the one login in the simplest form. Our clients are predominantly law firms, accountants and estate agents but those involved in HR are increasingly turning to Veriphy to assist them in their hiring decisions.

For these clients we provide a high quality service from the very start of the project. When we receive a query from a client our first reaction is to ask what could be made clearer so that question was never asked. By engineering out any doubt about the process and the outcomes of checks, we create a better experience for our customers and sometimes these queries lead to new product offerings to further assist our customers. We believe that by being flexible and willing to respond to our clients we can continue to grow and innovate.

It is our ambition to become the first port of call for any firm in the regulated sector. We can achieve this by continually improving the experience of our clients. Indeed, 80% of those joining us state that they came to us through word of mouth.

This high rate of recommendations is partially because of our unique service offering. The breadth

of checks we offer and the transparency in our business model make joining Veriphy a very easy decision, unlike our competitors who seem to relish complexity and obscure fundamental things such as cost. I believe that we are the only organisation that actually puts the price of its checks on its website.

We firmly do not believe in contracts with clients – if they like what they are getting they will stay.

Moving forward our focus will be on continuing to enhance our offering in order to adapt to changes in the industry and better support our clients. For example, the AML regulations stipulate that all staff have to be trained on money laundering. Therefore, in response to client requests, we recently launched an online Anti-Money Laundering course, which provides users with simple access and clear pricing in conjunction with one of the UK’s leading compliance experts. In the future we will continue to innovate in this way and meet our clients’ ever evolving needs.

Ultimately, it is Veriphy’s ethos to create the simplest possible access to AML checks, as well as all of the other checks that are available. From the interface where it takes mere seconds to perform a check to the business model which has no contracts, minimum use or payment for credits up front, we are able to support businesses around the world and ensure they are compliant with the latest legislation. This is an important role, and one which we take very seriously, and therefore it is a genuine honour to have our work recognised in this way.

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Most Innovative IT Project & Portfolio Management Company - USA Company: Visual Connections LLC Name: Fred Deese Email: fdeese@ visualconnections.net Web Address: www.visualconnections.net Address: 2810 Lord Baltimore Drive, Suite W218 Windsor Mill, MD 21244 Phone: 866.630.2073 ext. 700

Visual Connections, LLC is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business and a Minority Business Enterprise with extensive experience delivering Project and Portfolio Management, IT Services and Systems Integration. We invited Frederick Deese, CEO and founder of Visual Connections, to talk us through this fascinating company.

Visual Connections has built its reputation as a Health IT consulting firm, supporting clients in federal and state government, as well as in private sector business. In addition to 10 contracts the firm has held at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, it also has extensive IT experience across numerous programs and federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), to name a few. Visual Connections also has divisions in the telecommunications industry and in the medical supplies and services sector. Fred explains what sets the firm apart and has made it the best option for these contracts.

“At Visual Connections, we firmly believe it is not just what your company is or what you do, but how you do it that sets you apart. We have worked hard to build trusted relationships with our clients, partners, and agencies, with honesty and integrity as the cornerstone of every aspect of our business.”

“Our business success is also dependent on earning the trust and confidence of our employees, which we do by adhering to commitments, displaying honesty and integrity and reaching company goals solely through honourable conduct.”

“As such we have worked hard to become a trusted firm that delivers results on our projects.

Our company is customer-centric, meaning we first listen then focus on what the customer actually needs and wants for their project, always ensuring that we are delivering to meet their goals. Our substantial past performance across numerous agencies and involving a variety of technologies also sets us apart as a diverse, agile frim that has proven itself again and again.”

Within the Heath IT industry currently, agencies are moving more toward open source technology, which is a shift from proprietary systems, as well as becoming more small business friendly and adapting to agile methodologies. Fred explains how Visual Connections is working to ensure that they keep up with these trends and stay one step ahead of the competition by focusing on their human resources.

“At VC we are working to align ourselves with the agile trend and educating ourselves constantly so that we can bring our clients the most cutting edge technologies. To stay ahead of emerging developments in our sector we continue to look for innovative employees and developers to help prepare the company to deal with these newer technologies that are not yet in the government space. We continue to be a flat, open and accessible company; there is not a lot of bureaucracy, which allows us to be versatile and adaptable to change. We encourage thought leadership.

“Therefore, our aim is to foster a culture of innovation by hiring forward thinkers. We make sure we continue to offer competitive salaries, good employee benefits—including appropriate time off—to make sure we can attract the quality of people we need. We put an emphasis on thoroughly training our employees in their areas of responsibility, getting them the appropriate security clearances for government work, and training them on any agency-specific protocols and procedures.”

As his final comment, Fred was keen to focus on the firm’s upcoming projects, which include moving into new sectors.

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“Looking ahead into the second half of 2016 and into 2017, small business trends demand that a business be well-rounded. It’s smart for small businesses to diversify, just like diversified large businesses.

Visual Connections has expanded its work into two additional areas, including Portfolio Management support for the Department of Defense, and telecommunications work involving various types of wiring and multi-media installations across both the federal government and commercial sectors.

“The firm’s work with the DoD has been focused primarily at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), where the firm has been providing a wide range of services including Program and Portfolio Management support. The company’s telecommunications cabling work includes projects for the Veterans Administration, the US Army, the US Air Force, the Department of Homeland Security, the General Services Administration, the Customs and Border Patrol, and many private sector clients including Comcast.

“We’re also excited about the company’s expansion into application hosting through its Genesis Innovation Lab (GIL). This FISMA and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant lab recently hosted an application for DLA. The GIL was developed to replicate DoD Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) technical environment, pre-configured with demonstration versions of the leading IT and Business Intelligence (BI) products. Deployed and integrated products include a mix of innovative solutions.”

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Best Business Mobility Virtualisation Company Company: VMware, Inc Name: Ian Evans Email: ajaouhari@vmware.com Web Address: www.air-watch.com Address: 202 Elder Gate, Milton Keynes, MK9 1BE Telephone: +44 1908 557 700

VMware, Inc VMware AirWatch is the trusted enterprise mobility management solution with the largest customer base in the industry, continued analyst recognition, strong technology partnerships and industry expertise to enable a successful deployment. Ian Evans, VP End User Computing VMware and AirWatch EMEA Managing Director, talks us through this creative solution.

VMware AirWatch is recognised, once again, as the leader in business mobility as the Best Business Mobility Solutions Provider - UK & Most Innovative Mobility Management Platform.

This award represents the fifth EMEA award for VMware AirWatch in 2016 – including the UK Cloud Awards 2016, the European IT & Software Excellence Awards 2016, the Network Computing Awards 2016 and the PR World Award 2016. This acknowledgement is a testament to VMware AirWatch’s vision, strategy and product innovation.

With proven large-scale deployments and the ability to support flexible management approaches, AirWatch allows end users to work at the speed of life from any device, anywhere, anytime.

What is VMware AirWatch Mobile devices are proliferating in the enterprise at an exponential rate. With the growing number of device models, platforms, operating systems and versions available, businesses are facing new and complex mobility management challenges.

Increasingly, businesses of all sizes are creating a digital workspace – redefining the way IT delivers applications and services to users across all devices and operating systems, and fundamentally changing how users do their jobs in a way that is consumer simple, enterprise secure, and transparent to the user.

The digital workspace represents both the environment that IT delivers to users and the environment that users leverage to access their critical business resources. Unlike the desktop of the client-server era, it is not defined by a single image. It is the aggregation of all devices and the applications and services required by users, securely managed and unified by common access and identity.

The digital workspace supports the need for simplified, unified management of all device endpoints, while providing a new, more efficient model

for delivering and managing enterprise applications to users across all of their devices. It also supports advanced security models required to protect sensitive enterprise data and intellectual property across a more mobile workforce.

VMware is at the forefront of preparing organisations to embrace the new mobile cloud era.

With a deep bench of industry visionaries, VMware offers the insight and expertise that organisations need to drive innovation with the digital workspace and transformation through business mobility.

VMware AirWatch Enterprise Mobility Management enables businesses to address these mobility challenges by providing a simplified, efficient way to view and manage all enterprise devices from one central console. With AirWatch, organisations can manage a diverse fleet of devices, regardless of platform, device type or ownership (corporateowned or bring your own device (BYOD).

Leading analyst firm IDC recently recognised VMware AirWatch as the largest enterprise mobility management (EMM) vendor in terms of revenue market share in 2015. AirWatch grew 83.8 percent from 2014 through 2015 and holds the largest percentage of market share among the top 14 EMM vendors at 16.5 percent, according to the report.

VMware AirWatch experienced phenomenal growth in the last year, thanks to continued integration with VMware, a unified VMware End-User Computing strategy and focus on applications that are user friendly and enterprise secure. Notably, VMware AirWatch grew nearly 84 percent, while the EMM market as a whole increased by less than 30 percent, according to IDC, pointing to the strength and differentiation of the VMware AirWatch platform.

What we think the future will look like Mobile technologies have been rapidly adopted and it started with several key technologies, including MDM, MAM, MCM, identity and virtual apps. One of the trends that we are seeing in organisations

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and our own customer base is to mature their deployment past these initial requirements.

In this new mobile-cloud era, increasing individual and team productivity remains important, but innovation is significantly higher on the list of executive business priorities, including: • Application Delivery Transformation: Enterprises that deploy the digital workspace can easily embrace heterogeneity because identity access and personalisation transcends every app, across every device.

• Mobile and End-Point Management: To protect the most sensitive information, the digital workspace combines identity and device management, enforcing access decisions based on a range of conditions from strength of authentication, network, location, and device compliance.

• Business Mobility: The digital workspace enables enterprises to target key areas of improvement, moving core business processes and operations to a mobile model.

AirWatch embraces this shift in the market and understands the need to build this unification into our platform to create flexibility for organisations to deploy any app to any device, while keeping enterprise data secure and users productive. This unification is driving organisations to create a digital workplace.

At this critical point in the innovation cycle, enterprises must make a choice between incremental change and adding real business value.

There is a great need to deliver a consumer-simple, secure enterprise platform for IT organisations to deliver and manage any application, on any device.

When users get a unified experience across multiple devices with ubiquitous access to applications, content, and services, IT organisations achieve greater visibility and control of the company data being used and shared.

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Best IT Service Platform: youcall-it.com Company: Youcall-it.com Name: Wayne Conyers, Director Office Address: 65 Tontine Street, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 1JR Phone: +44 1303 372423 Web: www.youcall-it.com Email: wayne.conyers@youcall-it.com

YouCall-it.com is an innovative IT service platform which is changing the face of IT support services. We spoke to Wayne Conyers, the firm’s Director to learn more.

Winning this accolade at this point in our business evolution is a great achievement for the team. It asserts our, long-held, belief that the global shift towards innovation in IT service management is growing.

You have to go back to 2010 to really appreciate the changes. Traditional methods of 3rd party service management hide the details of the subcontractor supply chain from the end client. This is changing and YouCall-it.com is at the forefront of this change.

Our success has been built by working with organisations which are not afraid to question the way the IT service market works and who realise that by, questioning the way service is delivered, they can make fundamental improvements to the way business is delivered.

Youcall-it.com has traditionally offered IT service management on a global scale. We started as a network of IT service companies around the world, managing service delivery through the first version of the YouCall-it platform.

Back in 2010 our platform allowed customers to log service requirements and project requests and have them assigned to the designated partner in that country. We were rolling out upgrades in Asia at the time for an EPOS project and had to work across three time zones with multiple organisations involved. Other organisations would have achieved this by sending out thousands of emails, having a very pretty (but not up to date) project plan and would have had paperwork flying all over the place.

Our platform allowed us to bring together all those elements and manage them as one, regardless of the supply chain or management structure.

Fast forward to 2016 and the “one platform, one vision” mantra rings true more than ever before.

Software as a service describes us to some degree but we see Youcall-it.com very much as Service within software. They are intertwined at every level.

If you have a platform which isn’t fully utilised or a

service which doesn’t have two ends to its process, then neither works to its full potential.

As well as building our own service and Vendor management platform from the ground up we also created dedicated APIs to allow the development community to readily integrate with and extend our systems. We recognise that many organisations have their own business processes and systems so we have evolved a range of APIs to enable companies to take advantage of our products and services without being required to change their existing work patterns and practices. We’re here to help and we will always go the extra mile to make integrating a new client a breeze.

We want to help our customers communicate as effectively as possible. To do this we make sure that our systems are built using the latest web technologies and cover the widest range of platforms possible. We continually seek ways to add value to our users by developing and expanding our product offering; integrating existing cloud based services (where available) and innovating bespoke solutions (where not).

This is our focus and it drives our ambition to have one global service and vendor management platform.

All of the active service partners on the platform (over 100 globally based IT service companies around the world, with a further 300 in preparation) go through a due diligence process and are vetted before being made “live” on the system. We then work with our clients, who may be a direct client, another IT service provider looking to expand their capability or someone who needs to create relationships on a global scale. Those relationships, sales requests, service requests, logistics requirements, contract management, translation tools, service reports, billing and many other features are all then managed on the platform. What was originally just a service hub has fast grown into

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a full suite of Vendor management tools.

Ultimately, transparency is our biggest aim. By joining up clients directly to IT service providers in a country or territory they begin to work directly together. For us, the client can work in as many countries as they require but the process on the platform remains the same.

Every user has the same functionality – we do not provide our suppliers with a slimmed down version of our management tools. We cannot as they are a part of the system just as our clients are. In short, our suppliers are also our customers which means that everybody gets the same platform and tools and everybody benefits from sharing the same contacts, leads and service tools. For us it’s all about creating a simplified repeatable global process for the businesses we manage.

These service features, coupled with the unified service mantra have allowed us to introduce our systems to a range of customers from “main tier” downwards. We design, provide and deliver 3rd part support to clients across the whole of the EU. We built our own platform so the evolution process will never stop. At YouCall-it we want to help our customers communicate as effectively as possible.

To do this we make sure that our systems are built using the latest web technologies and cover the widest range of platforms possible. We are always looking for ways to add value to our users by constantly developing and expanding our product offering; integrating existing cloud based services (where available) and innovating bespoke solutions (where not). Our team is working hard to both manage service for our clients and to provide solutions which make our customers lives easier.

We only see ourselves as becoming more relevant in this industry. The concept of “transparency”, once not widely regarded, is becoming more talked about; a trend which can only continue.

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Best Business Optimisation Platform: X-Act Optimal Business Control & Most Innovative Predictive Analytics Company – USA Company: Accretive Technologies Inc Website: http://www.acrtek.com/ Email: info@acrtek.com Phone: +1 (888) 572-2135

Best IT Relocation Services Company - UK Company: Ace IT Relocation Ltd Name: Kyle Taylor Email: kyle.taylor@aceitrelocation.co.uk Web Address: www.aceitrelocation.co.uk Address: Unit 3a Ladycross Business Park, Hollow Lane, Dormansland, Surrey, RH7 6PB Telephone: 0800 6 88 99 66

Accretive Technologies Inc Accretive offers highly accurate predictive and prescriptive analytic capabilities to help organizations thrive in the face of increasing pressures to innovate, contain costs and grow. We invited CEO, Nabil Abu el Ata to tell us more.

Endless amounts of time and resources are dedicated to the task of risk management, but every executive knows that the biggest threats to their business plans will be some new chain of events or unexpected surprises—none of which will be predicted using conventional wisdom or current predictive analytics technologies.

It is the unknown risks that keep corporate executives awake at night— wondering how to prepare for and steer their companies clear from that which they cannot predict. As our world becomes more dynamically complex through global operations and technological advances that accelerate change, the window of opportunity to take corrective actions when problems arise is shrinking and risks are rising.

Today, many corporations are fighting hidden risks that are engendered by the obsolescence of their cost structures, outdated business implementation platforms and practices, market evolution in reach and speed, client perception and pricing pressures that demand some form of business model renewal.

Under pressure, businesses often treat the symptoms rather than the risk potential both quantitatively and qualitatively. This approach typically produces undesirable results that forms the impetus of the next crisis— launching an organization into a state of chronic crisis. This is when Accretive is often called and where our conversation begins, because Accretive provides a revolutionary solution to the risk management challenges of business transformation.

Accretive’s predictive analytics solution, X-Act® OBC Platform, prepares executives to confidently define the right disruptive innovation for better economy, controlled risk and critical renewal by pinpointing the nature and root cause of potential problems and detailing the preventive actions that should be taken to ensure the continuous efficiency and cost effectiveness of operations.

By mathematically emulating the existing environment, we can evaluate the gain or loss and operationally justify the move to a new business model or further modify plans to find the right solution before money and resources are dedicated to the effort. Throughout the process of implementation, we can use the emulation to measure the progress of each stage and adjust plans as needed to meet the stated business objectives.

The recognition of Accretive as ‘Most Innovative Predictive Analytics Company’ and our X-Act OBC Platform as ‘Best Business Risk Management Platform’ by Corporate Vision is encouraging. It shows that we not only have the right solution to address this growing problem of predictability in risk management, but also that we offer a unique solution to the corporate risk management problems of our modern world.

Ace IT Relocation Ltd specialises in the physical relocation of all types of IT Hard-ware and provides a dedicated, secure solution throughout the UK and mainland Europe.

We caught up with Kyle Taylor to learn more.

Ace IT Relocation is one of the UK’s market leaders in this sector, offering a comprehensive range of services for any Data Centre Relocations, Server Room Migrations or IT related office moves. Additionally, the firm also provides integrated services such as data cabling, cable management and IT disposal services which encompass all requirements that may arise throughout the project. Kyle explains the firm’s mission and the lengths it goes to in order to achieve it.

“As a company our aim is always to exceed the expectations of our clients with our professional attitude and flexibility. We understand the pressures that Project Managers and IT staff are under, especially at crucial times such as a data centre move. Therefore, we understand that things sometimes change at short notice, and we do all we can to be accommodating. Our ultimate goal is for a good, long term, working relationship with all of our clients.

“To achieve this we pride ourselves on providing a flexible, reliable service which is custom designed to meet our clients’ needs and requirements in which they can have absolute trust and confidence. Our combination of professional engineers, purpose-built packaging, secure transportation and fully insured service means that our clients can relax, knowing that their valuable IT equipment and data is in safe hands.”

As his final comment Kyle is eager to emphasise the firm’s dedication to offering quality client services.

“Overall, our proven procedures and experience enable Ace IT Relocation to offer solutions at significantly reduced costs in comparison to our competitors. We maintain the highest standards required to fulfil an efficient and secure service, whilst ensuring we are flexible to accommodate the client with any last minute changes that may be required.

“From single server, to an entire data centre move, rest assured Ace IT Relocation pro-vides a secure, rapid service for any type of IT relocation project. We have years of experience in dealing with all types of server, storage and network infrastructure from all major manufacturers, so you can be confident that Ace IT Relocation will provide a flexible, reliable service custom built to suit our clients’ needs.”

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Best for Intent-Based Marketing Strategies

Most Innovative Global Digital Advertising Company 2016

Company: Acronym Name: Selina Eizick Email: info@acronym.com Web Address: acronym.com Address: 350 5th Avenue, Suite 6520, New York, NY 10118 Telephone: 212.691.7051

Company: Ad2pro Media Solutions Pvt Ltd. (2adpro) Website: http://www.2adpro.com/

Acronym Acronym is a website marketing specialist. We invited Selina Eizick to talk us through the firm and its service offering.

Acronym is an independent company that was founded in 1995. Today the firm is the longest and largest established Search agency in the industry.

Selina outlines how the firm has grown since inception.

“We started as an innovator in search engine optimization and paid search, and have evolved into who we are today, a technology driven, IntentBased digital marketing agency for global Enterprise brands. Search is still very much at the core of who we are, but we recognized early on that there was real value in search data as a source of business and consumer intelligence. In addition to the SEM and SEO services that one would expect, we also provide advanced search data management and insight services, content gap analysis, consumer journey mapping and enterprisewide training and consulting solutions.”

Working in such a competitive market it is vital that firms such as Acronym remain focused on their overall goals. Selina discusses the firm’s mission and the steps it takes to achieve this.

“Our mission is to ensure that we are always adding tangible value to our clients’ business. To achieve this, our strategy is to remain one step ahead of the competition through technology innovation for niche market service offerings. To be clear, we use technology to underpin our services for a specific type of client.

“Fundamentally, in the digital age, people consume media entirely differently; the notion of a “funnel” that marketers used as a “mental-map” for customers is gone and has been replaced by a very fragmented customer journey. Connecting the dots and providing the right experience at every touch point along the way is now critical to sales success. We know the types of clients that can benefit from our services and technology and we focus our efforts in these areas.”

Looking to the future, Selina explained how collaboration was key to the firm’s success moving forward.

“As a business we have always been very keen on strategic partnerships.

We are constantly working with partner companies in the digital marketing space to enhance or add greater value to some of our client offerings. So, while we’re continuing to broaden out our services, we still maintaining control over quality and delivery. For the future, we simply want to be recognized as the leading intent-based digital marketing agency on the planet. And we’re certainly already on the way there.”

Ad2pro Media Solutions Established in 2006, 2adpro is a global creative design and technology services company providing high quality print, digital and technology solutions for companies around the world. We profile this dynamic firm and examine how it came to achieve its current success.

An independent global marketing service company that develops strategic creative, low-cost implementation, and technology solutions to the world’s leading brands and media companies, 2adpro combines outstanding creative talent, superior customer service, operational efficiency and a robust technology platform to create a unique on-demand virtual studio solution for publishers and brands. The firm’s goal is to help clients increase their creative capacity, reduce turnaround times, streamline the production process and ultimately be cost efficient.

In 2015, 2adpro acquired Somewhat, a London-based boutique digital creative agency. The acquisition of Somewhat will accelerate 2adpro’s ability to offer full-service digital to its clients and drive additional brand growth. With a multidisciplinary team that includes strategists, designers and creative technologists, Somewhat has devised interactive experiences for some of the world’s most iconic brands, including the BBC, Tesco, Clarks, French Connection and Manolo Blahnik.

More recently, the firm hired Fred Schuster as Chief Executive Officer of Global Brand Solutions. Prior to joining 2adpro, Schuster led a successful creative consulting practice, Fred&Co, servicing many leading agencies and global brands to help them improve their creative and execution efficiency. Schuster was also the former CEO of RedWorks (WPP) and Craft Worldwide (IPG) and has extensive experience building global creative and execution agencies.

In this new role, Schuster will be responsible for driving growth across the company’s brand business, expanding their global footprint and integrating near-shore strategic creative resources with their Indian-based creative production unit.

Moving forward, the firm is firmly focused on growth, and the new appointment and acquisition are just the start of an exciting new phase for 2adpro.

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Best Systematic Trading Software: Adaptrade Builder & Most Innovative Financial Software Company - California

Best Cloud-Based Billing Provider - USA

Company: Adaptrade Software Name: Michael R. Bryant, Ph.D. Email: info@Adaptrade.com Web Address: www.Adaptrade.com Address: 33175 Temecula Pkwy #A336, Temecula, CA 92592 Telephone: 951-302-1624

Company: Aria Systems, Inc. Name: Tom Dibble, President and CEO Email: tdibble@ariasystems.com Web Address: www.ariasystems.com Address: 575 Market St. 30th Floor, San Francisco, CA

Adaptrade Software Adaptrade Software develops leading-edge trading software based on sophisticated technology. We invited Michael Bryant to provide us an overview of the firm.

Adaptrade software offers two innovative products, Adaptrade Builder and Market System Analyzer (MSA). Builder is a software tool that uses a form of machine learning called genetic programming to auto-generate trading strategy code for trading the financial markets systematically. It helps the user find profitable trading strategies and writes the code for the strategies automatically.

MSA is a money management tool that helps the user maximize the performance of their existing trading strategy or method by allowing them to overlay different position sizing methods and other money management rules onto their trading results.

Michael explains why he believes these products are ideal for his clients and how they help the firm to achieve its mission.

“The uniqueness of the features and the level of technology in my software combined with an affordable price point differentiates Adaptrade Software from my competitors.

“This helps us to achieve our mission: to develop and provide innovative software tools that make sophisticated trading and analysis techniques easily accessible to both individual and professional traders. Achieving this requires constant development and innovation. Software is never complete. There’s always a next new version or release, which is both a challenge and an opportunity. The opportunity is to keep pushing the limits of what’s possible in the field.”

He adds that one of the key challenges he finds is staying ahead of current changes in the industry, but this is a challenge he enjoys overcoming.

“The trading technology industry is affected generally by trends in computer and information technology, including increases in transaction speed, advances in machine learning, and new software delivery devices, such as mobile phones and tablets.

“Therefore, staying current in my field is certainly challenging and made more so because it cuts across a number of different disciplines, including machine learning, financial products, market trading technology, and software development. It is necessary to actively follow trends and keep up with the latest developments in each of these areas.”

As a final comment, Michael describes his future plans for the firm.

“Going forward, I intend to keep developing my current offerings, adding new, innovative features and making the products accessible to even more traders.”

Aria Systems, Inc. Aria Systems provides a cloud-based monetization platform that removes billing bottlenecks and allows companies to rapidly introduce and evolve their customer-centric products and services. Aria provides speed and agility at scale in the cloud, delivers actionable customer insights, and empowers business users with direct control to better monetize their offerings. We spoke to Aria President and CEO Tom Dibble about how the company has become the secret weapon for enterprise companies that want to provide rapid responses to customer demands in an always-on, IoT- filled world.

Aria was founded on the simple but powerful notion that cloud billing holds the key to long-term business growth and lasting customer satisfaction.

In fact, we were the first cloud-based billing offering, created to provide monetization tools for companies moving beyond traditional transactional pricing to recurring revenue. Aria has recently expanded with headquarters in San Francisco and regional offices in Philadelphia and the U.K. In 2015, Aria had a breakout year with 145% year-over-year growth in bookings and 97% account retention. We also secured new funding of $50M (USD) from world-class investors, which brings the total amount raised to $133M. What sets Aria apart is our active monetization platform purpose-built for the global enterprise market. We serve enterprise companies that need sophisticated tools to bring agility to their innovative, yet often complex, business models. We currently serve dozens of enterprise customers in many industries—high tech and electronics, telecom, medical devices and technology, automotive, financial and business services and media. We also assist leading-edge companies that are involved in Internet of Things (IoT) projects, which, once they are running and generating real recurring revenue, we refer to as “Monetization of Things.”

Examples of Aria’s customers include successful, established enterprises like Pitney Bowes that want to continue to re-invent themselves to defend their prominent positions from new, disruptive entrants. These companies understand that time-to-market and the ability to monetize their assets and offerings in an ever-changing world are key differentiators. We are pleased to count enterprise customers including Audi, Experian, Roku, Philips, Pitney Bowes, Red Hat, and Zipcar among those that have chosen Aria for its scalability, security, and ease of use.

Key to maximizing recurring revenue is understanding that it is about more than just billing. It’s about managing the end-to-end monetization process to maximize customer lifetime value. Aria manages the breadth of this lifecycle—from creating a dynamic product catalogue, to handling sophisticated subscription and usage-based pricing, to customer relationship management, and efficient financial reporting and accurate billing.

Aria is uniquely positioned to lead enterprise companies to compete against nimble start-ups. We can give them the agility to release products and services quickly, monetize new services, and connect better than ever with customers, all through an innovative active monetization platform.

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Best VAT Automation Solutions Provider

Best Treasury Focussed Software: tm5

Company: Avalara Name: Gemma Mullen – Marketing Director EMEA Web Address: www.avalara.co.uk

Company: BELLIN Name: Ralf Heinrich Email: welcome@bellin.com Web Address: bellin.com Address: (HQ:) Tullastr. 19, 77855 Ettenheim, Germany Telephone: +49 7822 44600

BELLIN

Avalara Avalara is a pioneering leader in the automation of indirect tax compliance for businesses of all sizes. We invited Tom Pacholke, Managing Director EMEA, to talk us through the firm’s service offering and how its dedication to innovation and creativity has led the company to its current success.

BELLIN is a treasury solution specialist with headquarters in Germany. We spoke to Ralf Heinrich to learn more about the firm and its innovative solution, tm5.

Founded in 1998 in Ettenheim, Germany, BELLIN has grown to become a global leader in consulting, software and services for corporate treasury management. The BELLIN group and partner companies serve more than 350 customers comprising more than 15,000 companies and 25,000+ users.

Avalara provides a wide range of cloud-based tax compliance automation solutions and services including VAT, Sales and Use Tax, excise taxes, and import taxes for clients around the world. Our products and services support the needs of organisations doing business both in-country as well as cross border.

BELLIN’s flagship product tm5 is the web-based all-in-one solution for managing all aspects of a corporate treasury. On Treasury Connected, users apply the firm’s “get treasury connected” principle. This online platform enables the BELLIN Community to exchange views on products and industry information and to keep in touch.

Our Compliance Cloud platform delivers an end-to-end suite transactional tax compliance solutions for determination, forms management and returns. Our comprehensive managed returns services are designed to help cut through the complexities of international VAT and include registration assistance, preparation and filing of returns in local languages and formats for both in-country and cross-border commerce.

Ralf explains how the firm’s focus on making clients happy has helped drive it to success.

We are proud to have won this prestigious award, which is a great validation of all the hard work we put into creating, updating and continually improving Compliance Cloud platform, our deep tax content, our superior technology and - perhaps most important - our team. We have the industry’s most experienced indirect tax automation experts; their insights and vision enable us to understand the tax compliance landscape and continually discover new ways to assist our customers.

At Avalara our mission is to be part of every transaction in the world, because we believe that the automation of cumbersome, inaccurate manual tax compliance processes is inevitable.

To achieve this ambitious aim, we have developed partner relationships with all major providers of accounting, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), ecommerce, payment platforms, and other business applications and have built hundreds of “off the shelf” integrations into those applications.

This partner base includes hundreds of renowned industry names such as Sage, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics, Magento, Hybris, Demandware, and IBM, and it is growing every day.

“Our mission is to delight multinational organizations with the most innovative treasury solutions.

“We aim to make a fundamental difference in the world of corporate finance. We search for the next great idea and the next great technology to lead treasuries forward. We will conceive, design, build and execute solutions that become an integral part of strategic management.”

Looking to the future, Ralf explains that BELLIN has a number of exciting projects on the horizon that will provide the firm with great opportunities moving forward.

“Recently we have been introducing TaaS (Treasury as a Service), which is highly anticipated. As treasurers and treasury experts, with the best treasury platform at hand, it is easy for us to provide our knowledge, our resources, our software and our consulting from one hand. So corporates can then outsource specific or custom treasury tasks, lightening the workload of the treasury team by getting rid of all the repetitive work, so they can focus on the strategic treasury tasks.

“Beside this, we also have a completely new treasury management system in the works that is to be released in 2017.”

These new developments will help the firm to grow and make a difference in the corporate landscape. As his final comment, Ralf explains how awards such as this will impact on the company and allow them to better serve the industry.

“The change of the banking industry in combination with FinTech is disrupting the corporate values. Within our abilities we are driving this change. By winning awards like the Technology Innovator Award we have the chance to address Treasury to target groups we otherwise would not reach. We strongly believe Treasury is an important topic for every SME, not just the huge corporates in the world.”

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E-Commerce Platform of the Year

Best International Chemical & Pigment Dispersions Supplier

Company: ChannelAdvisor Name: Zoe Ripley Email: ukteam@channeladvisor.com Web Address: www.channeladvisor.co.uk Address: 33 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6UF Telephone: 0203 014 2700

Company: Chromaflo Technologies Email: Europe@chromaflo.com Web Address: www.chromaflo.com Address: Nusterweg 98, Sittard, 6136KV, The Netherlands Telephone: +31 (0) 46 457 0100

Technologies For more than a decade, ChannelAdvisor has set the global standard for e-commerce optimisation by providing best-in-class technology, strategic services and thoughtleadership to help retailers and branded manufacturers master the complexity of connecting with consumers online. We invited Zoe Ripley to tell us more about the firm and the solutions it offers.

ChannelAdvisor is a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions that enable retailers and branded manufacturers to integrate, manage and optimise their merchandise sales across hundreds of online channels including Amazon, Google, eBay, Facebook and more.

Through automation, analytics and optimisation, ChannelAdvisor customers can leverage a single inventory feed to more efficiently list and advertise products online, and connect with shoppers to increase sales. Billions of dollars in merchandise value are driven through ChannelAdvisor’s platform every year, and thousands of customers use ChannelAdvisor’s solutions to help grow their businesses.

Zoe explains the firm’s mission and the techniques it employs to achieve it.

“Our mission is to connect retailers and branded manufacturers to new and emerging sources of demand for their products and provide the most comprehensive set of tools and analytics to optimise their e-commerce business. We achieve this by constantly watching the e-commerce industry and innovating our solution to help retailers to succeed online.’

“For example, in our most recent product release we announced new functionality such as predictive analytics with Amazon insights, support for Amazon Sponsored Products in Europe, Digital Marketing Benchmarking to give customers better perspective into their performance, strategic targeting with Google RLSA and Customer Match, along with Buy Local and Product Intelligence for brands.”

Ultimately, Zoe believes it is the firm’s international reach which makes the firm unique and sets it apart from its competitors.

“Our global scale makes us a unique platform for retailers and brands.

Because of our worldwide presence, we have a deep understanding of international e-commerce and are well-equipped to help retailers scale their businesses to new international channels seamlessly.

“Additionally, we are lucky to have a really strong team here at ChannelAdvisor. It comprises of people with direct retail experience, those who have worked with the large marketplaces or digital marketing channels or those with a passion for e-commerce. Together this gives us a unique 360 degree view of the e-commerce landscape and helps us deliver great results for our customers.”

Chromaflo Technologies is a premier global provider of colorant technology solutions, serving customers in the architectural and industrial paint and coatings industries and thermoset composite industry. Managing Director of EMEA, Holger Spieckermann, details the firm’s dedication to colour and how it is keen to reshape the industry through innovation.

Industrial paints and coatings protect structures in some of the harshest conditions on Earth, from offshore oil platforms to large bridge spans.

Achieving the correct performance for your customers is the priority, so color might be one of the last things you consider in your coating – but it shouldn’t be.

Sourcing the right colorants for paints and coatings means finding the perfect color match and ensuring your paint or coating will stand up to wear and tear over its lifetime. This is where the expertise of Chromaflo comes into play.

Chromaflo’s mission is to bring technology to the art of color. Technology is not just what makes us different, it is also what gives our customers an edge. We provide the optimal blend of skill and craftsmanship to produce colorants that are as diverse and specialized as the customers we serve.

Our colorants can be found in a wide variety of end products, including paint; infrared reflective coatings; adhesives and sealants; concrete protection and flooring; marine coatings; wood coatings; gel coats; pultrusion; and polyurethanes.

Creating a successful end-use product is not always just an internal effort; it’s an effort that can require the coordination of multiple disciplines, customers and suppliers to come together as a team. We often partner with our customers to help solve problems and create new ideas. Our technical experience and knowledge involving colorant and additive technology is paired with our customers’ expertise and knowledge in their technology to create those solutions. Good communication is key to success, so we follow these general guidelines when engaging in new projects.

To remain competitive, we aim to keep current on existing and emerging trends that will affect the industry in the coming months and years. The landscape for colorants is constantly changing as technology and global economics exert pressure on the industry to innovate and evolve. The three key trends that Chromaflo has identified is the rapid globalisation of our customer base, the move to more sustainable practices and increasing momentum of emerging technologies such as infrared reflective coatings.

Chromaflo has a strong foundation and rich history in colorant systems and chemical pigment dispersions, built on brands such as Colortrend, Chroma-Chem, Plasticolors, Monicolor, Temacolor and Innovatint.

Ultimately, Chromaflo is honoured to be recognised in the Technology Innovator Awards 2016. We believe our success is testament to our eight decades of industry experience and passion for innovative technologies.

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Most Innovative Portfolio Management Solution: Sentry PM™

Best 3rd Party EMC Support Provider & Recognised Leader in OEM Quality Services

Company: ClearStructure Financial Technology Name: Monica Pepe Email: monica.pepe@clearstructure.com Web Address: www.clearstructure.com Address: 83 Wooster Heights, Danbury, CT 06810 Telephone: (203) 205-2701

Company: Computer Data Source Inc. Website: http://www.cds.net/

Established in 1999, ClearStructure Financial Technology offers an innovative portfolio management system, Sentry PM™. We invited Monica Pepe to talk us through both the firm and unique solution for the financial industry.

Computer Data Source (CDS) is a global leader in delivering data center storage and support services. Dave Grimshaw provides us with a fascinating overview of the company and the solutions it offers.

ClearStructure Financial Technology provides a cloud based, frontto-back office portfolio management platform used by hedge funds, asset managers, CLO managers, direct lenders and loan trading desks throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. With offices in Connecticut, Texas, California, and England, we continue to utilize over 15 years of direct experience serving financial professionals by delivering solutions which emphasize flexibility, integration and automation.

Our unique and innovative solution is designed with the flexibility to adjust to our clients’ workflows, adapt to market innovations and give them full, secure access to their data. Sentry PM, our all-inclusive system, delivers value by offering advanced technology, modular scalability and decision support. A one-of-a-kind system with immense functionality, Sentry PM can be modified to meet our clients’ needs and ever-growing businesses, without the lengthy process of custom buildouts.

Financial technology, like technology in general, tends to evolve in ways which are difficult to anticipate. However, at ClearStructure we have been early adopters of new technology in the past and continue this approach today, as we are currently on the forefront of bringing mobile solutions to the portfolio management market.

It is this pioneering approach that we believe will define our future and bring ClearStructure even greater success. Over the next ten years, we expect ClearStructure and our Sentry PM platform to be the dominant players in the portfolio management space, as managers continue to replace outdated disparate technology with new solutions which are webbased and flexible. As we launch into the future, we will continue to grow and evolve with our clients, partners and the financial industry.

CDS are the world’s largest provider of third party EMC support, with a 25-year pedigree providing infrastructure and support services on behalf of the world’s leading technology and service providers.

Our primary expertise is in support of enterprise level storage products from vendors including EMC and NetApp. The firm’s core service is the provision of OEM quality services on a worldwide basis, supporting enterprise level storage products.

Using our flagship product, the propriety RAYTRIX diagnostic suite, CDS engineers maintain products from industry leading vendors, such as EMCs flagship VMAX and Symmetrix product families.

As well as supporting users that are responsible for managing and maintaining their hardware infrastructure, we also support OEMs themselves, including IBM, HPE, EMC and HDS who utilize our expertise in support of their own multi-vendor service business.

Our logistics teams are constantly looking at ways to shorten the time it takes to deliver parts to our customers and reducing the cost of doing so.

These savings are shared with our clients who see direct benefits from our pricing strategy.

Looking to the future, with the ever changing and evolving industry we continue to see a massive demand for storage. Our everyday lives are being shaped and transformed with this desire to leverage as much of the data that is being collected to understand user behaviour.

This behaviour is being used to drive innovations in products and services which are being brought to market faster than ever before. We see it as our job to stay abreast and informed of the latest technologies, and how they can be used by our customers to meet their strategic goals now, and long into the future.

The challenge of this increased demand for storage has led to the development of a wide range of different technology platforms. The result of which is current technology needs to be cascaded down through the customer’s infrastructure to make room for the latest technology while managing costs.

Our position over the next 10 years will be at the forefront of the services industry. To achieve this, we will continue to expand our global reach and, unlike many of today’s competitors, we will continue to invest in our tools and capabilities to service technologies that have a viable use within a client’s environment.

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Best Travel Technology Company - UK

Best eCOA Solution: TrialMax®

Company: Comtec Group Ltd Name: Simon Powell Web Address: www.comtec-group.com Address: 3 The Quadrangle, Vision Court, Cardiff, CF23 8HA

Company: CRF Health Name: John Blakeley Web Address: www. crfhealth.com Address: 4000 Chemical Road, Suite 400, Plymouth Meeting, PA, 19462 Telephone: +1 267 498 2300

CRF Health is a leading provider of electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) solutions for the life sciences industry. We invited John Blakeley to tell us more.

Comtec is the largest seller of specialist tour operator systems with one of the most recognised and well-known brands in the UK travel technology sector. We invited Simon Powell to provide us with an overview of the firm and the solutions it offers.

Internationally, Comtec has customers in Canada, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Croatia. Since 2008, Comtec has invested heavily in penetrating the North American market, and as a result, Comtec has developed a modern, feature rich tour operator system specifically for the overseas markets.

As a firm we provide mission critical software and related services to a large and loyal customer base that includes many of the UK’s top 100 tour operators and travel agencies. Our offering includes Travelink, the most widely used specialist tour operator multichannel sales and management system in the UK and Travelconnect, one of the most modern retail travel agency sales systems in the UK. We also offer Personalisation and Content Aggregation via our partnership with sister Company Eysys.

These solutions offer the highest level of functional sophistication combined with greatest scalability and reliability in the market coupled with exceptional value for money, a clear understanding of the industry needs, innovation, proven management leadership and a real positive can do attitude to be the best With regards to services, we provide customer relationship management, e-commerce and revenue management tools designed to meet the needs of the business, as well as consultancy, training and development services.

Ultimately it is our mission to be the leading provider of Tour Operator and Retail systems on a global basis delivering exceptional client service and long term successful, enjoyable and profitable relationships. We aim to achieve this through exceptional product quality supported by continuous client CSQ and internal KPI management which have established a framework for all to see, aspire too and enjoy.

Currently the business is at a very exciting time of accelerated growth and we are excited about what the future holds for the firm. Our partnership with Eysys also delivers further technical innovation to our clients enabling multi-channel distribution on a Global basis with personalisation in the client experience on any device.

Since inception in 2000, CRF Health has grown rapidly to become a global leader in eCOA via the development of next-generation solutions that are now improving the clinical trial experience for patients around the world.

John outlines the firm’s experience in this area and how it has helped the company to become the market leading success it is today.

“With experience in more than 800 eCOA trials, in 100 languages across 74 countries, our eCOA technology is used in global clinical trials and consistently demonstrates high levels of data accuracy, patient and site compliance, and plays a significant role in patient retention.”

“Our ultimate mission is to help life sciences companies bring new medicines to market as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, thereby simplify the path to approval. We do this by combining a collaborative, agile design approach with user-friendly data collection tools, to streamline complex processes and deliver reliable results for superior clinical trial outcomes.”

Working in such a competitive industry it is vital that firm’s such as CRF Health differentiate from their competitors, as John highlights.

“As one of the first companies to put dedicated eCOA devices in the hands of patients, we continue to lead the industry with a uniquely collaborative design process and a focus on patient experience first and foremost. Our team has unparalleled eCOA expertise and share a common vision and passion for the development of patient-focused technologies which are investigator-friendly.”

“In addition, we continually strive to bring our innovative approach to different parts of the clinical trial. For example, we have recently introduced TrialConsent™, a first-of-its-kind eCOA-native electronic informed consent technology for use in clinical trials. While others in the industry offer electronic informed consent solutions, TrialConsent is the only solution to offer a single-platform eConsent and eCOA on the same device, removing the need for any additional technologies to be included in a trial’s design, and significantly reducing the burden and complexity for study teams.”

Going forward, John emphasised the firm’s dedication to evolving with the market in order to continue offering the very best solutions to its clients.

“With modern technology now firmly embedded in people’s lives across all generations of the population, there is no doubt that the eCOA market will continue to evolve. As a company we will continue to invest in research and development to ensure we create game-changing technology which will ultimately accelerate the process of safely getting new drugs to market.”

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Best Heating Engineer 2016 - Fife Company: Crossgates Gas Service and Maintenance Ltd Phone: 07711 261247 Website: http://www.crossgatesgas.com/

Crossgates Gas Service and Maintenance Ltd Crossgates Gas Service and Maintenance are a Fife based gas boiler repairs and central heating specialist. We invited Pedro Tang to tell us more.

Crossgates Gas Service and Maintenance are able to quickly resolve any hot water and central heating problems, repair gas boilers, prevent gas leaks or fix any other plumbing problem client may have. Pedro outlines how the firm sets itself apart from its competitors.

“We offer a fast, reliable and cost efficient service, which has lead us into green energy as there is such a big saving on energy bills when you take certain measures. Customers are amazed by just how much will be saved in utility bills per week when installing a new energy efficient boiler, and we are able to explain these savings in an accessible way which ensures they always feel supported.”

Looking ahead, Pedro outlines the growth strategies which will help the firm to expand and better serve its clients.

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“Moving forward we are keen to expand into more commercial work in the future, and will continue with training initiatives to ensure clients receive the very highest quality service.”

A North American Life Insurance company eliminates a legacy insurance system and increases product speed to market by 75% with Concentrix GIAS technology.

Solving Client Problems Our client, a major North American life insurance company, had multi-country, languages and currency new business. Its strategy was upgrading its technology in pursuit of efficiency and growth. The old system couldn’t cope.

Everyone was nervous about making a switch, but how else could the company handle all of the different Caribbean countries without an upgraded system?

Collaboration, Innovation and Immediate Impact Our client made the right choice when it partnered with Concentrix. Using the Concentrix proprietary GIAS technology platform, the client was able to automate its processes and improve its customer experience.

The client waited for a phone call about the new system’s inevitable glitch. Every part of the business, every country, every product had a different type of customization.

Weeks went by, but the client still hadn’t gotten that phone call. The GIAS system had handled the upgrade smoothly.

“It is a great honor to be recognized at the Technology Innovation Awards for Best Insurance Administration Solutions Provider. We owe our portfolio of insurance client’s success to our Concentrix GIAS technology and services.”

- Chris Caldwell, President, Concentrix

Driving Outcomes In addition to a seamless migration, the new system dramatically reduced time to market. Rolling out a new product used to take several months, but the GIAS platform reduced this time to a few days. The client rolled out a new product, and again, waited for the phone call to let them know something wasn’t working. Once again, the call never came.

The GIAS technology platform removed the growth limitations, immediately increased product speed to market and improved our client’s revenue.

Whether it’s the customer who isn’t calling because a seamless online system provides everything they need or the IT specialist who doesn’t call to say the system is down, the best phone call is the one that doesn’t come.

Concentrix is a top 10 global services company with a presence in 25 countries, 40 languages, 90 locations and 70k+ staff.

Learn more: www.concentrix.com

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Best Remote Monitoring and Management Software: PIPS

Best Data Solutions Provider - UK

Company: Data Direct (Thames Valley) Ltd. Name: Sheila Daisy I. Larsen Email:marketing@data-direct.co.uk Web Address: www.data-direct.co.uk Address: 11 Ivanhoe Road, Finchampstead Berkshire. RG40 4QQ Telephone:+44 (0)1189734564

Company: Data8 Limited Phone: 0151 355 4555 Name: Emmy Lippold Email: emmyl@data-8.co.uk Website: https://www.data-8.co.uk/

Data Direct is the UK’s leading distributor of consumables and hardware to printer resellers and copier dealers.

We spoke to Sheila Larsen to find out more.

Founded in 1992, Data Direct is the leading UK distributor for consumables and hardware always focusing on ways to improve and add value to its customers. Shelia provides a detailed overview of the firm’s solutions.

“Our portfolio includes solutions to reduce stock, cut costs and man hours as well as present business opportunities to increase revenue.

“Along with these industry leading solutions, Data Direct stocks over £2.5 million worth of both OEM and Remanufactured products alone in the UK. Having been in the industry for over 20 years, our expertise ensures that we source the best products from the world’s best manufacturers and develop our own industry leading warranties, with unmatched standards and quality.”

The firm’s mission is to deliver products and services that increase productivity, gross margins and reduce waste to the industry. To achieve this, Data Direct developed the PIPS system, an innovative new approach to meter reading. Shelia explains the software’s core uses and the added value features that make it unique.

“Developed to enhance the monitoring and collection of meter readings from a printer fleet, PIPS has evolved to become more than just a meter reading software. As a remote monitoring and management software PIPS has real-time live updates and visual interface showing the exact issue for house-keeping for your MIF base. Unlike other remote monitoring systems on the market PIPS has first-hand UK support and developers, which means issues are attended to and resolved in the UK within the shortest possible time.”

Looking to the future, Shelia emphasises the firm’s dedication to continued innovation and how this will enable it to better support clients.

“Going forward, we see the company and our innovative solutions evolving with the industry and thus resulting in cutting edge technological solutions that do not only cut costs and increase efficiency for our customers, but also provide new business opportunities, due to their ability to provide a single-source solution for their end-users.”

Data8 are a data specialist that leads the way in data quality management. Emmy Lippold talks us through the firm and its dedication to providing quality data services.

Data8 provide real time data validation, comprehensive data cleansing, data management, analytics, and visualisation enabling a single customer view; the powerhouse of strategic decisions. The firm also offers industry leading data supply services, offering clients B2B and B2C data sources which have unrivalled data volumes for creating tailored data lists, for extending reach and expanding business. Emmy explains the firm’s mission and how everyone at Data8 works to ensure that clients receive the very highest standard of service.

“Data8’s overall mission is to optimise customer’s sales, marketing and overall efficiency and professionalism through data solutions. We provide a complete approach to data, offering solutions for every aspect of data; its collection and management and analysing and using it to increase ROI and business growth.

“Our four main divisions of services, to Validate, Cleanse, Manage, Supply are delivered with a highly consultative approach so customers understand the data solutions in the context of their wider data strategy.

Through the consultation our Account Managers provide clients are able to make informed decisions which continually strengthen their data quality lifecycle process, and their wider data strategy.”

Data8 is dedicated to innovation and developing the latest technologies for optimising the power of data. Its technology team are passionate about delivering advanced solutions which make a real difference to clients.

Emmy talks us through how this is what truly sets the firm apart.

“We provide complete coverage of all data solutions. Rather than specialising in one aspect of data, we have developed expertise in every area. This simplifies managing data for our clients, as they can receive all the data solutions needed in one place.

Our approach is highly consultative, which is delivered by data experts who understand all aspects of data. All services are tailored to the precise requirements of our customers as our advanced technology allows a high level of flexibility. Our advanced in house technology underpins all our services and the smooth deployment of the services and solutions to our clients.”

As a result of its quality service offering and dedication to client support, Data8 has seen phenomenal growth in the past two years. Looking ahead, Emmy believes that this will only increase and states that the firm is keen to capitalise on this success.

“Moving forward we have plans to grow both in the UK and internationally, while continuing to invest in our products and services to become one of the leading data solutions providers worldwide.”

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Best Additive Metal 3D Company – USA & Most Innovative Additive Metal Process: DMD®

Best Web Design Company - South West & Recognised Leaders in Online Marketing - South West

Company: DM3D Technology, LLC Website: http://www.dm3dtech.com/

Company: E direct Link Ltd Name: Rudy Kazal Email: rudy@edirectlink.net Web Address: www.edirectlink.net Address: 8 Richmond Gardens, Bournemouth, BH1 1JE Telephone: 01202 798777

DM3D Technology, LLC DM3D Technology, LLC is the premier solutions provider within the emerging market of metal based additive manufacturing. We invited Chief Legal Officer Chris Loomis to talk us through the firm and what differentiates it from its competitors.

With over 18 years of active development and production within metal additive manufacturing, it is DM3D’s expertise and innovation, which is protected by its patents and proprietary trade secrets, that gives the company its competitive edge in the marketplace. We strive every day to push the boundaries of “how it has always been done” in order to usher in a more efficient, less wasteful world of manufacturing. It was this daily determination that led to our latest innovation- TransFormAM. As 3D Printing/Additive Manufacturing (AM) is emerging as a major manufacturing technology, production throughput and cost appear to be two major challenges between its wide scale acceptance in the industry and current niche technology status. As such, using 3D printing to manufacture original equipment products has not been feasible, particularly if the product includes a large volume.

DM3D’s TransFormAM is a new approach to AM that uses an existing metal forming technologies (such as casting, forging, extrusion etc.) to fabricate a metal preform and then uses DMD® Technology to add metal on the preform to transform it into a fully functional metal part.

This innovative approach will (a) Improve throughput; (b) Help to ease the fabrication of large parts; (c) Provide better quality of finished part due to the wrought microstructure of the preform; (d) Reduce risk of manufacturing; and (e) Reduce overall cost.

In addition, unlike laser sintering, traditional coating or thermal spray processes, DMD Technology produces fully dense metal parts with a strong metallurgical bond to the base material resulting in production parts. This allows us to deposit the exact materials we want (including multiple materials simultaneously or consecutively) exactly where we want them in order to create the best possible tool, component or finished part for our customer’s exact needs. Graded cermets, buffer bonded bi-metallics, on-the-fly alloys are products of this unique multi-material capability of DMD Technology enabling innovative solutions to challenging product requirements.

So if you are a manufacturer of anything from basic fabrication tools to advanced aerospace components and you are looking to make a better product while saving money at the same time, give us a call here at DM3D. We most likely have the solution to a problem you did not even know you could solve.

E Direct Link is a full service online marketing agency based in the centre of Bournemouth. We invited Rudy Kazal to talk us through the firm and the services it provides.

E Direct Link was established in 2001, and has been growing a loyal and impressive customer base over the past 15 years. From our beginnings as a web development company, we have expanded our service provisions to include SEO, PPC, Branding and Graphic design. As well as developing our web development skills from creating simple websites to fully bespoke web based software.

What makes our firm unique is that we have always strived to create more advanced and forward thinking web developments than our competitors, incorporating the latest technological trends in order to create modern and unique web developments and marketing campaigns.

Ultimately, it is our mission to provide businesses with efficient marketing solutions. With knowledgeable and skilled employees and efficient processes, we will provide effective marketing at an affordable cost.

To ensure we drive forward on our mission statement we have developed highly efficient systems for service delivery, staff development, and use of the latest technology. For both online marketing and web development, we have employees dedicated to R&D, who focus on researching new technology, testing this, and rolling this out into our current business processes or service provisions.

Overall, following three years of impressive growth we are looking to continually expand for the foreseeable future. We have recently planned an expansion to Dubai, which is already in progress, and we fully intend to take all of the latest technological trends across to a country that is behind the UK in technological advancement. E Direct Link plan to continue developing with technological trends into the future and look forward to the opportunities our growth strategies hold.

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Best Autodesk Implementation & Support System: Pinnacle Series

Most Trusted CCM Software Company 2016 – USA & Most Innovative BXP SaaS Platform: Tango+

Company: Eagle Point Software Corporation Website: http://www.eaglepoint.com/

Company: Elixir Technologies Corporation Address: 1314 East Ojai Avenue, Ojai, CA USA 93023 Phone: 805 641 5900 Fax: 805 648 9151 Email: info_us@elixir.com Website: http://www.elixir.com/europe/

Pinnacle Series Eagle Point Software creates innovative solutions which help Autodesk users increase productivity and take full advantage of their Autodesk software. We invited Kent Kraus to provide an overview of the company and its award winning solution.

Starting in 1983 with our founders’ roots in engineering and architecture, Eagle Point set out to solve problems for clients in the AEC market and to help them take advantage of ever-changing technology. Through our 33 years of evolution, Eagle Point has moved from providing design tools, to putting our focus on helping our clients to take full advantage of the technology throughout their organization.

This is accomplished through our flagship product, the Pinnacle Series.

Pinnacle Series is a productivity solution that provides Autodesk users instant access to best practice Workflows, helpful Cheat Sheets, How-to videos, structured Learning Paths and best-in-class live support. Resources are accessed through a single concise interface allows users to overcome the everyday challenges they face using technology.

Pinnacle Series differentiates itself from competition in the market by providing a complete solution that addresses three areas that negatively impact productivity with technology. Typical competing solutions are really only aimed at one area: training. Both traditional training and e-learning tools put an emphasis on learning functions of the application. Pinnacle Series ensures corporate best practices are followed by all users through customizable Workflows. Learning Paths are provided to train users on the software allowing them to increase their skill sets making them a more valuable asset to the organization. When users get stuck, they simply type in a search and are returned with How-to and Training Videos, Workflows, Cheat Sheets and Live Support to provide them with immediate answers keeping them productive. All content is customizable allowing for resident knowledge to easily be captured and made available to all users.

As Eagle Point thinks longer term into the future, we subscribe to the belief that we should first think about problems that our customers face.

Having identified those problems, we consider how we can leverage our strengths, market knowledge and technology advancements as a whole to bring new/better solutions to market. We do not approach our longer-term thinking by first developing innovative technologies and then looking for a problem that it solves. We are oriented toward first identifying problems and then developing innovative solutions. With these thoughts in mind, looking 10 years into the future, we will continue moving our solutions mobile where applicable. We will bring customers more value from the IoT and we will continue our push toward SaaS offerings.

Ultimately we are excited and honored to receive this award. We always feel a sense of pride when our product is recognized by an outside publication.

It is a credit to the hard work of our entire team, along with valuable input from our clients. This award continues to validate Pinnacle Series as a classleading system to implement, train and support technology.

Elixir Technologies Corporation Elixir provides technology and services that help organizations improve communications to their members and customers by streamlining processes and reducing operational costs. We profile the firm and explore the secrets behind the firm’s success.

Founded in 1985, Elixir have consistently provided state-of-the-art technology for creating and delivering correspondence.

The importance of timely and accurate customer correspondence is at an all-time high and deploying applications as quickly as they’re needed is becoming more and more of a challenge. On-time delivery of the right content can mean the difference between keeping or losing valuable customers or meeting regulatory requirements. At the same time, the resources needed to make this happen must be carefully managed and allocated to ensure return on investment for clients.

As such Elixir has developed the innovative Tango+, a SaaS Business Experience Platform (BXP) that creates variable business correspondence by extending design, management, and publishing capabilities across organization.

Clients can access the Tango+ portal framework from any browsercapable mobile or desktop device. Tango+ can be configured for on premise and hosted cloud deployments, providing scalability, reliability, and high performance.

The firm are a company of diverse people who value human relationships and are on a mission is to improve people’s lives in the way it does business, delivering value to customers through technology.

Beyond implementation and customization, Elixir’s managed service capabilities mean that clients can rely on the firm to host, manage, and even operate their clients’ cloud-based solution in a way that best matches with their own strategies. The firm’s world-class infrastructure and services professionals are available to support clients from implementation through ongoing operation.

Ultimately, using Tango as the underlying technology, Elixir configures and customizes the applications that companies need in time for their most important business initiatives. The firm is a global company with offices in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and headquarters in the United States, and support clients through its innovative solutions, and, going forward, this will be the firm’s continued focus as it seeks to support more clients in more ways, and therefore build upon its current success.

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Most Client-Focused Credit Union Solutions Company – Washington & Best Core Processing Software: FORZA3™

SMS Service Provider of the Year – UK & Best SMS Business Platform 2016 - UK

Company: Enhanced Software Products, Inc. (ESP) Name: Shaun Murray Email: smurray@espsolution.net Web Address: www.espsolution.net Address: 1811 N Hutchinson Rd. Spokane, WA 99212 Telephone: (509) 534-1514

Company: Fastsms Ltd Name: Oliver Burt (Marketing Director) Email: helpdesk@ fastsms.co.uk Web Address: www.fastsms.co.uk Telephone: 0800 954 5305

Enhanced Software Products, Inc. (ESP) Enhanced Software Products (ESP) is a technology firm specialising in working with credit unions. We invited Shaun Murray to talk us through how the firm’s focus on client service has helped it to achieve the success it enjoys today.

Here at ESP our core competency is our Core Processing software package, FORZA3™ that essentially runs all aspects of the Credit Union.

Fastsms provides a range of text messaging services to business clients. We invited the firm’s Marketing Director Oliver Burt to give us an overview of the firm and the services it provides.

The solution is highly flexible, and 97% of our clients also host their data at our headquarters. They can take on other vendors for different reasons and we integrate those solutions in with ours. We only approach integration as full integration to eliminate the need for double-entry.

Fastsms has been providing professional text messaging services to businesses and individuals since 2002. Organisations of all shapes and sizes from local schools to marketing agencies, global corporations and emergency services all rely on fastsms for instant, reliable SMS communication. We enable our clients to send and receive time-critical SMS messages via our popular cloud-based platform NetMessenger as well through any email client and our extensive API for developers.

Alongside this product, we also built and offer our clients solutions like home banking, audio response, member imaging, paperless receipts, digital documents and more. The idea here is to bring state-of-the-art solutions to any size credit union, no matter their size. We will not be a stumbling block for credit unions to serve their members, everyone should be able to deploy solutions to achieve their goals.

It is our mission here at Fastsms to deliver a great customer experience to our users where support is freely given regardless of how much they spend. To achieve this, we ensure that we are available for our clients 24/7 via live chat, email and phone. We regularly act on customer feedback and are committed to developing a service that puts their experience before our convenience.

As a business it is our mission “to become the most trusted and admired core processor in the industry”. By “Trusted”, we mean that we do what we say, when we say it. We show our clients that there is truly a partner in the core processing world. We remove road blocks for our clients by working with third party companies on their behalf and any that we choose, we ensure that those companies handle business and clients up to the same standard we do.

In addition, we have worked hard to put together a team that strives for continuous improvement, for both our business and that of our customers, and therefore we are experienced in spotting and then acting on new opportunities. We have strategies and processes in place to ensure we gather feedback and suggestions from our users on a regular basis and use this information to drive our product forward.

“Admired” means that we always follow through with what we promise to, increase communication, transparency and our clients talk to their peers and vendors. Our hope is that those people start to think “I want to be a part of that, they are treated good, they have a voice and someone/ company is interested in assuring that we are succeeding”. That conversation leads to being admired for doing right, which is our overall Vision.

Looking ahead, we will continue to support our users and develop our service offering to support their ever evolving needs. We will remain open and honest about pricing, continue to care about the level of service we offer, and overall ensure that every development we make is in the interest of our loyal customers.

Looking forward, the firm is aiming to grow organically, expanding both our client base and our workforce in order to ensure that we can maintain the high level of service which has made ESP what it is today.

ESP’s implementation pipeline is almost at full till the middle of 2018. “We like our role in the market and we look forward to future success for our clients and my staff”.

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Best e-Commerce Website Provider 2016 Company: Fat Media Name: John French Email: info@fatmedia.co.uk Web Address: www.fatmedia.co.uk Address: 12 Spring Garden Street, Lancaster, LA1 1RQ Telephone: 01524 548948

Fat Media is a full service digital marketing agency that specialises in a range of services including website design and development, digital marketing, hosting, branding, marketing strategy, graphic design, photography, copywriting and more. We invited John French to talk us through the company and its vast service offering.

Established 11 years ago, Fat Media started life in Lancaster with just five members of staff. Since inception the firm has added offices in London and Bristol and now operates a team of over 120. John explains the firm’s mission and the steps it takes to achieve it.

“Fat Media aims to become the UK’s leading mid-market agency. We build lasting relationships with our clients, to provide ongoing support to help grow their businesses through online and offline methods. The people are at the heart of Fat Media, and we work hard to maintain our fun, collaborative culture and attractive employee benefits, to make sure we attract and retain a high calibre team.”

Collaboration not only occurs with clients, as John outlines how the firm’s focus on supporting its staff is the secret behind its success.

“Fat Media’s key differentiator is our people. We take care to hire passionate, positive and expert individuals – creating a team of people who genuinely love what they do. Our client services team in particular provide a personal, attentive service to every single customer, large or small, getting to know the people as well as the business.

“We also encourage an open and positive team culture from which naturally emerges creativity, innovation and genuine excitement about the results we bring for our clients. Internally we celebrate success, recognise achievement and promote open feedback to all members of the team.

Externally we organise social events, seasonal activities and fundraisers for everyone to get involved in.”

Best for Investment Claim Filing & Monitoring Systems Company: Financial Recovery Technologies Email: info@frtservices.com Web Address: www.frtservices.com Address: 200 River’s Edge Drive, Suite 300, Medford, MA 02155 Telephone: 339-674-1000

Financial Recovery Technologies (FRT) is a technologybased services firm that helps the investment community identify eligibility, file claims and collect funds made available in securities class action settlements. Christopher Higgins talks us through the firm and the services it provides.

Offering the most comprehensive range of claim filing and monitoring services available, here at FRT we provide best-in-class eligibility analysis, disbursement auditing and client reporting, and deliver the highest level of accuracy, accountability and transparency available.

The firm is the provider of choice for leading hedge funds, asset managers, investment managers, pension funds, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, global custodians and regional banks.

As a company we differ from our competitors in many ways, offering transparency, innovation, robust IT infrastructure, and superior controls and procedures. FRT is comfortable being transparent because we are confident that our IT infrastructure and our controls and procedures are robust and industry leading. Our IT infrastructure is expressly designed to service the needs of the financial services industry. Our controls and procedures have been developed to ensure data quality and accuracy at all critical points in the recovery process, including comprehensive information security policies and procedures that meet or exceed industry standards.

Moving forward, in addition to further enhancing its product offerings, FRT also plans to continue to expand its client base. In anticipation of our growth in client base, FRT has made significant investments in people and technology in order to ensure our ability to scale seamlessly, including the introduction of automated reporting and significant upgrades to our data center. FRT has also made a strategic choice to invest in technology and infrastructure sufficient to ensure its continued ability to provide its comprehensive solution at an enterprise level. Ultimately, we are looking forward to an exciting, opportunity laden future.

Despite its phenomenal success over the past years John insists that, moving forward, the firm is eager to build upon this and continue working diligently to support its clients.

“Our aim for the future is to establish further regional hubs to ensure all customers have a point of contact within a relatively short distance. We will also continue to invest in our staff and in the tools and platforms we use, as well as research up and coming technology in which we can become early adopters.”

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Best Global Tax Reclamation Company & Recognised Leaders in Class Actions Recovery

Best Estimation Software: EstimatorXpress

Company: Goal Group Ltd Email: vdean@goalgroup.com Website: www.goalgroup.com Telephone: +44 (0)20 8760 7130

Goal Group is the global leader in withholding tax reclamation and securities class actions recovery services.

We invited Vicky Dean to tell us more.

Goal Group is very pleased that our efforts to provide best-of-class technology solutions and services to the financial services industry have been recognised by the Technology Innovator Awards 2016. We aim to make it as easy as possible for the world’s largest financial institutions to maximise investor returns. Our market-leading proprietary software and systems offer an efficient, cost-effective and secure way to reclaim tax on cross-border dividend income and participate in securities class actions.

The Accelerator system provides financial services institutions and the investment management community with an automated process for securities class actions recoveries. It processes client data that relates to global securities class actions and provides calculations on recognised losses where clients may have a claim. This allows institutional investors to meet their fiduciary duties and maximise returns for their clients with great ease. Global Tax Reclamation Solution (GTRS), our licensed software for cross-border withholding tax reclaims, is our flagship product and has underpinned the growth and continued success of the company.

The modular system allows for the automation of as much of the tax reclamation process as required as well as including advanced reporting capabilities. In addition to that, Goal Group’s secure client web portals offer a powerful reporting function on both securities class actions recoveries and withholding tax reclaims.

Starting with the launch of GTRS we have continually strived to enhance our existing products and services in line with client feedback and based on our own experience and knowledge. At the same time we have developed and launched complementary products to serve our existing client base as well as prospects around the globe. This has enabled us to firmly establish our niche market position. Against the backdrop of an increasingly globalised and interconnected financial economy driven by rapid advancements in processing and analysing huge amounts of data, we see ourselves at the forefront of technological progress. This is a position we aim to hold and expand. We will continue to provide highly integrated, powerful solutions to our clients. As a next step, for example, we aspire to enter the American Depositary Receipts (ADR) market in New York City commencing Q1 of 2017.

Having been awarded the Technology Innovator Awards 2016 is no reason to rest on our laurels. For innovative technology companies this is a time of exciting opportunities and we strive to make the best of it. Our proprietary software continues to be at the core of our business and we go to great lengths to ensure that both our technology and our services continue to be ahead of the curve. This will allow us to continue to serve a large and continuously growing global client base from our headquarters in London and our offices in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Company: HBXL Ltd Name: Joanna Mulgrew Email: joanna.mulgrew@ hbxl.co.uk Web Address: hbxl.co.uk Address: 3 Portland Place, Pritchard Street, Bristol BS2 8RH Telephone: 0117 9167850

HBXL develops market leading building software for the construction industry. We invited Joanna Mulgrew to tell us more.

HBXL provides products, including EstimatorXpress, PlansXpress, Health & Safety Xpert and ContractsXpert, all of which enable small to medium sized building firms to embrace time and cost saving benefits of IT to win more work and increase profitability through accurate and professional plans, estimates, quotes, method statements, risk assessments and building contracts.

Joanna outlines the firm’s pride at having won this prestigious accolade, and explains that is the firm’s focus on supporting its clients that has led it to this success.

“HBXL is absolutely delighted to have received this award. I believe that our success stems from our focus on our customers – our goal is for them to succeed in seeing our software transform the way they work.

We endeavour to develop software that is as user-friendly as possible so that the builders who purchase our products can quickly see a return on their investment and reap the rewards of using technology in their own businesses.

“Our customers regularly tell us that we stand out from the competition because we know our customers well and understand the challenges that they face. We know that not all our customers are IT savvy and encourage them to take advantage of our friendly and knowledgeable Technical Support team and to enrol on our free software skills course so that that they get up and running as soon as possible. Our latest survey indicate that 95% of our customers are extremely happy with the Technical Support they receive from HBXL.” Moving forward, Joanna adds that the firm has a number of exciting developments in the pipeline which will provide them with exciting opportunities for growth.

“HBXL’s newest innovation is due for launch autumn 2016 and is the culmination of six years of R&D in conjunction with the Technology Strategy Board, University of West of England and Innovate UK. It is a low-cost multi-disciplinary toolset for SME builders to use for Building Information Modelling (BIM) covering the life-cycle of construction projects helping builders engage with the Government’s Soft Landings target. The prototype integrates HBXL’s BuildingWorks™ linking CAD, new-build and retrofit estimating, SAP calculating, Advanced Project Management, Health and Safety Design and Construction Phase and Contract Management.

BuildingWorksTM is currently being beta tested by a panel of builders and has already received fantastic feedback.”

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Most Innovative Supply Chain Information Technology 2016

Best in Business Intelligence & Performance Management Solutions – UK

Company: Independent Purchasing Cooperative, Inc. Name: George Labelle Email: George Labelle <george@ipcoop.com> Web Address: www.ipcoop.com Address: 9200 S. Dadeland Blvd Suite 800, Miami, FL, USA 33156 Telephone: 305-670-0041

Company: www.inphase.com Open data example: allwales.inphase.com

Independent Purchasing Cooperative, Inc.

InPhase Limited

Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC) is an independent SUBWAY® franchisee-owned and operated purchasing cooperative for the restaurants in the United States and Canada.

We caught up with CIO George Labelle to find out more.

Based in Miami, IPC negotiates the lowest costs for purchased goods and services, while improving quality, enhancing competitiveness and ensuring the best value to SUBWAY® members and their customers. The company’s mission is to help SUBWAY® franchisees be more profitable and competitive, both today and for the future. IPC is the largest restaurant purchasing cooperative and SUBWAY® is the largest restaurant chain the world by number of units.

Chief Information Officer George Labelle leads the Information Technology team. Inspired by the agile approach and the latest thinking in software development and project management, his team works in interdisciplinary teams that are nimble and efficient in rolling out innovative software and technology solutions for franchisees. George outlines how this approach achieves this aim and describes the attributes which help set the company apart from other purchasing cooperatives.

“Our approach is unique in three major ways. First, we have broken down the usual silos between functional teams. When faced with a business challenge that requires an IT solution, we work on interdisciplinary teams that include designers, builders, operators and evaluators. This allows us to quickly roll out time-saving and money-saving programs to our franchisees.

“Second, instead of planning the rollout of a business solution over months or even years, we break every project down into smaller components that can be developed and evaluated in two week increments. We can evaluate each piece quickly and pivot when necessary; we no longer invest weeks or months in a project that doesn’t have a proven ROI. “Finally, our work is enabled by a company culture like no other. There is a great positive energy and everybody feeds into the positive energy.

Everyone is challenging each other, encouraging each other, and this helps us to operate at the very highest level.”

Looking ahead, George talked us through IPC’s plans for the future and how it aimed to support franchises and restaurant goers by remaining at the forefront of emerging industry developments.

“As Subway continues to grow, so do we. Currently we are supporting a major digital marketing transformation in order to continue delivering the very highest standard of service.”

InPhase represents the latest frontier in business management, specialising in combining market leading functionality with ease of use.

Report Summary: What Makes InPhase Distinctive?

Easy and Clever.. in a world of data The solution is clever, giving easy access to data from across the business, anywhere in the world, to deliver new real-time insights. The big win of course is giving decision makers access to real time reporting and analytics so they can make decisions founded on fact rather than gut-feel and best guess.

InPhase supports clients in going beyond traditional data connectivity to blend the operational data sets users want to see into combined analytical views, delivering totally new performance insights.

While it is clear that the ease of data connectivity stands InPhase apart, it also does so cost effectively. In many cases InPhase moves the ability to create the data connectivity out of the hands of scarce specialist IT staff, into the hands of business users.

Unsurprisingly the reporting is comprehensive with push reports such as automatic creation of Board Reports through to dynamic self-service pickers, slicers and sliders so that managers can get what they want, when they want it, in a highly visual presentation.

Intelligent and SMART InPhase is what we call today an intelligent solution – it is not just a reporting tool - it adds value.

Simply the most inspired benefit that makes InPhase stand apart is the built-in functionality that enables users to chat real-time about the analytics, and initiate new operational, tactical and strategic activity to change the organisation’s future performance directly within the software.

The actions, metrics, projects, risks and governance or compliance assessments dynamically update the business plan at all levels, delivering a real-time ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ loop of best practice business management.

Conclusion Ultimately, InPhase enables managers to get both the classic BI benefit of gaining insights into what is going on anywhere in the business right now, to see how this aligns to their plans, and the likely outcome trends if nothing changes, real-time.

The firm has a number of exciting plans to help encourage growth and better support clients moving forward. This month InPhase launch an open data web service where customers can present their complex performance and compliance information in an easily digestible way for the public.

“Thank you Technology Innovator Awards for recognising InPhase as the UK’s most innovative BI and Performance Management solution. These awards inspire us to continue to innovate and push boundaries, helping our customers achieve better outcomes. The team at InPhase are excited with the recognition that InPhase empowers business managers like no other application in its market space” enthused Robert Hobbs, CEO.

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Best International Banking Software Provider

Best for Electronic Billing Solutions - Mid-West USA

Company: International Financial Systems Name: Matthew Day Email: matthew.day@ifinancial.systems Web Adress: www.banking-software.com Address: 1 Caxton Place, Roden Street, Ilford, Essex, IG1 2AH Telephone: +44 208 477 1400

Company: iPayX (Internet Payment Exchange, Inc.) Address: 1946 N 13th St., Ste 348, Toledo, OH 43604 USA Phone: (800) 530-7004 Fax: (419) 730-7095 Website: http://www.ipayx.com

iPayX provides payment systems, electronic document delivery, and associated customer service solutions to healthcare providers, utility companies, wholesale distributors, municipal governments, service providers and other organizations. We profile the firm and gain an exclusive insight from Alexia Moseley. iFinancial have been providing software solutions to the finance and banking community since 1992, when the firm first began offering its flagship software BankWare. Sales Director Matthew Day explains this vital and fascinating solution and the company behind it.

BankWare is ‘customer centric’ and capable of running the front, middle and back office of any bank. It is made up of a number of discreet but fully integrated components and modules and can interact with iBank (Internet Banking Application) and AMLtrac (anti-money landering) solutions on a real time basis.

In this current climate no financial institution can afford to be without automated solutions. We designed BankWare for quick and easy implementation whilst loosing none of the flexibility required. Typically, our clients are branches of foreign banks worldwide, UK niche banks, offshore banks and small retail banks. Whilst some are privately owned others are subsidiaries of much larger institutions.

As good as BankWare is it, like all software solutions, is never complete and we continue to evolve and improve it. At the moment we are working on improving our Trade Finance functionality. iFinancial have operations in London, Gibraltar and Vietnam. Our software is available and supported through agents and resellers worldwide.

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, iPayX serves organizations in 47 states and processes over two billion dollars in electronic payments annually.

Alexia outlines the firm’s focus on security and how this has helped it to better serve them. “iPayX is committed to the highest security standards. Our policies and credentials reflect our abilities to provide the safest, most secure payment system technology. As a PCI DSS Level 1 certified payment service provider, iPayX regularly scans for weaknesses in security before they can be exploited.

“In addition, a Qualified Security Assessor performs an in depth, on-site inspection of security practices. iPayX implements rigorous security knowledge standards for all employees, and does everything possible to ensure the safety and privacy of your customer’s personal and financial information. Secure online payments are our number one priority.”

Ultimately, Alexia explains that the firm is dedicated to offering truly unique solutions which meet clients’ ever evolving needs.

“Since its inception, iPayX has committed to delivering true value through innovative solutions. We are focused on building virtual payment systems that meet the growing demands of a modern business and consumer landscape. Our robust, omni-channel Payment Hub helps businesses manage the complexities of billing and payment collection, leveraging one comprehensive, completely secure payment platform. We are honored to be recognized with the 2016 Technology Innovator Award and are excited to continue in our mission to collect more money, faster.”

Ultimately, we believe that it’s important for our customers that we get the right balance. They need practical, cost-effective solutions quickly and easily delivered within ever tightening budgets. It is all about using and utilising systems in the most efficient manner to maximise returns and improve efficiency.

Finally, in accepting this prestigious award, of which we are very proud, we would like to thank our customers, staff and everybody involved in the creation and evolution of BankWare for their hard work and dedication without which the receiving of this award would not have been possible.

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Best European Cloud Services Platform 2016 & Best ICT Acquisition: Interoute/Easynet

Best for Electronic Trading Technology Solutions & Most Innovative Trading Platform: Tbricks by Itiviti

Company: Interoute Email: info@interoute.com Web Address: www.interoute.com Address: 31st Floor 25 Canada Square, London, E14 5LQ, UK Telephone: +44 20 7025 9000

Company: Itiviti AB Address: Kungsgatan 36, 5th floor, P.O. Box 7742, SE-103 95 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46(0)8 506 477 00 Fax: +46(0)8 506 477 01 Email: info@itiviti.com Website: http://www.itiviti.com/

Interoute is the owner-operator of one of Europe’s largest networks and a global cloud services platform which encompasses 12 data centres, 17 virtual data centres and 31 colocation centres, with connections to 195 additional third-party data centres across Europe. We spoke to Jonathan Brown, VP Marketing, to find out more about this fascinating company and the services it provides.

Interoute’s Unified ICT strategy provides solutions for enterprises seeking connectivity and a scalable, secure advanced platform on which they can build their voice, video, computing and data services, as well as service providers in need of high capacity international data transit and infrastructure.

Jonathan outlines the firm’s mission and the steps it takes to achieve this.

“Interoute’s mission is to be the leading ICT provider in Europe. Interoute is well on track, having already created an ICT multi-service platform leveraging all 28 EU countries and interconnecting globally; introduced fully integrated Unified ICT into the fabric of the European enterprise sector; and redefined how businesses deploy advanced communications platforms in the Cloud.

“To achieve this we have taken a different approach to delivering cloud services since inception. Most clouds offer compute, storage and network connectivity to customer sites in a siloed way. Integrators or interfaces might disguise this inefficiency from the customer, but behind the customer interface is a patchwork of infrastructure and providers underpinned by different contract agreements and service levels.

“Therefore we designed our cloud for customer efficiency and simplicity. Our vision was to create a fully integrated cloud infrastructure platform (fully IaaS, integrating compute and storage with public and private networking) built into the fabric of one of Europe’s largest ICT infrastructures, incorporating 70,000 route km of fibre networks, 12 Data Centres, hundreds of PoPs and 31 colo sites. This integrated platform supports customer data, software, and services and customer legacy hardware and digital DEVOPs environments to enable digital transformation and service creation for enterprises.”

Moving forward, Jonathan outlines the exciting projects the firm has coming up which will provide it with invigorating areas of growth.

“We have just launched our next innovation the Interoute Digital Enterprise Platform. It is designed for enterprises who want to achieve digital transformation and enables companies to move to the more agile world of cloud based applications and development while still leveraging their existing legacy IT infrastructure that is not a good fit for the cloud. By using Interoute Digital Enterprise Platform as the foundation for a company’s ICT legacy, digital, private and public data and services, customer IT and 3rd party data centre and cloud providers can all be integrated onto one global platform, that makes transformation possible at a pace that is right for their business.”

Itiviti AB Itiviti is a Stockholm based software company with a focus on Fintech. We spoke to Chief Strategy Office Jonas Hansbo, who provided us with a fascinating history of Itiviti and an exciting glimpse into the future of this innovative company.

Formed by the recent union of Orc Group, Tbricks and CameronTec Group, Itiviti is a new company with a vast experience, built since the early days of trading technology. Established in 1987, Itiviti began as a market maker on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, creating pioneering software to support the company’s own trading. As the founders realised that their real forte was software development, the firm let go of the trading and devoted itself to providing other traders with the tools they needed.

“We have a strong history of innovation, as we were one of the first vendors to offer an electronic trading platform and later were among the first to develop an automated trading solution. Sweden is an ideal setting for such a pioneering, creative company, as we were early adopters of electronic trading,” says Jonas Hansbo. He joined Orc Software in 1994, co-founded Tbricks in 2006, before returning last year to what is now Itiviti.

Today, Itiviti runs a truly global business with a technology offering based on two innovative platforms, Tbricks for trading and Catalys, for FIX protocol based infrastructure and connectivity. The award-winning Tbricks platform is designed as an app- based software which is supported on a core platform, with clients provided with the source code to enable them to customise the technology to meet their individual requirements.

Moving forward, Jonas explains that the firm is constantly exploring new developments and seeking to stay ahead of the industry in terms of adapting to the latest regulatory and legislative changes.

“Here at Itiviti, we pride ourselves on being proactive, not reactive, and are always seeking to stay one step ahead of the industry changes. We have a dedicated team who are committed to analysing the latest regulatory developments around the world and advising us on how we can change our technology to meet the evolving needs of our clients.

“Therefore, looking ahead, we will continue to adapt and develop our software solutions to ensure we meet the needs of the modern Fintech industry. Coming up we have a number of exciting new projects on the horizon which I feel will help us to both support our existing client base and attain new customers.”

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Best Food Supply Chain Software Company - Europe

Most Distinguished in Language Translation Solutions 2016 & CV Innovation Award: onDemand

Company: LINKFRESH Software Limited Email: info@linkfresh.com Web Address: www.linkfresh.com Address: Cambridge, UK & California, USA Telephone: 01223 873400

Company: Lionbridge onDemand Name: Stephanie Carone, Sales & Marketing Operations Manager Email: stephanie.carone@lionbridge.com Web: www.lionbridge.com/ondemand Address: 1050 Winter Street, Suite 2300, Waltham, MA 02451 Telephone: +1 978-964-4965

Lionbridge LINKFRESH is a software and IT consultancy organisation with extensive fresh food supply chain expertise.

Lionbridge Technologies is a recognised global industry leader in translation and localisation services, which is measured by its market share, total revenue, thought leadership, and client feedback. We invited Stephanie Carone, Sales & Marketing Operations Manager, to talk to us about staying one step ahead in the digital age.

LINKFRESH is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV). LINKFRESH serves an International customer base from its offices in Cambridge, UK and California, USA.

Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with more than 5,500 employees in 45 offices in 26 countries, the firm’s global footprint ensures that a Lionbridge office is open and available for clients at any time of day.

This global capacity enables Lionbridge to meet any client’s needs.

LINKFRESH ERP customers include food organisations such as Produce World Group, Noble Foods, L H Gray & Sons (Canada), Farmcare Trading Ltd, The Giumarra Companies (USA), Pacific America Fish Company (USA), Wholesum Harvest (USA), Grandma Singletons, Q V Foods, Hilton Foods Ireland, Vestey Foods Group, Minor Weir & Willis, G’s Fresh.

Newly appointed LINKFRESH Sales Director, Paul Roebuck said he has a vision for LINKFRESH to become the partner of choice for the food industry.

“LINKFRESH are the food ERP people. The company understands the challenges of growers, suppliers and distributors and delivers software rich in unique functionality only necessary for the food industry. Because products are developed and refined in partnership with customers using direct industry feedback on requirements – the software meets their very specific and specialist needs. As a global company that speaks the language of food and fresh produce, the industry already sees LINKFRESH as the food experts.”

The need for food suppliers to ensure that their IT systems are not outdated has never been more urgent. 2016 has already seen a number of high profile food recalls such as Mars and Weetabix, both of whom had to recall products in February due to fears over contamination. Cuttingedge solutions, which allow produce to be traced from ‘farm to fork’ in real time, are demanded by a rising number of retailers, driven themselves by consumer demand. Supply chain management software solutions, such as LINKFRESH ERP can provide suppliers with data on where ingredients have come from, how they are stored, which equipment and staff were involved at each stage of the supply chain and quality control test results.

Looking forward for the remainder of 2016, and beyond, the future looks very bright. LINKFRESH will continue to develop and expand its food industry-specific software portfolio further, bringing innovative and relevant software solutions to market which will be essential as the food industry raises the bar on traceability and supply chain transparency.

“We specialise in dynamic and agile translation and localisation solutions for software, apps, product documentation, marketing materials, videos, training content, and websites to ensure a consistent user experience for multilingual needs,” explains Stephanie Carone, Sales & Marketing Operations Manager at Lionbridge. “Our accurate human translations take context, culture, and perception into account, and we provide quality translations, regardless of volume, thanks to our wide network of highly educated translators. We’ve been in business for 20 years and over 800 leading global companies trust our expertise to satisfy their wide variety of translation needs.”

The world is speeding up and clients expect to be able to order translation 24/7 and receive professional translations back within 24 hours. Lionbridge was ahead of this trend and created Lionbridge onDemand three years ago to satisfy the need for high quality, rapid translation. In the past year alone, 667 companies shifted their translation needs to Lionbridge onDemand.

Another reason for the success of Lionbridge onDemand is the sharp focus on faithfully representing a client’s brand across languages and locales.

“Lionbridge’s unique Global Brand Voice approach codifies the elements of a brand and aligns in-country client personnel’s preferences with those of the professional linguists. This approach leads to faithful brand representation and high satisfaction among client in-market staff.”

Recently, Lionbridge onDemand was awarded the prestigious title of 2016 Technology Innovator, as voted by CV Magazine.

“We are pleased to be honoured with the 2016 Technology Innovator Award. We have placed significant effort into Lionbridge onDemand and endeavoured to make it the most innovative, streamlined translation portal on the market today. CV Magazine honouring us with this award solidifies our efforts have all been worthwhile.”

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Best Enterprise Management Solutions Supplier – UK & CV Innovation Award: Symphony Suite Company: MCR Systems Name: Matthew Gatter Email: mgatter@ mcr-systems.co.uk Web Address: www.mcr-systems.co.uk Address: Vantage House, Vantage Park, Leicester LE4 9LJ Telephone: +44 (0) 116 299 7000

Best Online Payment Gateway 2016 - Africa Company: MyGate Name: Glen Ross Email: glen.ross@mygateglobal.com Web Address: www.mygate.co.za Address: Unit 12, The Pavilion, Century City, South Africa Telephone: +27 21 555 3260

MCR Systems provides a wide range of enterprise management solutions, including the award winning Symphony Suite, designed to support businesses in a variety of industries and help them to improve their overall performance. Matthew Gatter talks us through the firm and its unique solution.

MyGate is an online payment gateway that has been servicing banks and merchants in South Africa for over 10 years. We caught up with Glen Ross to find out more.

Established in 1978, MCR Systems has nearly 40 years’ experience in supplying enterprise management solutions directly improving the efficiency of hospitality, catering and leisure organisations business operations. The firm’s Symphony Solution platform focusses on enhancing customer experiences and delivering real business insight.

MyGate delivers all the required national and international online payment solutions for currencies in Africa and abroad. We consult directly with each merchant in terms of tailoring their businesses payment requirements per target market. Merchants have the option of using hosted payment pages or API solution when securely accepting card payments. MyGate’s in-depth industry knowledge of payment practices across Africa and in conjunction with our merchant consultancy services help merchants position their businesses to sell more in Africa.

The company are proud of its proven track record for delivering high quality integrated EPOS solutions as part of large scale roll-out programmes, nationwide and within intensive time constraints. Matthew talks us through how this is achieved, with a key advantage being the firm’s dedicated and experienced staff.

“At MCR Systems we recognise technology is only one element of an overall business solution. We have a powerful reputation for improving performance through providing high levels of both pre and post-sales consultancy and support. Ongoing expert advice, training and after-sales backup is an integral part of our solution offer.

For the past two years MyGate have expanded our reach into a number of African countries, as we look to drive ecommerce adoption in these countries. We offer a wide range of ecommerce payment solutions enabling card acceptance from a website or application. Our solutions protect card holder data and reduce merchant scope when it comes to security and PCI DSS.

“Our firm has a proven track record supplying and supporting multi-site/ multi brand / multi concept organisations. Our installation base of many thousands of POS systems includes major multiple operators and leading names across the F&B, Hospitality and Leisure sectors.”

One key factor which makes our firm unique is our flexible solutions.

Payment processing can differ country by country which can complicate the payment ecosystem. Our technology simplifies this for merchant and bank so that time to market, complexity and costs remain as low as possible. Merchants want to deal with one provider for technology, acquiring rates and support for multiple markets and that is what we offer.

Looking to the future, flexibility and innovation of apps and solutions designed to run on new mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones and touchscreen laptops are at the forefront of many customer and colleague facing initiatives. However, reliability and stability are sometimes overlooked and these are crucial to maintain service continuity, a critical element in any customer facing industry. Matthew outlines how his firm aims to be at the forefront of these developments through its Symphony Solution.

Currently, Africa mobile penetration is one of the highest in the world, with some reports estimating mobile penetration at 80%. We believe our debit and credit card solutions are helping consumers access services that were previously not available and aid in a reduction in cost to access services, particularly in channels such as bill payment and digital goods. The mobile phone is going to pave the way for ecommerce in Africa, and we are keen to be at the forefront of this revolution.

“Our Symphony Solution reflects our partner’s ongoing focus on adapting and responding to clients’ needs in a dynamic and fast moving industry.

As the workplace changes our partners are at the forefront of making sure hospitality and catering service delivery changes alongside it — or even ahead of it. The ability to anticipate and stay ahead of market trends is key to any growth strategy. As a strategic technology partner MCR is at the centre of delivering a tailored service solution meeting the requirements and budgets of a diverse client base.

“Overall, MCR are proud of the long-standing partnership with all our partners and look forward to developing our relationship to support their continued growth.”

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Best IT Support Solutions Provider 2016 - UK Company: Microtrading Ltd Name: Andrew Penlington Email: ap@microtrading.co.uk Web: www.microtrading.co.uk Address: System House, 158 Church Road, Yardley, Birmingham, B25 8UT Telephone: 0121 784 0077

Microtrading is a Managed IT Services Provider based in Birmingham, and one of the UK’s leading Microsoft partners. We invited Andrew Penlington to tell us more.

Since 1981, we have been providing IT support and services to small and medium sized businesses across a wide range of industry sectors. Our clients understand the importance of technology and want to use it to help their business grow. We offer all the services necessary to allow our customers to outsource as much of the IT function as they desire. This includes fully managed IT services and support, through to cloud solutions, such as Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, and also telephone systems.

Our overall objective is to help our customers utilise technology within their business to reduce costs and increase revenues. We take responsibility for the management and support of our clients’ IT system, providing an outstanding customer experience and allowing them to focus on running their business, not their IT. The overwhelming response to recent customer surveys highlights the fact that we are valued for our trust, expertise and proactivity. From us spending the time to really understand their requirements, our customers feel reassured that the solutions we talk to them about are relevant to their individual business needs and long term objectives.

Each client is proactively cared for by their account manager, who maintains regular contact and will swiftly adapt to any changes within their business. We also use advanced tools to monitor and manage their systems 24/7. This enables us to identify and fix problems before they impact on the business.

With dedicated support, project and customer management teams, we have the resources and expertise that would simply be too expensive for SMBs to implement internally.

Whilst we are based in the Midlands, and have many customers in this area, we do support companies all over the UK. Current challenges small and medium sized organisations face are in understanding what cloud computing really means to them and, if it is the best choice for their business, how to manage a successful migration. Security is also a major concern with the ever increasing rise in cybercrime, malware attacks, and the use of personal devices for work purposes. Understanding what a company needs to do to ensure protection of their critical data and intellectual property is crucial in today’s environment. Furthermore, the increasing convergence between voice and data offers a tremendous opportunity to many SMBs, enabling them to reduce costs whilst enjoying more flexible working.

Staying ahead of emerging technology and development is definitely a challenge in this industry however, it is probably one of our greatest strengths. We are a very agile business and spend thousands of pounds every year in R&D, training and certification. This constant investment ensures that our team are always up to speed with the latest technology and continue with their individual professional development programs. We also work very closely with our partners, such as Microsoft, to understand new product releases and what they offer our customers. As members of the UK IT Association we regularly attend best practice seminars and workshops so that we are always ahead of the game.

Keeping a good staff base of motivated, dedicated employees who work in a supportive culture is vital to ensuring clients receive the very best service. This is somewhat easier for us due to the longevity of our staff and their commitment to our business and customers alike. We run an apprenticeship program, as

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we have found this produces high quality team members that embrace our culture and forges long term relationships. This means they live and breathe our company ethic and unwavering commitment to customer service. Customer satisfaction levels are monitored on a daily basis and our staff are remunerated based on achieving a customer satisfaction rating of 90% or higher for every ticket they work on. We believe training is also key to a great working environment, alongside a ‘can do’ attitude and strong internal communications. We constantly strive to exceed customer expectations and this is inherent amongst all our staff. Being ok is not good enough, we need to be the best.

Going forward, the future for Microtrading is exciting and we are very proud and delighted to have won this award. We have fully embraced the cloud and the work we have done to successfully migrate literally hundreds of businesses has played a significant part in our growth. Many businesses are still waiting to make the leap to the cloud and with the increased capability being added to Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, there is still much scope in this area. The addition of telephony to our portfolio and the unification of voice and data also offers even greater opportunity for small and medium sized businesses to reduce costs and streamline operations further. I believe our desire for constant improvement coupled with a relentless commitment to provide outstanding customer service means that the next few years will be a truly great time for both us and our customers.

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Most Innovative Cloud & Telecom Solutions Provider - California & Best Multivendor Proposal Product: Netformx SalesXpert

Best IP Technology Provider 2016 - California

Company: Netformx Name: Ittai Bareket Email: sales@netformx.com Web Address: www.netformx.com Address: 333 W. Santa Clara Street, Suite 612, San Jose, CA 95113 USA Telephone: 408-423-6600

Company: NGCodec Name: Oliver Gunasekara Email: Oliver.Gunasekara@ NGCodec.com Web: NGCodec.com Address: 440 North Wolfe Rd., Sunnyvale, CA 94085, USA Phone: +1 408 766 4382

NGCodec Netformx is the leader in sales enablement and profit acceleration platforms for IT solution providers. Ittai Bareket talks us through the firm’s innovative solutions.

Netformx enables our customers to design and sell winning and implementable multivendor solutions, while operating their businesses profitably. Netformx has over 2,000 systems integrator and service provider customers in more than 120 countries, with customers including some of the largest and best-known brands in the world, as well as highly innovative niche providers. Ittai explains how the firm aims to provide these clients with the very highest quality of service.

“Netformx accelerates IT solution provider profits with powerful business intelligence, actionable insights, collaboration, and automation that increase productivity by connecting people, information, and processes.

By combining prescriptive analytics and a comprehensive catalogue we provide users with the information they need – in a single pane of glass – to make informed decisions without needing to query multiple databases and vendor websites. The secret behind our success is the Netformx KnowledgeBase™, the richest multi-vendor content library in the world. It is a comprehensive database of product, service, promotion, replacement, and other content, that is consumed by Netformx applications.

“The KnowledgeBase currently contains more than one million devices and components and more than three million rules. It includes vendor products, services, and program compliance data from our partner vendors such as Cisco, Brocade, Juniper, and Avaya. Vendor and distributor data can include products, services, replacements, program compliance, promotions, certifications, and prices. Those comprehensive, up-to-date data enable our customer’s engineers to quickly create accurate designs and proposals and their managers to maximize productivity. The result is that Netformx enables solution providers to increase their profitability more than 1% by reducing time-to-quote 80% and cutting time-to-market for new products and services 50%. Design mistakes are reduced by a factor of 100 and implementation error rates reduced by 99%. Fundamentally, that is our differentiation.”

Ultimately, the firm is on a mission to provide clients with the solutions which meet their needs, as Ittai outlines.

“Our mission is to provide innovative solutions that enable our customers to win more deals, to implement their solutions successfully, and to maximize their profit throughout the sales lifecycle. We accomplish this through the Netformx Ecosystem, which consists of a powerful platform, seamlessly integrated applications, and a comprehensive catalogue of vendor product and service information. Our innovative, intelligent, integrated solutions provide our customers with competitive advantage and increased productivity. In addition, our solutions enable them to increase profitability through tighter relationships with their partners and greater vendor incentive program participation and rewards.”

NGCodec specialise in creating next generation video compression technology. We invited Oliver Gunasekara to talk us through the firm and its innovative solutions.

NGCodec is positioned to become a dominant player in the rapidly growing market for SaaS cloud-based video compression services. The company was founded in 2012 by a team with deep domain expertise and experience, including the successful sale of their previous video codec company to Cavium. Since inception the firm has completed initial development of a proprietary, FPGA-based accelerator, which offers more than 25X improvement over existing and announced compression solutions for the new H.265/HEVC standard.

Our technology can reduce the bit rate of video by 50% for the same quality. This enables cost reduction on delivering and storing video and enables higher quality such as 4K UHD, providing added value to customers.

The cost to encode video in the cloud is going to increase dramatically as the market moves to 4K and implements a better video compression standard (H.265/HEVC). Unlike legacy cloud encoding which uses pure software running on Intel CPU’s we are leveraging unique hardware acceleration in the form of an FPGA offload card. This can provide a more than 25X reduction in cost with improved speed and video quality. Intel has acquired Altera for $17B to put FPGA in the data center.

Online video consumption is exploding, growing at over 200% per year in the US. Every video on the Internet is typically encoded and saved in one hundred or more representations to support different devices, bitrates and resolutions. Comscore and NGCodec estimate there will be 224 Billion minutes encoded in 2020, resulting in a SAM for NGCodec of more than $20B in the US alone.

The firm has three main competitors: Elemental (acquired by Amazon), Envivio (acquired by Ericsson) and Harmonic. All of the competitors are using software-based encoding. Due to our FPGA accelerator we will have a significant cost, quality and speed advantage. We have an advantage in that FPGA-based CODEC development is very difficult to do and requires deep technical expertise in video compression, hardware design, API and drivers.

Looking ahead, NGCodec intends to build a capital efficient SaaS encoding business using our propriety accelerator cards in hosted, industry standard servers. In order to both generate early revenue, and drive the development of the various versions of our HW with real world customer requirements, we have begun sales to select, specialized customers. Our current customers include a major Sat TV provider and a military imaging contractor. We have a strong customer pipeline with multiple outstanding proposals.

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Best Integrated Power Company - USA

Most Pioneering International Aquaculture Company 2016 - Ireland

Company: NRG Name: Donna Benefield Email: donna.benefield@nrg.com Web Address: http://www.nrg.com Address: 1201 Fannin Street, Houston, TX 77002 Telephone: 713-537-3000

Company: Ocean Harvest Technology Email: info@oceanharvest.ie Web Address: www.oceanfeed.ie Address: Ocean Harvest Technology Ltd Unit 5, Milltown Business Park, Milltown, Tuam H54 D722, Co. Galway Ireland Telephone: +353 9351807

NRG is a technologically advanced power generation company delivering innovative solutions. Donna Benefield explains how these solutions are helping both the firm and the wider energy industry to become more sustainable.

Over the past five years, OceanFeed™ has expanded to the USA and Vietnam. The company’s focus has been centred on how to eradicate synthetics and chemicals out of aqua and agrifeeds and replace them with natural sustainable organic feed ingredients, i.e. macroalgae or seaweeds with considerable success. We profile this dynamic firm and speak to the firm’s Founders about the services it offers.

The energy industry is in the midst of a transformation from legacy systems and business models to a 21st century hub of innovation, architected around safety, reliability and customer satisfaction. As the industry is arguably one of the last of the public utilities (i.e. telco) to evolve, part of the challenge is to keep up with the pace of innovation, while systematically deploying only tested, trusted technologies to preserve reliability and safely deliver energy to all of our customers. NRG is successfully transforming itself and the energy industry into it’s next iteration with a vision of a cleaner, reliable and more sustainable energy future. Donna Benefield, SVP of IT at NRG, outlines how the company is achieving this ambitious undertaking.

“At NRG, we are keen to continue our strong legacy of innovation and growth along with our commitment to a clean energy future. As a Fortune 200 company, NRG’s diverse power generating facilities can generate approximately 50,000 megawatts from solar, wind, fossil and nuclear.

Through our company and our subsidiaries, we serve customers in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.” One key means by which firms in the energy sector can adapt is through the use of technology. Donna explains how the firm uses technology to better support clients and the industry.

“Our teams – not just in IT, but across the company – are continually engaging with and evaluating new technologies coming to market. We have a ‘prove value or fail-fast’ mentality with regard to validating whether or not a new technology meets our, and our customers’, needs.

“Currently, our techniques include agile development processes utilizing integrated technologies. Our integrated platforms include mobile workforce and customer solutions together with our enterprise systems.

We work to optimize our business processes and improve customer experiences through a variety of technologies tightly integrated across our company. As we look to improve utilization, improve customer experience, and deliver value from our data, we have invested in Big Data analytics solutions as well.”

As a final comment, Donna adds that moving forward, the company will remain committed to innovation and utilizing technology to enable change.

“Ultimately we are committed to continually transform and innovate to stay ahead of the market.”

Founded in 2005 by Dr Stefan Kraan and Patrick Martin, OHT has created a variety of patented seaweed based formulas based on the bioactive ingredients present in the different brown, green and red seaweeds that replace the synthetic and other less desirable ingredients found in a variety of agri- and aquacultural feed ingredients such as antibiotics or synthetic colorants.

OHT aims to eradicate chemical and synthetic use in animal feeds by using bioactive ingredients from a variety of different seaweed to provide safe and healthy sustainable alternatives. Continued R&D and trial work on a variety of species will ensure that this will happen. Latest results on antibiotic replacement and obtaining USDA/NOP organic certification are testimony to this.

“Several species we use are grown in tanks as well as in our seaweed farms beside sustainable wild harvest. The variety of green, red and brown algae we use ensure all the interesting bioactives are present which sets us apart of the companies using single species commodity seaweeds,” explained Dr Kraan, who is an internationally recognised scientist and expert on algae and seaweed applications.

“OHT palletise these mixes, again a unique aspect, for easy use in the feed manufacturing process. These proven and proprietary formulas consisting of 7-12 species is unique in the industry and represent a breakthrough in the animal rearing and farming sectors, being the first 100% sustainable marine sourced ingredient formulas of their kind,” said co-founder Patrick Martin, a 25-year veteran of the global salmon aquaculture industry.

After extensive testing during a variety of animal and fish trials, OHT has created OceanFeed™ salmonids, -shrimp, -swine, -bovine, -sheep –equine, -Poultry and C-pet, a pet food supplement which OHT now sells to several global clients in the fish, shrimp and animal rearing industries. Innovation and development has led to several other value added products for animal health and disease issues in farmed animals. OHT supports its unique formulas with an extremely experienced and successful scientific and technical management team working alongside the founders.

The company current expansion and uptake in the Americas with its focus on swine (OHT can eradicate growth promoters and certain antibiotics as shown in the latest university and commercial trials) and its direct disruptive technology will now be a game changer for the industry!

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Best Direct Marketing Agency – Canada

Most Innovative Mobile Engagement Solutions Provider

Company: OnPath Business Solutions Inc. (OnPath) Name: Dan Scheunert Email: dscheunert@ onpath.com Web: www.onpath.com Address: 1165 Kenaston St, Ottawa, Ontario, K1B 3N9 Canada Telephone: 613-842-4160

Company: OpenMarket Web Address: www.openmarket.com Address: Offices in Seattle, London, Sydney and Pune. [Headquarters] 2211 Elliott Avenue Suite 400, Seattle, WA 98121 Telephone: +1 877 277 2801

OpenMarket OnPath is a full service direct marketing agency that develops best-in-class multi-channel marketing programs for large organizations. Dan Scheunert outlines the firm and its innovative service offering.

OnPath have extensive experience in developing and executing sophisticated and highly measurable programs for both B2B and B2C audiences, with more than 30 years of experience in direct mail/email, telemarketing, CRM as well as a range of digital SEO/SEM and marketing automation capabilities. Dan outlines the firm’s clients and the services it provides them and how the company has evolved over the years in order to secure its market leading position.

“Our distinguished clients such as HP, Google, Adobe and American Express appreciate how our senior consultants conceive, develop and optimize programs as well as how the execution teams deliver quality results day in and day out. In today’s hyper-competitive world, successful marketing requires a crystal clear strategy and a tactical approach designed to effectively progress buyers, especially in tangible demand generation and sales type work that we at OnPath conduct. We’ve learned that to stand out and deliver the lowest possible cost per acquisition, it’s crucial to develop extremely aligned messaging and intelligently blend available channels.

“To further position OnPath as a market leader over the last four years, we’ve invested heavily in developing our VAS technology, which is a new concept in telemarketing that leverages a live agent and a set of prerecorded conversation snippets. Conversations are fully interactive and natural, but the real benefit is in improved quality, consistency and overall cost effectiveness. We’re seeing tremendous results with VAS whether it’s engagement in direct-to-consumer outreach or blended as part of a multiphase approach for B2B.” OnPath currently employs a staff of about 600 in four centres across Canada, but as Dan highlights, the firm’s goal for the future is expansion into the US. “While we’ve been serving clients across North America for many years, our goal is to further expand our reach in the U.S. in the coming months.”

OpenMarket is a mobile engagement solutions firm supporting clients from a variety of industries. We invited Paul Murphy to talk us through the firm and how it aims to support clients through its innovative solutions.

Enterprises in all industries and across all geographies recognise that mobile communications are dramatically altering how we engage with each other. Mobile is influencing which brands we buy, the companies we work for, and is further driving the requirement for personalised, relevant customer and employee engagement. Paul Murphy, EMEA Commercial Director for OpenMarket, explains how the company works to support its clients with their mobile activities and the factors which set it apart.

“OpenMarket helps enterprises transform their business by using mobile messaging to better engage with their customers and employees and optimize internal business processes. With over 17 years in the mobile industry, we provide expertise in mobile engagement solutions, regulatory compliance and industry best practices. Our portfolio of solutions, including the highly scalable and reliable Mobile Engagement Platform and professional services, provide industry-leading SLAs and operational expertise to allow enterprises to support multiple use cases across their organizations.”

Paul shared that “our customers span those across the retail, education, financial services, and marketing services industries.” OpenMarket and its cloudbased mobile messaging solutions support over 400 enterprises, including four of the top 10 most respected global brands, with mobile messaging use cases like customer service appointment reminders, emergency notifications, company announcements, and secure PIN authentication.

OpenMarket’s mission is to be a trusted partner that offers a wholly reliable platform, stays on top of developing technologies and device capabilities, and understands how mobile communications can improve business processes. The secret to achieving this ambitious objective, according to Paul, is to hire the very best staff in the industry.

“To achieve our mission, we ensure that we hire the best talent, people who really are trusted advisors to our customers. Our staff understands the unique enterprise customer and market needs and how OpenMarket can help solve them; whether the customer’s goal is to optimise communications, improve customer experiences, mobilise operational processes, drive brand awareness or generate new revenue opportunities.”

As a final comment Paul made it clear that the firm’s supportive, client centred approach was what has led the company to its current success.

“Our clients are the most innovative brands in the world, across retail, technology, IOT, e-commerce, travel and more. We progress at a fast pace in order to offer the latest technologies to suit their needs. By working closely with our clients to tailor our solutions to their campaigns and customer engagement strategies, we now have the most reliable platform for enterprise use, as well as the largest number of countries covered by two-way global SMS. Our outstanding teams worldwide continue to innovate and exceed client expectations by consistently delivering remarkable mobile engagement solutions.”

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Most Innovative Television Company 2016 - Ireland

Recognised Leaders in Process Fluid Purification - Ohio

Company: Pi Communications Name: Norah-Anne Barron Email: info@picommunications.tv Web Address: www.picommunications.tv Address: 19 Church Avenue, Dunmurry, Belfast, BT17 9RS Telephone: 02890 600655

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Company: Process Solutions, Inc. Name: Ellen Adamski Email: ellen@psiwater.com Web: www.psiwater.com Address: 7845 Palace Drive; Cincinnati, OH 45249 Telephone: 513-791-3338

Water and Process Fluid Purification

Pi Communications is a broadcasting and production company based in Belfast, with offices in Dublin, and an international client base. We invited Norah-Anne Barron to talk us through the company and its service offering.

Process Solutions Inc. is a full-service provider of total solutions for users of high purity water. We invited Ellen Adamski to provide us with an overview of the company and the work it does in this niche market.

Pi Communications provides a range of services including video production and post-production, live event solutions and streaming, television news and current affairs, and parliamentary broadcasting, and the firm are the broadcasters of both the Northern Ireland Assembly and Houses of the Oireachtas. The company has a wide and varied portfolio of clients, including many government and public sector organisations, as well as private sector clients ranging from small local enterprises to large multinational corporations, working across a huge variety of different sectors. Norah- Anne explains how the firm sets itself apart from other broadcasters and showcases its talent to these clients through innovation and creative thinking.

Process Solutions serve clients across a range of markets including power generation, food and beverage manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, health care product manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, specialty chemical production, high technology research and development, and municipal drinking water. These clients, who rely upon water purity for the production of their product or service, are provided with services including water purification systems, support products used over the life cycle of the systems, and technical support services, both in place and off site.

“Pi Communications has a passionate commitment to embracing change and encouraging a forward-thinking approach and attitude within our organisation. We believe that our success in this area can be attributed to our continuous pursuit of new opportunities in broadcasting and production – as a company, we are always on the lookout for new technologies, new services to offer our clients, and new and different ways to improve our existing services. We consider innovation in technology as essential to delivering the best services and products possible.

“Ultimately, at Pi Communications, we embrace technological innovation whilst at the same time retaining our original dedication to producing quality content which engages and inspires.”

The future holds a number of exciting challenges and opportunities for Pi Communications, as Norah- Anne explains.

“We have recently been re-awarded a number of our major contracts, so are working with these clients to develop their services to respond to the challenges they face in the coming years. In addition, we have also initiated projects with new clients providing media content for their markets in the Americas and Middle East, enabling us to expand into these new regions, as well as consolidating our business closer to home.

“Another key aspect of our future strategy is that we are developing new services to offer our clients, and are hoping to break even more new ground once they are rolled out.”

Ellen explains the firm’s mission and how it aims to achieve this by offering a vast array of services which will meet clients’ every need.

“Our mission is to be recognized as experts in high purity water solutions by offering the highest performing equipment, products and services in the industry that exceed the expectations of our clients, and by demonstrating the ability and resources to provide solutions that outshine our competitors’ offerings.

“As such we offer a wide variety of premium products and services; and we consider flexibility and responsiveness to be our primary strengths. In addition, we take the time to understand client needs and challenges, then develop customized solutions from design concept through the life of the equipment; whereas most of our competitors offer packaged solutions for only the product(s) they manufacture. Our relationships with strategic partners as well as clients are founded on mutual trust and most are longterm (some 25 years or longer).”

Moving forward, Process Solutions has plans to grow and expand into new market, according to Ellen.

“Currently we are implementing an aggressive growth strategy to triple the company’s business by 2020. One of the key growth areas is in water conservation, reclamation and reuse. With the increasing cost of water and sewer services, and the diminishing availability of supply, we believe this to be the most lucrative opportunity for our clients’ businesses as well as our own. We are also working to expand our supplier base to offer additional and emerging technologies.”

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Most Innovative SME IT Consultants 2016 - West Midlands

Most Innovative Emissions-Reduction Product Programme

Company: p-Tech ltd Name: James Pennington Email: jpennington@ p-tech.org.uk Web: www.p-tech.org.uk Address: 94 Penshurst Way, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV11 4XN Telephone: 02476 620655

Company: Richard Chambers GmbH Name: Richard Chambers Email: chambers@qmi.de Web: www.chambers-gmbh.de English: www.chambers-company.de

Richard Chambers GmbH

p-Tech ltd is a West Midlands based IT business located in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. We caught up with Founder James Pennington to find out more.

Richard Chambers GmbH provides products that reduce costs and emissions. We spoke to Founder Richard to learn more.

Established in 2002, p-Tech ltd was created through James’ work with the University of Warwick. Having worked for the National B2B Centre for 10 years across the West Midlands assisting SMEs to change how they use the web and ecommerce, the business spun out of the University. James explains how the firm’s set-up enabled it to provide the highest quality services to clients.

Richard Chambers GmbH has been operating for over 30 years and specialising in saving clients from around the world money. Richard talks us through the firm’s mission and how it differentiates itself from other firms in the industry.

“Our clients range in size from start-ups through to large organisations.

We have clients that we’ve worked with for a long time such as Severn Partnership in Shrewsbury, Rainbow Signs and Graphics in Wolverhampton and some clients we only meet on training courses and they go away and implement the learning and it may be the odd email afterwards to offer that little of extra support in answering questions. We work closely with WMG at the University of Warwick and also Coventry Chamber of Commerce assisting with IT apprenticeships and HNC training.

“As an independent business we are able to provide clients with an informed perspective without a hidden agenda. Sometimes we just have a brief a meeting with a client, give some quick wins and then they go away and we have not charged them. We stand by our knowledge and ability to improve a company’s online activity. We do not just take a client’s money and provide something that sees no results. If we think the client needs assistance another areas or to work on different things first, then we choose not to take the work.”

Looking ahead, James makes it clear that the focus is firmly on expansion, growing the team and widening the skills.

“We aim to save costs and emissions, and our customers are rewarded by their efforts by a ROI of at least 700%. Our versatility and ability to save clients’ money on more than just technology is what sets us apart from our competitors.”

Offering the very best, in terms of service, staff and technology is crucial, according to Richard, who adds that being forthcoming about the products they offer is also key.

“Openness about our products and also about the problems we face means that when confronted with problems or questions they know how to react, and ensures clients feel supported and, ultimately, get the help and advice they need.”

Going forward, Richard states that the aim is to focus on educating clients on the issues of emissions and how these affect both the environment and the people living in it.

“Moving forward, we plan to use this award to emphasise the emissions problem. In Germany, in 2015, 100,000 people died from air contamination through many sorts of emissions. We will propagate the idea that those who actively, with lies, innuendos and corruption, oppose measures and products which reduce emissions, are actively causing harm to people.”

“Moving forward, the aim is to develop a training centre in the Midlands where we can deliver focused courses. We want to be the consultancy that can take a look at the data, understand the objectives and develop plans that can then be worked through with existing agencies. Ultimately we want to be the people who you come to in order to make what the digital agency produces work.”

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Best IT Support Company 2016 – Yorkshire

Rebmark Legal Solutions - Best Software Solutions for Injury Lawyers 2016

Company: RAE Computing Ltd Address: Bowling Green Mills, Lime Street, Bingley, West Yorkshire, BD97 1AD Phone: 0845 00 48 435 Email: support@ raecomputing.com Website: www.raecomputing.com

RAE Computing is at the forefront of IT development and communication technologies, with a strong focus on customer service. We interviewed Founder Richard Eyres to find out more.

RAE Computing was established in 2003 with a focus on providing clients with a combination of quality client service and excellent technological advice, support and consultation.

Our clients range from sole traders through to larger firms with several hundred staff. We work across the business landscape, with our clients including hotels, pubs and bars as well as solicitors, accountants, veterinary practices, architects, estate agents and insurance brokers.

For these varied clients we provide an array of services, from individual projects which may involve setting up monitored networks, through to managed support packages servicing all of their IT needs and effectively acting as an external IT department.

As businesses increasingly rely on their technological infrastructure the maintenance and development of their IT systems becomes increasingly vital. Therefore, here at RAE Computing we pride ourselves on never viewing our clients as a number, which is a common practice among other IT firms. Instead, we assign a dedicated engineer to every issue from the start, so that the client has one central point of contact. This approach has helped us maintain strong client retention, as customers appreciate our dedicated approach. Whilst an issue might seem minor to us, it could be crucial to the client, and as such we take every problem that they bring to us with the utmost seriousness.

Looking to the future, we are keen to grow as a company and expand our service offering organically, so that we can maintain our high standard of client service. We are developing our internal processes, such as upgrading our CRM system and internal service desk, so that we can better support our clients and ensure that they always receive the quality service that we pride ourselves on.

Alongside this internal growth, we also have to develop our service offering in line with the ever evolving technology industry. As many of our clients are migrating to cloud services we are increasingly investing time in supporting these, and installing redundant connectivity to keep our clients online at all times. With cloud Internet connectivity becomes critical and in order to better support our clients we have developed a unique monitoring platform (part of our flagship ‘Managed Support Service’) which ensures that both the client and ourselves are alerted to any issues with the network on smartphones immediately. This innovative service allows us to better support and retain our clients and will help us to achieve our long term goal: to become Yorkshire’s leading IT firm.

Company: Rebmark Legal Solutions Name: Mark Hewitt (MD) Email: mark.hewitt@ picalculator.co.uk Web Address: www.picalculator.co.uk Address: Blenheim Reach, 861 Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, S11 8TH Phone: 0114 266 3300

Rebmark Legal Solutions specialise in developing software for the legal industry, in particular the claims sector. We invited Managing Director Mark Hewitt to talk us through the firm’s latest innovations.

Rebmark Legal Solutions work collaboratively with clients and claims industry leaders to understand the market within which they operate so that they can develop innovative software solutions for them. Mark provides an overview of some of the firm latest solutions.

“Our software is used by claimant and defendant lawyers, insurance companies, claims handlers and barristers. We originally launched our company with one product, piCalculator. piCalculator assists personal injury and clinical negligence lawyers and claims handlers in preparing schedules of loss. The software handles all the mathematical calculations, allowing lawyers to focus on the law. It is particularly useful in high value, complex injury claims where calculations can be very time consuming and there is greater potential for error.

“We have expanded our products to include noiseCalculator, which is used by lawyers and claims handlers who specialise in Noise Induced Hearing Loss claims (NIHL). This software harnesses technology with NIHL claims know-how, enabling practitioners to accurately appraise and improve the settlement outcome in noise cases.

“The most recent addition to our portfolio is caseAssist, a new concept for improved risk assessment and evaluation of Industrial Disease claims. This software programme streamlines the process of accepting new claims or for auditing existing ones.”

Working in the highly competitive technology sector, Mark explains how the firm stays ahead of the curve and works to provide the best possible service to clients.

“The legal field is a fast-paced one and our mission is not to simply keep abreast of developments, but to involve ourselves in thought-leadership discussions on the future of the sector and how technology can be applied.

“Within the technology sector we operate in a very niche market and one that is notoriously difficult to crack. However, we combine previous hands-on expertise of working in the sector as a lawyer with a cutting edge software development capability that enables us to quickly translate the industry’s requirements into practical, accurate and reliable tools that don’t take long to implement or adopt.”

To conclude Mark outlines the firm’s latest project, which will provide it with exciting opportunities to expand its current knowledge and experience.

“We are currently working with a leading insurance law firm developing a new piece of software called Consensus. This is a revolutionary on-line platform for all parties to a claim that aids negotiations and facilities early settlement in personal injury and clinical negligence claims.”

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Best Business Software Company Worcestershire & Best Financial Services Compliance Platform: Insight

Best Secure Collaboration Platform

Company: Redland Business Solutions Limited Address: Office 2 Green Box, Westonhall Road, Stoke Prior, Bromsgrove, Worcs, B60 4AL Phone: +44 (0)1527 871938 Website: http://www.redland-solutions.co.uk

Company: Ribose Name: Ronald Tse Web Address: https://www.ribose.com Address: Suite 1111, 1 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong Telephone: +852 3976 3976

Redland Business Solutions Limited

Redland Business Solutions is a provider of specialised Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions to the financial services and insurance industries. We spoke to John Harrison, Business Development Director to learn more about the firm and its service offering.

Established in 2001, Redland Business Solutions have since worked with some of the largest companies in the financial services industry, including: Sesame, Openwork, Nomura, Scotia Bank, Sanlam, Homeserve, Wesleyan, and Santander UK. John explained how, through their work with these renowned clients, the company has obtained an excellent reputation for timely, on budget delivery of GRC solutions and have consistently evidenced its system capability and professionalism.

“At Redland we have a strong culture of thought leadership and innovation and we have been at the forefront of designing solutions to meet the latest regulations.”

“Our clients view us as a trusted strategic partner, and we are often asked for our advice on T&C and compliance practice, bringing a further level of expertise and experience in-house from other client projects. We are very proud of our delivery track record to our clients and believe in the genuine ‘partnership’ nature of our relationship with them, and would encourage you to seek references from them when appropriate.”

Moving forward, John believes the firm has an exciting future ahead of it as it enjoys a number of new opportunities for growth and success.

“The future holds a number opportunities and challenges from commercial, social and technology standpoints. Our challenge is to appraise new technologies and concepts such as ‘Big Data’ and ‘Blockchain’ and continue to engage with our customers to define and deliver market leading and innovative solutions. The future will no doubt see more widespread regulatory changes which we must be actively engaged with and be able to respond to.”

Ribose is an award-winning secure cloud collaboration platform trusted by regulated industries and users with heightened security needs. We spoke to founder Ronald Tse to learn more.

Ribose provides a unique and secure cloud collaboration platform that helps users work together effectively, while protecting their highly-valuable collaborative data through pioneering cloud security and privacy – delivered through an intuitive user experience expected in today’s consumer software.

Ronald explains how the firm’s focus on security has helped drive the company to the success it enjoys today.

“Our focus and our strength is in enabling secure collaboration. With threats evolving every day, our first priority is ensuring users can rely on our platform to protect their highly valuable data and focus on productivity. Our expertise and leadership in cloud security research keeps us on the cutting edge of the latest developments and threats in cyber security, allowing us to protect our platform and our users with the latest countermeasures.

“People use our platform to make their work easier, not to be constricted by security. That’s why our second focus is to deliver a user-centric experience that transparently embeds security into a fun and intuitive overall experience.

“This two-pronged approach enables our users to use the Ribose platform most effectively and to collaborate with confidence.”

Alongside this, Ronald added that the company is keen to take a collaborative approach, and work with clients and their existing technology to ensure higher levels of protection.

“Users rely on our platform to create high-value, mission-critical results involving valuable intellectual property or highly confidential information. However for users in highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare, existing collaboration software simply do not offer the necessary security levels to protect their important data.

“Ribose is the world’s only cloud service provider to have achieved simultaneous certification to all three of CSA’s cloud security assessment schemes, enabling collaboration in ways previously only accessible to enterprises with substantial technology budgets. We have gone to extreme lengths to certify our platform’s security to the most stringent global standards, giving users the peace of mind to concentrate on tasks at hand.”

Moving forward, Ronald stresses the firm’s dedication to continuing to offer a superior quality service to clients.

“Looking ahead, Ribose will continue to be a pioneer in secure cloud collaboration, developing tools for a user-centric experience, and expanding into various verticals to help organizations work better together – for today, tomorrow and in the future.”

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Best International Social Robotics Company 2016

Best for Sports Card System Design Solutions

Company: Robokind Name: Liz Ralston Email: liz@robokindrobots.com Web Address: www.robokindrobots.com and www.robots4autism.com Address: 211 N. Ervay, Ste 1100, Dallas, TX 75201 Telephone: 740-627-1719 or 972-331-7050 X123

Company: TeamCard Name: Randal McLister Email: randal@ scotcomms.co.uk Web: www.teamcard.com Address: Technology Centre, North Haugh, St Andrews, KY16 9SR, United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0) 1334 476504

Robokind RoboKind provide advanced humanoid robots that transform the teaching of content, deliver innovative intervention, and provide new and exciting engagement for children with autism. We invited Liz Ralston to tell us more.

Scotcomms Technology Group, trading under the brand TeamCard, provide smart venue access management that brings added value. We invited Randal McLister to tell us more.

RoboKind is based in Dallas, Texas, and provides innovative robot based curriculum and technology to support children with autism. Liz explains the firm’s Robots4Autism project and how it supports children with autism and helps them interact.

Established in 1996, STG introduced our flagship TeamCard solution to the sports venue market. We have listened carefully to our clients such as Chelsea, Stoke City, Gloucester Rugby, Goodwood and MCC to understand their aspirations for venue access control, customer engagement and membership. Using our innovation and experience we have constantly improved our TeamCard solution to tick the boxes on our clients’ wish lists.

Continuing innovation, using and creating leading edge technologies to provide an ever-improving solution is TeamCard’s aim.

“Robots4Autism is a comprehensive researched based curriculum with embedded scientifically evidence based practices, a web portal for automated student data collection and extensive teacher support materials all delivered on the extremely engaging platform of our robot, Milo.

“Milo is highly effective at reaching and motivating students with autism who have difficulty interacting with humans or who are uncomfortable practicing and using social skills with people. Recent research has shown that children working with a therapist and Milo are engaged 84% of the time compared to just 3-10% of the time with traditional approaches.

Students want to engage with the technology of Milo increasing their opportunities to learn.

“Our overall mission with Robots4Autism is to touch as many students with autism to help develop their social and emotional behaviour skills. We have developed a comprehensive program that is continually being reviewed and enhanced with updates and new materials as well as a continual effort to improve the technology of the robot and the delivery platform.”

Milo is different to other robots thanks to his human features, which make him ideal for supporting children with autism, as Liz highlights.

“The humanoid face of our robot is unique from any other with the ability of demonstrating at least 15 facial expressions and emotions. In addition, our comprehensive research based curriculum with 8 scientifically evidence based practices specifically for students with autism as identified by the National Professional Development Center study done in 2014 and our automated individual student data collection accessible through a web portal.”

Currently, the technology industry is growing quickly to service the needs of an ever-demanding society. Innovation and creativity are key attributes for those driving technology forward, but they must be matched with experience, reliability and service. The challenge is to deliver innovative technology whilst maintaining the trust of those who use it.

As such, here at TeamCard we have worked hard to create a solution which meets the needs of our clients and adapts to changes within the market. We believe our unique solution leads the way because it has been specifically created and developed for the industry it serves, unlike others who adapt systems used in other sectors and attempt to make them fit.

Ultimately the TeamCard solution never stands still, as we always aim to be one step ahead.

In recent years TeamCard has moved into new sports sectors and branched out into non-stadium based events. The opportunities to expand into new areas excites us and we look forward to an exciting future. To compliment that we are working on a new technology platform which will help us add even greater innovation and enhancements to our TeamCard solution.

Looking to the future, Liz explains that the firm has ambitious plans to grow and support a wider range of children.

“RoboKind plans to bring high quality content and curriculum to a broader group of students. We plan to release Robot4STEM, a STEM and Computer Science curriculum very soon. We will continue to create new, and innovative robots which are more expressive and more interactive to help students engage more deeply and be more connected to their learning.”

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Best for Mobile Workforce Management Software Solutions

Best Use of AI Software in Consultancy Practices

Company: ServicePower Technologies, Plc Name: Marne Martin, CEO Email: hello@servicepower.com Web Address: www.servicepower.com, www.nexus-fs.com Address: • 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 600, McLean, VA 22102 , +1 (703) 287 8900 • Petersgate House, St Petersgate, Stockport, SK1 1HE, +44 (0)161 476 2277

Company: Shaping Tomorrow Limited Web Address: www.shapingtomorrow.com Address: The Red Barn, Hurstpierpoint, BN6 9UZ

ServicePower, the acknowledged industry leader in optimization technology, provides a patented, connected, mobile workforce management software platform used by field organizations to maximize productivity and efficiency, intelligently schedule appointments, SLA and complex jobs, as well as parts with an ever evolving roadmap.

CEO Marne Martin outlines the strategies and techniques the firm uses to maintain its market leading position.

“ServicePower’s platform focuses on solving fundamental challenges with mobile workforces through its ability to manage the life cycle of needs of someone in the field, whether they are working in field service, retail, the public sector, healthcare etc.

The firm’s leading capabilities around patented routing and schedule optimization that drive schedule productivity and customer experience, third party dispatch and warranty claim payments, cross-platform mobile technology and asset tracking software, robust business intelligence and M2M Connected Services all deliver the value and technology needed by a mobile worker to do their best. The firm’s latest innovations are Optimization on DemandTM and NEXUS FSTM Field Service Management software. Marne explains the firm’s mission and how this ensures that clients always receive the very highest quality service.

“ServicePower’s mission is to provide organizations with innovative, effective mobile workforce management solutions which provide the highest levels of productivity and efficiency to deliver the best customer service possible.

“As a business, we understand the mobile workforce market from decades of enterprise experience building our capabilities side by side with customers. We understand the complexities of managing a mobile workforce, as our experts have managed mobile techs, engineers and other mobile workers for some of the largest organizations in the world. We not only understand software, we understand how to manage, drive performance, and improve key performance indicators in those organizations.”

“Therefore, through continuous innovation in our product, ServicePower provides our clients a modular, cloud based mobile workforce management solution which supports not only business needs today, but also where our customers, prospects, and ourselves see the future evolution.”

Despite its current success, Marne makes it very clear that the firm is determined not to rest on its laurels, and will continue to experiment and create pioneering new solutions in order to maintain its current success.

“ServicePower is very well positioned for the future. Our new product launches, and enhancements to the existing platform support our existing clients as their businesses change and adapt to new technologies and changing customer expectations. The platform provides new clients with a connected, mobile workforce management platform that enables each to intelligently mix the best resources to provide the highest levels of customer service.”

“We have also invested significant effort in building our partner ecosystem, with resale, technology and system integration partners which expand our footprint in terms of sales, complementary technologies and deployment resources.”

Shaping Tomorrow offer pioneering AI software solutions to clients across the corporate landscape. We invited Mike Jackson to provide us with a fascinating glimpse into this futuristic technology and how it is changing the business world for the better.

Since 2002 Shaping Tomorrow have been on a mission to help its members and clients to ‘anticipate and prepare for tomorrow by making better decisions today’. Mike outlines what this entails and how the firm strives to create solutions which are both innovative and functional.

“Here at Shaping Tomorrow, our 12,000 members and 40+ international clients come from diverse backgrounds in sectors including strategy; planning; R&D; product management; S&T; community development; foresight; change management; consulting; IT; education; risk management; design; policy-making; and intelligence.

“We provide these clients with extraordinary breadth and depth of global insights into the future, fresh forecasts and ideas covering all aspects of economics, the environment, healthcare, industries, lifestyles, organization, politics, society and technology. We illuminate the potential implications for organizations through combining the increasing use of visualization, heuristics, and algorithms to spot significant emerging signals of change early and to respond at the right time.”

There are lots of organizations offering semantic analysis, taxonomies, natural language processing, and equal numbers of people creating futures-oriented, horizon scanning content and strategic foresight platforms but only Shaping Tomorrow does both in real-time, setting it apart from competitors and highlighting its focus on excellence, as Mike explains.

“As a global horizon scanning company we use what we learn to improve our service as well as to help our members and clients. Our firm is focused on acting as a ‘constant start-up’: always looking for ways to improve our offering by reading, learning and listening to clients in order to be able to provide them with the service they need.”

Going forward, Mike believes that the increased focus on AI technology will help his firm to build upon its current success and continue to grow in the coming months and years.

“Increasing use of AI, machine/human-learning and designing for emotion are three of the key challenges and opportunities we see for ourselves right now as well as spreading our influence to reach our overall aim: to engrain and enhance the use of collaborative, holistic strategic foresight worldwide.’”

“Fundamentally we will continue to invest in our product, and in our people in order to build the highest levels of shareholder value.”

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Best Solar PV Systems Installation Company - Somerset

Best Field Service Software Provider 2016

Company: Solar South West Ltd Name: Rob Tippett Email: rob.tippett@solarsouthwest.co.uk Web Address: www.solarsouthwest.co.uk Address: Solar South West ltd, Coombe Farm, Roundham, Crewkerne, Somerset, TA18 8RR Telephone: 01460 279571

Company: Solarvista Software Name: Paul Adams Website: https://www.solarvista.com/

Solarvista Software Based in Crewkerne in Somerset, Solar South West ltd have many years of experience in providing commercial solar PV installations throughout Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and beyond. Rob Tippett outlines the firm’s service offering and how it came to win the prestigious title of ‘Best Solar PV Systems Installation Company – Somerset’.

Solarvista Software are a leading supplier of field service management software and solutions. We invited Paul Adams to tell us more.

Solar South West provide a complete solar PV solution from site selection, installation, monitoring, energy optimisation and maintenance for both commercial and domestic PV systems. Rob states that the secret to the firm’s success is its specialist focus.

Solarvista is a UK based software developer that develops and operates cloud-based applications for use by companies that operate a field service workforce. Paul talks us through the firm’s service offering.

“Although we have a large portfolio of project design & builds, from 4kW right up to 30+MW installations, we pride ourselves on the fact that we are a commercial rooftop specialist. From fragile roof systems to complex shading assessments and bespoke design Solar South West ltd has built up fantastic reputation to the position where most of our new customers have been drawn in by reputation alone. We also have a strong network of contacts within the industry that allows us to bid for highly sought after contracts, the most recent of these being the design and build of a 140kW ballast system at the new Ben Ainsley Racing HQ in Portsmouth, an installation we continue to operate and maintain on behalf of our client.”

“Herre at Solarvista we are experts in using cloud and mobile technologies to help businesses run field service oriented businesses. With recent technological developments and our new product line, we have ‘democratised’ access to software that traditionally could only be afforded by the largest businesses.

“In addition, we have developed a “3rd generation” mobile app that can be used for a wide range of purposes, without the need for any coding or costly development. It’s also available cross-platform, so mobile users can use the device of their preference, i.e. iPhone, Android or Windows Phones/Tablets.”

Moving forward, Rob explains that the firm is keen to evolve and adapt to industry changes in order to build upon its current success.

The firm’s flagship product is Solarvista LIVE/X9, a software that helps people who run field service oriented businesses, as Paul explains.

“Solar South West Ltd are currently embarking on gaining ISO9001:2015 accreditation in order to strengthen its working procedures & processes, improve company credibility and customer satisfaction, engage with its employees and create a positive working environment of proactive discussion and process adaptation as the business grows.

“Solarvista enables our customers to deliver exceptional service levels whilst increasing efficiency and driving revenue growth. It is the only complete solution that manages customer assets, service levels, contracts/agreements, job scheduling, job task control, parts, billing, and quotations. Solarvista LIVE/X9 is cloud-based so no hardware is required.

It’s accessible via every device type, is available in five editions to suit any business size and via simple all-inclusive per user pricing starting from as low as £15/month.”

“As a business we are now moving from a PV installation focused company to an operation and maintenance (O&M) leaning business. We intend to grow in this sector from our base of existing portfolio of managed sites & parent company installations; as well as increasing retrofit Energy Storage Installations and bespoke PV maintenance services. We will continue to utilise social media to keep our profile in the public eye and supplement this with traditional printed press and trade events throughout the year. We also plan to push our new price estimation widget on the revamped website.

“Overall we aim to be the largest PV maintenance service provider in the South West, and look forward to the challenges this will provide.”

As a final comment Paul outlines the unique features of the product and how these will provide the firm with a number of exciting opportunities in the future.

“Our product is accessible via the cloud, and as such we can make it available world-wide, as easy as we can to local UK users. We expect to have more users in India, China, Brazil, South Africa than in the UK by the end of 2018.”

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Best Intranet Software Solutions Provider 2016 Company: SORCE Intranet Name: John Nicklin Email: marketing@sorce.co.uk Web: www.sorce.co.uk Address: SORCE Limited, The Pavilion, Newbury Business Park, London Road, Newbury, RG14 2PZ Telephone: 01635 551777

SORCE intranet have been delivering intranet software solutions for some of the UK’s most respected organisations for over 15 years. We invited John Nicklin to tell us more.

SORCE intranet offer a unique intranet software experience, as John is eager to emphasize.

“Client’s come to us at very different stages of their intranet journey. Some already know their end user requirements and want to design and develop their new software solution straight away, whereas other clients use us to uncover their requirements, help develop their intranet strategy create bespoke branded solutions.

“Not only do we offer exceptional intranet software that makes a real difference to businesses, we go one step further and offer a range of additional services to enable our clients to get access to the expertise they need when they need it.”

“Currently, our technology powers intranet and extranet solutions for hundreds of organisations with more than a million users worldwide. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors, from finance to manufacturing, not for profit as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.”

The technology industry in the UK is currently an exhilarating place to be, as John outlines enthusiastically.

“It is currently great to be part of the UK intranet software industry.

It is a growing market and evolving as end user’s requirements and usability habits change due to the integration of social media and hand held devices. We are currently helping a number of new global clients understand their intranet requirements and develop bespoke solutions.”

Moving forward, John is optimistic about the firm’s future and excited about the opportunities this will bring.

“SORCE is a very exciting place to be right now as we continue to grow.

We are expanding our team and have some great developments in the pipeline.”

Most Innovative Energy Billing Application Company: Sycous Name: Joseph Collier Email: joseph.collier@sycous.com Web Address: sycous.com Address: 46 The Calls, Leeds, LS2 7EY Telephone: 07525651123

Sycous are a software company dedicated to revolutionising the world of district and communal energy.

We invited Joseph Collier to tell us more.

Sycous design and build hardware solutions and software that empowers heat and energy network operators, such as Local Authorities and Housing Associations to measure, control, manage and administer their energy network effectively. From providing cutting edge metering and data collection hardware, to custom designed remote data collection circuits, right through to cloud software for consumer management, automated billing and asset tracking, the firm are able to ensure clients receive the solution they need, as Joseph explains.

“Here at Sycous we work really hard to make sure we are providing the best, customer focused products to energy and heat network operators, so it feels great to be recognised for our effort. We truly believe our products, services and software bring huge benefits to network operators and consumers and that continuous innovation is needed to make sure consumers get the best deal, so it’s fantastic to know that our wider community believe we’re on the right track with our technology.

“We believe our success is down to our focus on our consumers and customers. We enjoy solving the problems they experience by using technology, and a focus on cutting edge innovation in not just technology, but processes, communication, and the way we create a great place to work.”

This focus on quality is emphasised by the team’s mission, Joseph adds.

“Our overall mission is to make sure that operators of heat networks, and the consumers on them, get the best deal when it comes to their energy costs. Consumers lose the ability to switch the moment they are connected to an energy network, so making sure they have access to great value products becomes increasingly important. It is also important to make sure they don’t get locked into long contracts or proprietary products, which is why we make sure everything we offer is open protocol, and advocate for this in the wider industry.”

In the future Joseph believes the firm’s exciting new projects will provide it with exciting opportunities for growth and expansion.

“Moving forward we will be spending the next 12 months studying the positive impact of our software and services on consumers in collaboration with the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We will also continue to work closely with Sustainable Homes to advocate for sustainability on heat and energy networks, as well as consumer value.”

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Best for Enterprise Mobile Hardware

Best Data Defined Storage Solution: GridBank Data Management Platform Company: Tarmin, Inc. Name: Shahbaz Ali Email: Shahbaz.ali@tarmin.com Web Address: www.tarmin.com

Company: Symec Technologies Email: customer.care@symec.co.uk Web Address: www.symec.co.uk Address: 159 Four Acres, Bristol, BS13 8RA Telephone: +44 845 269 5739

Symec Technologies

Tarmin, Inc.

Symec is one of the largest providers of mobile computer and barcode scanning solutions in the UK. Alex Whiting, Sales Director, spoke to us about how the firm differentiates itself from competitors in a cut-throat industry.

Tarmin is a data defined storage specialist offering a unique platform which takes a data centric approach to storage, focusing on the unlocking the value of information as an asset and strategic business enabler. We Invited Founder Shahbaz Ali to provide us with an insight into the firm and its innovative solution.

Symec specialises in the supply, installation, maintenance and support of rugged mobile data capture devices, phones, tablets, RF wireless networks, EPOS solutions, label printing solutions, voice picking solutions and network solutions.

“We offer more than 80 combined years’ industry experience and a high level of technical resource in-house from our Central European and UK locations,” says Alex, Symec’s Sales Director. “Our mission statement here at Symec is Service, Service, Service! Here, we strive to provide quality services and go above and beyond to win a new client, to ensure our reputation.”

In the fast-paced digital era we now live in, it’s important to stay one step ahead to guarantee success. Alex explains how Symec differentiates itself from the competition.

“Our mix of products and services is unique in the market. They are valuable to the clients and priced very competitively. We continue to strive to improve this mix, lower the costs and stay steps ahead of the rest of the marketplace.

“Symec’s approach begins by engaging deeply with the customer and their colleagues within their company, ensuring that we understand the business needs. This focus on the customer continues right the way through our journey and in the level of services that we provide during the rollout of a project.

“Our newly created customer interaction centre and online services tools, ensure that our customers get a fully accessible support service throughout their lifetime with Symec.

“We believe that the best way for us to succeed is to employ great people, reward them, give them the tools they need to be outstanding and the let them be entrepreneurial. This was the basis to our early success and continues to be our core ethos.”

Due to increased demands for international support from its clients, Alex foretells a bright future for Symec.

“In response to this increase, we are about to formally launch a large new service centre and office in Poland. With this increased capacity and coverage, we are already seeing a shift in the scale of projects that are being requested of us.

“Winning this award reflects our absolute focus on serving our customers, and can only add to our continued success.”

Tarmin was founded in 2007 by Shahbaz Ali and Steve Simpson with the intention of providing software for addressing the increasing challenges associated with massive data growth.

The company delivers GridBank Data Management Platform, the premier Data Defined Storage solution, which was architected from the ground up using the latest in enterprise ready technologies to address all of the pain points associated with massive amounts of data.

Clients for this pioneering solution are typically data intensive organizations within the financial services, healthcare and oil and gas industry, among others.

Shahbaz talks us through how the firm’s unique data centric solution is changing the face of the industry, as well as outlining how this service aligns with the firm’s overall mission.

“The big data storage problems organizations are facing today are nothing like they have grappled with before. Coupled with the rapid increases in data sizes from new and existing data sources and a need to have on demand access to information whenever and wherever required, these new business requirements are driving the need for a new architectural approach to storage and data management.

“Tarmin has developed GridBank, the premier Data Defined Storage solution, which deploys a data centric approach that represents a complete paradigm shift away from legacy media storage architectures. GridBank ingests data from virtually any source, moves it based on comprehensive policies throughout the entire storage infrastructure, manages it by virtually any criteria, and presents it cohesively through a transparent global namespace to any client in the world with almost infinite scalability.”

“Tarmin’s mission is to transform the way organizations manage, scale, search and gain value from data by uniting application, information and storage tiers into a single, integrated data centric management architecture. We are passionate about our work, GridBank and the capabilities it offers, as well as our progress in introducing data centric storage approaches to the market.”

Finally, Shahbaz was keen to emphasise that the firm has some exciting plans moving forward.

“We have a lot of exciting developments taking place over the next few months which will provide us with some great opportunities for future growth.”

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Best for Business Process Reengineering - South-Eastern USA

Best SME IT Training Company 2016 - UK

Company: Technical Solutions and Maintenance, Inc. Name: Ms. Kiralfy C. Forte Email: KForte@tsm-clitech.com Web: www.tsm-clitech.com Address: 205 S. Whiting St., #405, Alexandria, VA 22304 Telephone: 703-370-1104, ext. 203

Company: Technology Associates Limited Name: Kelvin Kirby Email: kkirby@techassoc.com Web Address: www.techassoc.com Address: Technology House, 1 Shottery Brook Office Park, Timothys Bridge Road, Stratford upon Avon, Warks CV37 9NR United Kingdom Telephone: 01789 292150

Technical Solutions and Maintenance, Inc. (TSM) provides comprehensive solutions to a wide range of business process reengineering needs, situational analytics, training, technical support, and hardware/ software needs. We create tailored endto-end managed services and workforce augmentation that provide measurable benefits to our customers, including greater efficiency, improved mission uptime, and reduced costs and complexity. Our experts improve security in operational IT environments in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, and civilian communities.

We invited Owner Kiralfy Forte to talk us through the business and the innovative solutions it offers.

Established in 1992, TSM, Inc. is a SBA Certified HubZone and Economically Disadvantaged Woman-Owned (EDWOSB), small business headquartered in Alexandria, VA with a principal office located in Eufaula, Alabama specializing in Information Technology and Professional Services.

The firm supports many government clients who require rapid response with quality, customized solutions which meet their needs.

Kiralfy believes that the firm’s success is predicated on its commitment to providing a superior quality service to all their clients, who include major organizations including the Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA. “What differentiates TSM from our competitors is our commitment to deliver quality services and products. We go the extra mile to ensure we meet and in many instances exceed our customers’ expectations.

“This is embodied in our mission statement: ‘To provide our customers with the absolute best in services and product delivery by incorporating Quality and Care within the entire infrastructure of each requirement’. We have observed that customer satisfaction is best achieved when tasks are addressed as performance objectives, and as such we endeavour to integrate this approach into every project we undertake.”

TSM’s vision and mission statement also guides the internal culture of the organization, with all staff fully committed to support clients and provide quality services, as Kiralfy explains in more detail.

“It is our dedication to quality when supporting our clients which guides our company’s values and provide us with purpose. That purpose, in turn, orients every decision we make and our employees make. When they are deeply authentic and prominently displayed, good vision statements can even help orient customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Our culture is that whatever you are hired to do, do it with ‘Quality’ where you go on company time, go with ‘Quality’.”

Ultimately the future for TSM is very bright, as Kiralfy is keen to highlight in her concluding comments.

Technology Associates has been helping businesses in the SMB and Enterprise sector take control of their IT since 1990. Specialising in Microsoft Cloud services including Office 365, SharePoint and Project Online the company has won a string of awards in the last two years. We caught up with CEO Kelvin Kirby to learn more.

Technology Associates has a long history of implementing softwarebased solutions for project management, particularly those based on the Microsoft platform. Kelvin outlines how the firm operates and the client base it serves.

“Here at Technology Associates we promote, advocate, develop and implement solutions based on Microsoft Project, Project Server, Project Online, SharePoint and Office 365. And we have some great tools available to help migrate customers from on premise to cloud. Cloud is increasingly the way to go as it reduces costs dramatically and negates the need for infrastructure, and also patch management”. We continue to support on premise and hybrid applications and recently rolled out new remote monitoring and management services on a monthly subscription basis.

“Our customers vary in both size and sector, but our main focus is on SMB & Midmarket customers – and in terms of market sector it is very varied covering everything from engineering, electronics, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, bio-tech, automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, utilities through to commercial, financial retail, and education/academic.

“Our mission is to be a leader in the delivery of software solutions that provide our customers with a cost-effective, well designed solutions that meets their business needs. Our focus is on delivering these solutions based on Microsoft technologies particularly Office 365 and Project Online.

We have worked hard to maintain our position as a Microsoft Gold Partner with relevant competencies and our customer testimonials speak for themselves.”

Overall, Kelvin is enthusiastic about the future and the firm’s growth strategy.

“We are very optimistic about the future, and have a number of exciting projects in the pipeline, which will eventually culminate in our firm offering one of the best support platforms around for Project Server/Project Online/ Office 365. Additionally, we will have an ad-hoc support service where companies can simply call and have their support queries dealt with and will be bringing our new Virtual Training Academy online in the next month.

We are very excited about the new things we have in the pipeline.”

“As we move forward with technological advancements we predict that the use of technology will be a very essential part of our lives. As the millennial generation continues to find their place in the workplace it calls for companies to be innovative in order for them to feel they belong. Given this, we believe that we are hiring from a generation that will help TSM to become a leader in information technology services and product support.”

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Most Innovative Cancer Research Organisation - Canada Company: Translational Research In Oncology (TRIO) Name: Launa Aspeslet, CEO Email: launa.aspeslet@ trioncology.org Web: www.trioncology.org Address: 1100-9925 109 St Edmonton, AB T5K 2J8 Telephone: 780.702.0200

Translational Research In Oncology (TRIO) is a not-forprofit academic clinical research organization. Launa Aspeslet, the firm’s CEO, talks us through the company and its vital service offering.

Best Energy Management System Provider 2016 Company: Utilitywise Plc, Energy Services Division Name: Lisa Gingell Email: lisa@t-mac.co.uk Web Address: www.utilitywise.com and www.t-mac.co.uk Address: Utilitywise Plc, Stand Park, Sheffield Road, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, S41 8JT Telephone: 01246233632

Utilitywise Plc is the UK’s leading independent utility cost management consultancy. We invited Lisa Gingell to tell us more.

TRIO’s specific expertise is in conducting clinical trials testing a wide range of innovative anticancer agents in many types of cancers, as Launa explains.

“Here at TRIO our translational research model allows us to assist our clients in developing innovative and biologically sound protocols. By using science to bring more targeted therapeutics into the clinic, we can find the shortest path to saving lives.

Utilitywise is a leading cost management consultancy firm specialising in supporting clients with the reduction of their energy usage.

“TRIO brings together basic and translational scientists, a committed global network of investigators and a powerful operational unit capable of conducting all phases of oncology drug trials. Through our corporate head office in Edmonton, Canada, our regional offices in Paris, France and Montevideo, Uruguay, and our global network of partners, we conduct our clinical research across the globe. Our global reach allows us to efficiently source patients, which helps us move our trials forward quickly.

Since its acquisition of t-mac Technologies in April 2015 and the recent partnership deal with Dell and Intel in April 2016, the Energy Services Division within the business has been embracing BeMS (Building Energy Management Systems) and IoT (Internet of Things) technologies. We are providing customers with the ability to connect energy-intensive devices across multiple businesses and sites to ‘control’ how and when they use energy.

“Our services cover the entire clinical research spectrum from study conception to design, execution, data analysis and dissemination of results. The broad expertise of our staff and our global network of investigational sites ensure that we are leaders in the design and execution of clinical trials. These trials include all phases of drug development from preclinical screening leading through Phase I, II and III registration studies.

Through our staff’s breadth of experience, our clients are able to work closely with the same company for the entire life cycle of the product.”

Our consultancy and bureau teams work closely with clients to understand how, why and where their businesses use energy. Our engineering teams implement IoT enabled BeMS systems, solutions and behavioural change programs to reduce consumption, carbon and cost to the business.

TRIO’s core values are integrity, teamwork and passion, which, as Launa highlights, prevail throughout the company.

“We believe our core values are integral to the work that TRIO performs and the success of the organization. Our staff are experienced and dedicated professionals committed to delivering high quality clinical trials to our sponsors.

“Our clinical trials are designed so that as much new data as possible is being collected. We ensure our sites provide high-quality tissue and blood samples needed for protocol specified biomarker and correlative science.

Every step that TRIO takes provides new information which assists in the further development and design of new translational studies. Because of our strong academic focus, TRIO and its investigators contribute to the concept, protocol design, analysis, interpretation, presentation and publication of a study, and work closely with the trial sponsor. This academic involvement ensures that our studies continue to be based on sound pre-clinical and clinical insights.”

Ultimately, TRIO’s mission to find cures for the multiple diseases which constitute cancer is not over, and therefore, as Launa emphasises, neither is their work.

Ultimately we are now operating in a world that will have an ever increasing focus on energy reduction, driven by need and cost as well as a desire to be more sustainable (corporate social responsibility). Buildings and systems, peoples’ lifestyles and the impact we all have on our earth can only be changed through ‘efficiency’; identifying what we are doing wrong, and subsequently putting it right to reduce wastage.

Technology is undoubtedly a key driver to energy efficiency as it is used to eradicate inefficient building and equipment performance and influence behavioural change. Efficiency and an ability to control consumption from our buildings is key to meeting the Government’s carbon reduction targets and assisting with the requirements of the National Grid to shift energy consumption from peak demand times.

As such we aim to ensure that Utilitywise becomes an integral partner for every business that we work with, allowing every organisation to save energy, boost their reputation and make substantial financial savings.

Looking ahead, we have ambitious growth plans which involve the deployment of our IoT enabled BeMS platform across commercial properties throughout the UK and Europe. We aim to become the partner of choice, assisting businesses to achieve their target of cutting utilities costs, carbon emissions and conforming to energy legislation.

“Moving forward, we will continue to expand our research platform and capacities in order to identify the best treatments.”

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Best International Smart Cities Consultants 2016

Sales & Management Solution of the Year 2016

Company: Urban Foresight Name: David Beeton Email: hello@urbanforesight.org Web Address: http://urbanforesight.org/ Address: Urban Foresight, The Core, Science Central, Bath Lane, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TF, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 191 495 7350

Urban Foresight is a strategy and innovation consultancy, shaping the smart cities of the future, where transport, energy, environmental and healthcare systems are much more interconnected.

Urban Foresight shapes the smart cities of the future, where transport, energy, environmental and healthcare systems are much more interconnected. This reduces costs, provides new services, and drives efficiencies, all for the benefit of the citizen.

These developments are underpinned by intelligent use of data and technology. They also require improvements in how cities engage society, offer leadership, work across disciplines and city systems, and deploy innovative business models and financing mechanisms.

Urban Foresight offers expertise in all of these areas, enabling cities to realise new opportunities to make cities more sustainable, resilient and intelligently responsive to the needs of citizens.

David explains the firm’s mission, which revolves around creating better cities for people across the globe.

“Urban Foresight is a mission driven business, working to shape a brighter future for cities and communities around the world. We are demonstrating that it is possible to grow a profitable business that accelerates the global transition to a more secure, citizen-focused, low carbon economy.

Creating a brighter future means that we need to do things differently. In carving out this new and exciting niche we have an opportunity to create our own rules. We take inspiration from lean and agile technology start-ups and the potential for world changing ideas to come from a small company.

Each project that we undertake is always unique and we always strive for it to be better than the last. We are building a corporate culture that fuses creative thinking with practical insights to deliver innovative solutions that will bring about real and lasting change.”

As his final comment David outlines the firm’s overall ambition.

“Our ultimate ambition is to scale up the number and size of projects that we undertake and to become the global go-to agency for smart city strategies.”

Company: Vecta Sales Solutions Ltd Phone: 0114 262 2033 Website: www.vecta.net

Vecta Sales Solutions Ltd offers a pioneering solution designed to help distributors sell more effectively. Jayne Hill discusses the firm’s pride at winning the prestigious ‘Sales & Management Solution of the Year 2016’ and provides a fascinating overview of this innovative solution.

Vecta is a unique integrated sales Analytics & CRM tool providing personalised ‘actionable’ sales and contact information; it spotlights buying gaps and drives increased sales and improved margins. The company works with B2B Distribution companies of all shapes and sizes, with the common aim of improving efficiencies, customer relations, sales results and profitability. Vecta’s Jayne Hill talks us through the firm’s mission and the steps it takes to achieve it.

“Our mission is to deliver an invaluable business solution and service that makes a measurable difference with a tool that sales people and management actively choose to use to enhance their effectiveness, efficiency and sales outcomes. Through regular contact with our customers Vecta has an inclusive approach enabling us to incorporate ideas and changes in our business planning quickly . It is important that we remain flexible in reacting to trends and advances in technology whilst ensuring our core plans are achieved and delivered and our niche market position optimised.

Customers talk of their confidence in Vecta’s reliability, the Vecta teams expertise and our focus on innovation and customer care. With over 50 years’ experience within the technology sector, the firm’s credibility and financial strength is also vitally important to customers when considering the longevity of a key software implementation to facilitate sustainable long term business growth for them.

The advent of mobile technologies has resulted in fast moving changes to platforms and devices, requiring an agile and reactive development and support team. Jayne explains how the firm aims to ensure that it always offers the most innovative and up-to-the-minute solutions.

“Innovative in our early delivery of mobile solutions, we continue to enrich our offering through the latest available technologies so that Vecta users benefit from a fully hosted robust and intuitive service. It is important to constantly introduce relevant enhancements so the Vecta team continually evaluate bestpractices, new technology and techniques. Advancements are progressed to ensure a sustainable product development lifecycle, as well as usability and functionality benefits for both the application and users.”

Overall, Jayne expressed her pride at the firm’s inclusive culture and progressive development, which she believes is the secret to the firm’s success: “We are proud of the open, inclusive Vecta culture where colleague input and ideas are embraced alongside those of Customers and industry experts. This has resulted in thousands of sales people and managers achieving exceptional results and the subsequent reward that brings. Undoubtedly this additional award is another affirmation of that success”.

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Most Dedicated SME IT Support Company - South East

Award for Innovation in Financial Technology & 2016 Customer Excellence Award in Computing

Company: Via Wire Website: www.viawire.net Phone: 020 7043 6030

Company: W2 Global Data Name: Martin Pashley Email: martin.pashley@ w2globaldata.com Web Address: www.w2globaldata.com Address: W2, Unit 18 CBTC 2, Capital Business Park, Cardiff, CF3 2PX Telephone: 0330 088 9542

Via Wire is an IT support company specialising in serving the needs of SMEs. We invited Adam Horn to provide us with an overview of the firm and its service offering.

Via Wire were recently awarded the Most Dedicated SME IT Support Company for the South East in the 2016 Technology Innovator Awards and were pleased and proud to win this prestigious award.

W2 Global Data (W2) empower clients to make highlyinformed decisions through powerful and tailored online screening. We invited Martin Pashley to provide us with an overview of the company and its service offering.

“I’m delighted that our hard work and determination has been rewarded, it proves that it’s worth putting in the effort,” said MD, Adam Horn.

Via Wire is based in Essex and services clients across Essex, Kent and London – as well as some further afield. The client base is varied and includes varying sized consultancies, through service industries like finance and recruitment, to multi-site engineering, security and even a company that manufacturers musical instruments.

W2 provide a wide range of SaaS screening tools to help organisations conduct regulatory Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Fraud prevention due diligence. Services include ID and Age verification, PEP and Sanctions screening and device location or reputation management.

“From the outset when I set the business up in 2010 I wanted to help businesses to get on with what they do best, without the stress that technology often creates. It’s about making it easy to get connected to the internet. No business can operate without the ability to get online – as we see the minute someone’s connection goes down and the whole organisation grinds to a halt!” Adam explains.

Martin explains the firm’s unique features and how these help it to better support clients.

As Adam’s team grows he believes in recruiting for attitude and, if necessary, training for skills. He describes the team as ‘non-nerdy nerds, who are passionate about technology’. There is a ban on talking technical gobbledegook with the clients – unless they happen to understand it. Speaking the client’s language – whatever level of tech-speak that includes – is the key to their success.

The team members are encouraged to keep up-to-date with the latest technology – not just in the IT arena. Their blog includes posts about things like driverless cars, new Apps and other advances and the team are responsible for resourcing interesting items.

Technology can be challenging and, although Essex is fairly wellconnected, the Via Wire team are on a mission to make getting online simple. Typically, it can take 7-10 days for a business to get their phone and broadband connection up and running in new premises. Via Wire are campaigning with OpenReach to have a smoother and faster means of connection as every day offline costs businesses money.

“We’re customer focused so we are always solution driven,” says Adam.

“We can set up a satellite broadband connection anywhere at short notice – even in a field – but we have been able to get a client connected by more traditional means in just two days.”

Unsurprisingly, one of the specialisms that Via Wire offers is event services for companies that want an end-to-end IT service from ticket sales right through to having robust broadband on site, regardless of whether it is in the middle of a city or in the middle of nowhere!

“As a firm we have access to some of the world’s largest data providers to ensure that our clients get intuitive, real-time access to reliable, up to date information. W2 provides a software enablement platform in which we aggregate data and ancillary services from a wide spectrum of domestic and international suppliers. This means that our customers can easily access a myriad of data sources and service providers including, but not limited to, PEP and adverse content, document verification services, e-KYC providers, corporate information (business intelligence) and enhanced investigative services. All through a single, intuitive point of access.”

“Because we have access to more and better data that is delivered to our clients in a simple, single integration we allow informed decisions to be made, quicker, and more efficiently. W2 are the only true end-to-end provider of e-KYC, Anti Money Laundering and fraud prevention solutions.

We remove the barriers in terms of integration overhead and cost but also make customer on-boarding much smoother.”

“One of the greatest strengths of W2 is the depth and breadth of our industry knowledge and experience. We don’t employ ‘Sales rep’s’ like many of our competitors, we just have industry experts and market vertical specialists.”

Going forward, Martin explains that the firm is keen to continue offering its exemplary services.

“Our future growth is all about continuing to support our clients and provide them with services which meet their needs.”

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Best International Data Analysis Software Provider & Most Innovative Data Analysis Solution: WPS Company: World Programming Press Team: press@worldprogramming.com Web: www.worldprogramming.com Address: World Programming Ltd. Osprey House, Budds Lane, Romsey, Hampshire, United Kingdom, SO51 0HA Press Agency Contact: 10Fold Communications Paul Doyle pdoyle@10fold.com 1 (617) 733-2173

World Programming is widely recognized for its WPS industrial analytics and data science software with users ranging from individuals to multi-national businesses, worldwide. We caught up with Oliver Robinson to find out more about the firm and its service offering.

World Programming’s popular WPS data platform is used for tasks ranging from everyday data management to complex machine learning and predictive analytics that consume very large datasets and live data streams. Oliver provides more detail on this pioneering software and how it helps the firm to achieve its client focused mission.

“Our mission is to help companies to manage, process and keep control of their data, and to analyse and understand data. Some companies’ business is to analyse data, whilst other companies are simply wanting to understand their business in order to make better decisions.

We can do the heavy-lifting of data for our customers and then provide the fine-tuned insight that makes all the difference. We are also keen to work closer with, and offer educational support to students and professionals in the field of data science.

“To help us achieve this we have built software that can run SAS language together with the R language on workstations, servers, cloud, grid, Hadoop and mainframe systems. Our customers include government agencies, international corporations, public and private sector companies of all sizes, charities, individual users,

consultants, students, and we aim to support and provide all our customers with solutions that meet their needs.”

The firm have built a rock-solid product that is extremely fast, handles huge amounts of data and offers a wide range of statistical analyses.

As a final comment Oliver outlines what the future has for both World Programming and its unique solution.

“Moving forward, we aim to build on our current general purpose data platform to offer easy-to-use tools that leverage the underlying sophistication for companies that don’t currently have a data science team, yet still want to understand their data. We will be offering industry-specific solutions and have recently formed a solutions and consulting arm that can offer direct assistance to our customers to help build analytics solutions. We will also be building out our partner program to a wider audience.

“In addition, we will soon be announcing the availability of our free Academic Edition software for universities, targeting students that aspire to become a data scientist one day. We want to provide them with the best tools and opportunities to reach their goals.”

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