After businesses were embroiled by operational disruptions throughout the height of the pandemic, Timo has now reflected on his observations and found that his mission to continue encouraging innovation has naturally become embedded in businesses future. 鈥淲ith unprecedented times came vastly accelerated innovation in order to survive.鈥�

Speaking to 顿别肠补迟丑濒辞苍鈥檚 Chief Value Officer, 鈥淣othing is impossible anymore鈥� is simple the new business experience in light of the innovation that has become possible. The downside to this journey stemmed from the elevated pace that businesses were required to innovate, and in turn, ended up doing so in silos.

鈥淚 recently saw some data from International Data Corporation (IDC) that showed, a couple of years ago, 75% of organisations were innovating with a strategic approach, leaving the remaining 25% who were innovating in silos. Unfortunately, those numbers have changed. Organisations innovated in a silo because they didn’t have time to do it in a more strategic way, and now the number of organisations that have a strategic approach has dropped to 50%. So, unfortunately, there’s lots of innovation, but because of all these new silos, it’s actually harder to do even more innovation in the future.鈥�

With these results in mind, analysts are in agreement that to innovate both at a faster pace and with strategic efficiency, there needs to be a solid information foundation coupled with a flexible set of building blocks. What the pandemic shone a light on was an atmosphere of uncertainty experienced by organisations which can be combated with flexibility, agility and the technology foundations to support it. Those organisations that weren鈥檛 able to adapt or differentiate themselves unfortunately were forced to fold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STDFvPBYW74

鈥淚 think one of the key takeaways, I hope, is that some organisations were a little complacent about needing to innovate. Why innovate? My business is stable. I don’t need to do anything differently. Instead, that thinking is a little bit like standing on a down escalator. You’re slowly moving backwards compared to the rest of the environment. In order to stay still in modern business, you have to be walking up the down escalator. You have to put effort in because the environment around you is evolving. Customers have higher demands, your employees have new expectations, your competitors are upping their game, so you have to do a certain amount of innovation just to stay still.鈥�

Asked on where organisations should begin their innovation efforts, Timo reminds us that because of a high investment in technology solutions that automate the time consuming parts of day to day operations, there鈥檚 a new wave of solutions such as a solutions. How do accelerate innovation this way? By letting business employees do more of the innovative work themselves in their area of expertise without IT and technology being a bottleneck.

Speaking to a customer, they explained to Timo that his 鈥榢nowledge workers鈥� know exactly what’s going wrong in the business and they know what should be done to fix it, but they feel powerless. 鈥淭hey feel like they’re at the mercy of the machine because they can’t fix it themselves. All they can do is point it out to a technology team, but that team don鈥檛 have enough time, there’s never enough resources, there’s always a backlog. So, the answer is no, we can鈥檛. Now, these new tools are becoming really powerful, where business people can create their entire applications, workflows, analytics and do it all themselves.鈥�

There are always some dangers to be aware of with implementing solutions like these, where if you let anybody in your business become involved in the technology, the result is probably going to be chaos. 鈥淣ot everybody’s ready to be enabled. Everybody’s gonna recreate the wheel and get calculations wrong.

So the right approach is not low-code or no-code or pro-code, but co-code where you have a combination of the technology teams putting in place the Lego bricks that reflects the different objects of the business like a customer or an invoice and so on. Employees can then take those blocks and use them, change the order and wire them up in different ways, and have different authorisations and so on in the knowledge that they’re going to do that in a way that isn’t gonna be damaging for the system it’s gonna be scalable, it’s gonna be compliant, follow all of the security laws and so on.鈥�

To hear more from this discussion, dive deeper into business innovation projects and hear more from Tim about his technology predictions for the future, listen to the full episode of The Best Run Podcast .

The post The Importance of Innovation in a Post-COVID Era appeared first on 麻豆原创 Australia & New Zealand News Center.

That鈥檚 changing as agencies look to adopt more digital-first agendas. The NSW government is encouraging its agencies to adopt 鈥樎爏trategies by 2023, while an of seven government agencies in South Australia reported that most planned to increase their use of cloud services within the next two years.

This acceleration is partially due to a pivot from strict government 鈥榗ontrol-based鈥� regulatory regimes towards an assessment of actual data risk, with controls applied based on those findings. This new approach is reflected in policies such as the Australian Cyber Security Centre鈥檚 (ACSC) Cloud Security Guidance, Information Security Manual and Essential Eight.

Implementing a risk-based approach to cloud security assessments gives agencies more flexibility in managing their workloads and data, with less carte-blanche security strategies that have traditionally protected everything in the same way by default.

This trend has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as agencies faced huge challenges in managing the rapid expansion of remote workforces. The pandemic required agencies to adopt cloud solutions such as Office 365 effectively overnight, with other digital demands like e-commerce and digital booking services becoming imperative.

It gave agencies an immediate business case that couldn鈥檛 be ignored because existing on-premise and remote access systems weren鈥檛 designed for the rapid increase of remote workers, and maintenance was hampered by global supply shortages.

With many of these initial transformations complete, agencies have now realised the value, scale and efficiencies that cloud services bring, and are now looking at other ways to digitally transform services and speed up their cloud adoption.

A few significant challenges remain. While the compliance landscape has shifted towards risk management, the sheer number of regulatory considerations is still staggering. To combat this, agencies and regulated industries often err on the side of caution, with tendencies to over assess or classify the data they wish to store, manage or handle within a cloud solution. This leads to a risk-averse approach that leans away from cloud innovation.

That attitude isn鈥檛 going to cut it in this new world, where citizens are demanding innovative digital services from government that are on par with what they鈥檙e getting from the private sector. It鈥檚 important to change this thinking to spark further innovation within our public services and regulated industries. Here are two common mistakes that we see agencies making every day.

Read more of Lindsay Morgan’s article in The Mandarin .

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Disruptive innovation from people with disabilities

epitomises tenacity and optimism to not just conquer adversity but thrive. A quadruple amputee at age 19, Nash thinks that people with disabilities or those involved with them are uniquely able to solve problems because they cannot do everything the way everyone else does.

鈥淪olving problems for people who have disabilities can often result in unintended consequences where new markets are inadvertently created through the proliferation of innovation,鈥� said Nash. 鈥淐onsider text to speech or speech to text, which was initially designed for people with disabilities. Initially expensive with access to a limited few, they became disruptive when a wider population discovered their usefulness. Now we have Alexa and Siri who make everyone鈥檚 lives easier.鈥�

As for how to make a compelling case for a major innovation, Nash advised a healthy dose of humour.

鈥淭he first person trying to change something pays a disproportionate price, whether it鈥檚 social, political, or in business,鈥� he said. 鈥淗umour hacks the impact of paying that price because it鈥檚 a light-hearted way to convey honest ideas in a more palatable manner.鈥�

New leadership norms to support remote workers

As a military helicopter pilot and Formation Commander in Australia鈥檚 Navy, it鈥檚 fair to say that knows a thing or two about leadership, especially across remote workforces. She saw effective communication and understanding team members fundamental to leading dispersed workforces.

鈥淧eople are inspired when they feel a genuine connection to the team and their leaders,鈥� said Munari. 鈥淟eaders have an essential role in maintaining a strong connection within the team, fostering a cohesive effort that ultimately unites them towards a shared mission and goal, while building individual, team, and workforce resilience.鈥�

Recognising that remote work can strain work/life balance, she encouraged people to also take time for themselves.

鈥淲hen I was on operations for months at a time in Afghanistan, work filled my every day,鈥� said Munari. 鈥淭o operate at peak mental and physical performance I made sure to do one thing every day just for me. This gave me that mental break, relaxing and recharging me to stay motivated towards the daily job.鈥�

Disruptions are teachable moments for sustainability

Sorting fact from fiction is second nature to award-winning Australian environmentalist , who cut through the standard dystopian climate change ethos with bright optimism.

鈥淭he pandemic has shown us what we can achieve with investments in science to quickly explore ideas, gain insights from clinical trials, and develop life-saving vaccines,鈥� she said. 鈥淗opefully that same credible peer reviewed expertise will extend to living and working more sustainably. Life disruptions are an opportunity to learn more cost-effective, sustainable habits like telehealth and remote work. The new normal has given us confidence in our ability to adapt and learn new things.鈥�

In confining people closer to home, pandemic lockdowns have opened many people鈥檚 eyes to the beauty of nature and importance of addressing climate change.

鈥淵ou look after what you love,鈥� said Ha. 鈥淗aving visited the beautiful outdoor spaces nearby their own communities, people are becoming environmentally-minded. They are realising that nature is on loan. It’s not something for us to exploit, but it’s something for us to benefit from while caring for it.鈥�

Embrace your personal de-stressors

For those of us feeling shall we say, challenged, by 18 months or nonstop stress, workplace well-being consultant , is a breath of motivational fresh air, including during a pandemic.

鈥淚t鈥檚 completely understandable to feel overwhelmed, more tired, or a bit less sharp,鈥� she said. 鈥淪tep back and acknowledge that this is happening, and that it鈥檚 a sign of your system dealing with stress. Cut yourself some slack, and if it makes sense for you, look for opportunities to do less. Having a routine that we feel we have control over actually enables us to do more.鈥�

Turns out there鈥檚 no single definitive list of de-stressors.

鈥淪tick to doing things that you know make you feel better; it doesn’t matter what that is,鈥� said Dr. Brockis. 鈥淚f you know that’s your one thing that can make the biggest difference in how you feel about things generally, make time for it. For me, it鈥檚 spending time outside and moving. Your mental well-being boost could be something entirely different.鈥�

My takeaway from all of this is that although making room for disruptive innovation is an intensely personal experience, it also stokes the productive future of every organisation.

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Join a collection of homegrown pioneers and global innovators to share, create, listen, connect, learn, and grow with industry and technology experts. This year鈥檚 event as always is where innovation and ingenuity meet imagination and creativity but imbued with a local flavour.

The Inspiration Stage is where thought leaders from Australia and New Zealand will share meaningful stories and insights into the future of technology and science. Our keynote, live in Sydney and Melbourne and virtual in other cities are co-founders of 鈥� Dr Angus Hervey and Tane Hunter. Future Crunch will guide you on your Effect journey, highlighting the possibilities and success stories driven by new technologies.

Future Crunch presentations explore the frontiers of science and technology, taking an intelligent, courageous, and optimistic view of how the future could unfold. They create unique and memorable experiences that integrate music and captivating visuals that have commanded crowds at over 200 events across five continents.

After losing both his hands and legs to a deadly disease, Tom Nash鈥檚 life journey with prosthetics has built a treasure trove of stories that will inspire and amuse. Filled with heart, hardship, and humour, Tom鈥檚 story of innovation will resonate long after his presentation.

The Labs will help attendees reimagine the exhibit-hall experience, providing an interactive space for engaging directly with our innovation experts with hands-on experiences.

The Future of Business is brought to life via a walk through 鈥榳orld鈥� experience to explore emerging technologies and practices in two areas. How we redefine how we work and creating a more sustainable approach to solving our everyday industry challenges. 麻豆原创鈥檚 innovation partner, will bring to life their take on Future of Business in this zone.

Inspiration Lane provides attendees with access to 麻豆原创鈥檚 innovative partner ecosystem, allowing them to view solution demos and engage with 麻豆原创鈥檚 most valued partners to explore the technology, processes, and practices that help businesses become intelligent enterprises.

Catch the Effect innovation experience as it returns to

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Leaders from two high-performing organisations in ANZ recently shared their experiences with digitalisation during a hosted by Des Fisher, innovation principal at 麻豆原创 ANZ. Here is a sampling of their far-ranging thoughts on the sustainable business realities behind innovating on cloud-based digital platforms.

Digitalisation is a mindset and tech transformation

For Australian-based Stockland, digitalisation involved transforming people鈥檚 mindsets along with systems company-wide. As one of the largest diversified real estate groups in Australia, the company owns, develops, and manages a large portfolio of retail town centres, workplace and logistics assets, residential communities, and retirement living villages. They鈥檝e replaced over 100 disparate, legacy software systems with 麻豆原创鈥檚 integrated platform, including and , as well as embedded AI and robotics.

鈥淲e now have a single source of the truth,鈥� said Tiernan O’Rourke, CFO at Stockland. 鈥淚鈥檓 absolutely convinced that in time we鈥檒l look back and say that was one of the best things we did in the 70-year history of the company鈥ur digitization journey shows that unless you鈥檙e on the journey you鈥檙e going to struggle in business, not only in Australia, but globally.鈥�

Stockland began by defining digitalisation on the company鈥檚 own terms. The digital platform was designed to strike a balance between achieving three objectives: organisational risk, governance, and business growth.

鈥淲e first looked at what digitisation meant to us and came at it by putting the company on the core 麻豆原创 platform,鈥� said O鈥橰ourke. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a tactile industry of property, bricks, and mortar. Getting people鈥檚 minds away from physical to digital was鈥ne of the biggest obstacles to overcome.鈥�

Digital backbone drives innovation

Oil and gas provider OMV New Zealand recently won an 麻豆原创 global Innovation Award for its groundbreaking digitalisation that included digital twins and augmented reality (AR) in onshore and offshore inspections. Replacing paper-heavy processes with digitalised and integrated workflows based on the latest mobile solutions and wearable technologies will help OMV improve decision-making, performance, and efficiencies in inspections and maintenance. Its integrated workflow management relies on 麻豆原创 Plant Maintenance (麻豆原创 S/4 HANA), , , and HoloLens 2.

鈥淭he use of automation and AI-driven technologies for creating intelligent digital twins is a key enabler for global scalability, and accelerates creating the digital backbone of the company during digital transformation. Enhancing this technology with an augmented reality experience including mark-up annotations, provides a solid basis for data insights, data-driven decision making, and performance optimization,鈥� said Farid Akbari, functional lead for digital transformation at OMV New Zealand. 鈥淭his innovation project will change the way we are working, and enables us to position ourselves among digital frontrunners within our industry.鈥�

Digital platforms are core to supplier relationships

Acknowledging that no business does business alone, Tiernan said that Stockland鈥檚 deep supplier relationship management strategy is foundational to customer centricity.

鈥淚f you don鈥檛 partner with best-in-breed, like-minded companies to help deliver premium services to customers you won鈥檛 win,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e have 14 percent market share in residential business鈥ecause we evaluate every step of the customer journey, including supplier choice鈥ou can鈥檛 know your suppliers unless you have deep relationships and are collaborating with them at a very granular level鈥ollaboration is an absolute threshold issue in business today.鈥�

Close gap between DX and business realities

When asked about some of the biggest DX challenges, Akbari discussed the gap between innovation aspirations and reality. He pointed out that while everyone wants simplicity, getting there means answering difficult questions.

鈥淲e asked ourselves if we had the right organisation in place to achieve digital maturity,鈥� he recalled. 鈥淥ther questions were about managing resistance to change, and how to actively support the change management process with tools that were changing the way we work鈥e asked how to build and retain skills over time as innovations like blockchain, IoT, and cloud computing continue [to emerge].鈥�

Akbari also warned organisations not to neglect core details such as infrastructure capabilities, technology integration, and resultant business process changes.

鈥淥ften the business comes up with a good idea, but we鈥檙e not ready yet,鈥� he said. 鈥淔or example, AR had to be integrated into the environment鈥ou also have to consider operational maturity鈥s a global gas and oil company, we have different maturity levels of all assets, and have to map where we are for each asset, and how we will achieve that automation level. 鈥�

Sustainability is much more than climate change

While ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) demands tend to emphasize climate change, O’Rourke urged companies to consider all aspects of sustainability, including diversity.

鈥淓veryone talks about climate change, but that鈥檚 just about the environment. To do business successfully鈥ou鈥檙e going to have to be very balanced in the E, S, and G of ESG,鈥� he said. 鈥淓veryone is focused on net zero carbon, and rightly so. But we can鈥檛 do that in isolation鈥e have to jump on [behaviour change] proactively to get suppliers to work with us in a way allows us to operate effectively. On the diversity side, business has been playing lip service for so long, and needs to get serious about focusing on this change.鈥�

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鈥淐ompanies that recognize the role of technology in transforming their business models are the ones that have been able to thrive,鈥� said Chris Willcocks, head of intelligent spend management at 麻豆原创 ANZ. 鈥淐ustomers are focused on driving visibility in their supply chains and through their data, becoming an agile , increasing the resilience of their functions in business, and identifying and reducing risk.鈥�

Intelligent enterprises innovate with business networks

Speaking with Baber Farooq, senior vice president of intelligent spend management at 麻豆原创, during the event, Willcocks gave the virtual audience a glimpse into the future of procurement. It鈥檚 built on insights from quality data across supply chains, bringing buyers much closer to their suppliers. Noting that procurement doesn鈥檛 exist in a vacuum, Willcocks said that collaborative business networks are foundational to digital transformation.

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e connected not only to your suppliers, but to your customers and their customers, you make the move to being an intelligent enterprise,鈥� he said.

Autonomous procurement for intelligent spend

Just when the world needs to boost productivity to recover from the worldwide pandemic, markets are facing potentially dire shortages of both goods and labor. The answer lies in intelligent procurement where people do the things that machines cannot replicate.

鈥淧rocurement is at the heart of solving these [productivity] problems,鈥� said Farooq. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why we鈥檙e focused on automating more and more processes 鈹� what we call autonomous procurement. Intelligent spend is finding out what machines can do and letting machines do that, and getting people to focus on the things that people do, which is establishing strategic relationships with suppliers.鈥�

Digitalized procurement translates to business innovation

In digitalizing forecasting, inventory management, and other collaboration points between buyers and suppliers, business networks have profoundly changed procurement. Teams have the time to be more productive, which translates to innovation.

鈥淚 was talking to an automotive customer who said that over 90 percent of the innovation they have in their cars came from their suppliers,鈥� said Farooq. 鈥淎nother customer in Asia recently launched an initiative where they used the 麻豆原创 business network supporting the goal of paying all suppliers within seven days. The network allows you to foster that amazing relationship with the supplier because everything is digital鈥eople can do what they do best, which is driving relationships and working on innovation.鈥�

Farooq challenged the audience to ask themselves, despite all the technological innovations the world has experienced in the past decade, if they had more time today for their work than they did 10 years ago.

鈥淭echnology has come about to make people more productive, but it has to get out of the way,鈥� he said.

鈥淭he heart of AI is to make businesses more effective鈥f we can make procurement organizations more productive, procurement organizations can make their entire business more productive, becoming a strategic advisor to the C-suite.鈥�

As for those organizations that regret not digitalizing fast enough to head off the worst business impacts from this pandemic, it鈥檚 not too late to prepare now for the next supply chain disruptions headed our way soon.

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But what if you could also run machine learning models in something as small as a golf ball dimple? That鈥檚 the reality that鈥檚 being enabled by TinyML, a broad movement to run tiny machine learning algorithms on embedded devices, or those with extremely low power requirements.

Heavy hitters such as Google, Qualcomm, and ARM recognise TinyML鈥檚 potential to transform the way we think about machine learning. It subverts the premise that ML is inherently power hungry and resource intensive, requiring swathes of cloud-hosted processing power to run anything remotely useful.

Read the full article on . Join the

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This year鈥檚 event saw entries from 13 different teams, most of them from Australia and New Zealand, as well as India, Japan and Indonesia. Each team was tasked with building an intelligent but practical solution to challenges the world is facing. The theme of the hackathon, 鈥淭he Evolution of Work鈥�, focused on the changing working landscape not only off the back of the COVID pandemic. It was also about how technology (AI/ML and Automation to name a few) is changing the working landscape, how we reskill people and how people will interact with technology and colleagues in the ever-evolving workplace of the future.

Teams also had to work and collaborate digitally, stretching the Hackathon鈥檚 duration to a two-week sprint that saw members of the partner ecosystem work together to solve real-world challenges faced by 麻豆原创 and Microsoft customers 鈥� particularly as both brands are committed to simplifying and streamlining the customer journey through .

And the winner is鈥�

Third place went to Team Still Viral from DXC Technology with their solution, Parkman, which used artificial intelligence and machine learning to help drivers park more efficiently while assisting parking rangers in their work.

A vehicle鈥檚 onboard camera is used to capture real-time data of license plates, sending this information to Azure for further processing. Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Event Grid, Azure Block Storage, and Azure Functions process the license plate data to send a text-based event to (BTP),聽 with being used to check the records for the same vehicles from previous patrols submitted by different parking rangers.

Combining this data with location-based parking rules, Parkman can detect differences and issues (such as overparking), sending a message directly to the vehicle’s stereo and heads up display, which is powered by 麻豆原创鈥檚 BTP web application. This feature can also be used for drivers trying to understand the parking rules of a specific area or spot.

Parkman can also connect with other public services, such as finding a license plate being looked for by Crime Stoppers, and automatically forwards a message to them with the relevant data. Further assistance for parking rangers is provided through voice activation supported by , which can communicate to them the parking rules and incidents in their vicinity, either via in-car stereo or smart device.

Thomas Yuan from team 鈥楽till Viral鈥� explained that how the first version of Parkman was developed in 2013. However, he found it was too expensive to upload mobile video data back then. He was thrilled to revisit this idea today with a dramatically different outcome as 麻豆原创 and Microsoft allowed him and his team to explore its potential through intelligent technology solutions.

Second place was awarded to Team BourneHack from Bourne Digital for TakeOff 鈥� an onboarding system that was demonstrated through a video of animated character 鈥楬olly鈥� starting her first day at a hybrid workplace.

Holly immediately received her company device with all software downloaded and ready for use, which included all account logins autogenerated by Azure. The focus of TakeOff is to guide and support new workers through the onboarding process, particularly as new-starts handle the challenges of beginning a new role remotely.

New employees, like Holly, are automatically guided through the onboarding process with simple steps that are also accessible via mobile app. TakeOff also includes an interactive organisation chart so Holly can navigate the team structure, understanding the names and roles of her new colleagues.

If faced with any issues or questions, TakeOff provides employees with a support centre and chatbot. This chatbot also acts as a tour guide in TakeOff鈥檚 virtual office AR induction, which is powered by Microsoft HoloLens. This intelligent function means employees can familiarise themselves with the office layout and explore it in a 3D-rendered environment so they鈥檙e comfortable with the layout once they get to the physical office.

According to Team BourneHack representative, Julia Leong, the whole team are passionate about the onboarding experience particularly as businesses strive to create a good first impression that helps attract and retain new talent during the challenges of the pandemic.

The winner of the 2021 麻豆原创 and Microsoft ANZ Hackathon was Team Aztecs from Capgemini, who produced an Upskilling Kiosk to assist those whose jobs were lost or rendered obsolete during the pandemic outbreak.

Operating in India, Team Aztecs understood first-hand how AI and the global pandemic are greatly impacting on employment and redundancies. The team highlighted studies that show the value in upskilling and reskilling staff compared to rehiring, seeing this as an opportunity to provide more resources and support to vulnerable workers.

Team Aztec noted two key upskilling challenges 鈥� skill development programs rarely direct focus on outcomes while training is generally through reading or video lectures, leading to trainees missing out on real world experience. The focus of Team Aztec was to bridge this gap with intelligent technology.

Using the digital Upskilling Kiosk, users answered a series of questions through an AI-powered chatbot. The kiosk then recommended a relevant learning journey based on each employee鈥檚 answers and experience. The platform can also show trainees what kinds of internal jobs they can apply for in the future.

The chatbot acts like a program manager, calculating utilisations, booking meetings, and offering guidance to trainees. Not only are they provided with scenario-based testing through AI, but trainees can access dashboards, reports, and analytics to closely monitor their learning journey and understand what skills are valued in the job market.

Team Aztec representative, Sayan Pal said the motivation behind this development was the common challenge many faced during COVID 鈥� upskill or be made redundant. Sayan noted that the project wasn鈥檛 just about reskilling people but offering them visibility around their training and development, which can lead to new opportunities and prevent employees from losing their jobs in an ever-changing talent marketplace.

A special thanks to all our participants, judges, and mentors. Your efforts made 麻豆原创 and Microsoft Innovation Hackathon #2聽 an exciting competition that brought real-world solutions to the common challenges many businesses and individuals face.

To learn more about the Hackathon, this year鈥檚 winners, or to register your interest in upcoming Hackathons, reach out to on Linkedin.

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But much of innovation stems from finding exciting new applications of existing, and in some cases ancient, concepts to provide new sources of value.

Take a product that (until 2020 and the decline in business travel) many of us used on a regular basis 鈥� the roller suitcase. We鈥檝e all had to transport these up and downstairs or from the overhead bin, wondering how anyone managed to carry suitcases without wheels any reasonable distance 鈥� but that must have been a long time ago, right?

In fact, the 鈥渞ollaboard鈥� travel bag was only invented in 1987, by a pilot who saw the opportunity to improve luggage for airline staff & frequent flyers. The oldest 鈥渢echnology鈥� 鈥� wheels, being added to a suitcase seems obvious now, but it was only a few decades ago that it was applied by someone who saw the design issue and business opportunity in adding these to luggage.

In a more recent example, technologies such as GPS location, first developed for military use, have been fused with power management technologies to now power mapping and exercise tracking applications for everyday consumers.

If we look at even older 鈥渢echnology鈥� being applied to solve new design challenges, the topic of biomimicry emerges 鈥� the field of leveraging solutions that have evolved in the natural world and applying these to new design challenges. A famous example is modeling bullet train noses on the shape of bird beaks, reducing noise and potential damage at high speeds by borrowing aerodynamic designs which evolved over millions of years.

In the digital transformation space, the application of concepts from one industry to another is a great source of innovation.

In the case of 麻豆原创, our work with the world鈥檚 largest pharmaceutical companies in ensuring vaccine production is tracked throughout the cold chain is being considered for how grocery chains may track and communicate the source of different produce types to customers.

Innovations in the eXtended Reality space are leveraging smartphone technology to assist in industrial training processes, while our supply chain and business network solutions are being leveraged to help with bridging online product searches and bricks and mortar pickup locations.

Our Industry4.Now strategy supports the development of intelligent processes & products, initially for the discrete and process industries with respect to supply chains and manufacturing operations. Many of these concepts are also highly relevant to industries such as mining and power utilities, with 麻豆原创 taking learnings and reapplying these to work with our customers to solve new business issues.

By having deep business process expertise across all major industries, 麻豆原创 has developed solutions for specific business and technical challenges that can be applied in different contexts for our customers.

Through leveraging offerings such as the , companies can deploy these different solutions, tailored to their processes, incredibly quickly yet in a secure and compliant manner.

Our innovation teams are available and ready to work with your business to explore these exciting new applications, and how different technologies can be used to address different business issues.

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The award recognises customers and partners who have driven a positive economic, environmental and social impact.

麻豆原创 ANZ today announced federal government agency, , energy retailer, , and integrated oil and gas provider , have won at . The global awards recognise the achievements customers and partners have driven to solve complex business challenges that create a positive economic, environmental and social impact.

In this year鈥檚 awards, there were a record 376 submissions across 27 industries, from airlines to wholesalers鈥� a 44 per cent increase over last year. 20 winners were selected from a list of 70 finalists representing seven categories:聽Social Catalyst,聽Industry Leader,聽Transformation Champion,聽Business Innovator,聽Cloud Genius,聽Adoption Superhero, and聽Partner Paragon.

With three out of 20 winners from Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), it is the most successful year for companies from ANZ since the awards began in 2016. Previous winners from the region include and in 2018; and in 2019; and received an Honourable Mention in 2020.

AGL, OMV and Services Australia were selected for projects that included major overhauls to employee experience, inspection and maintenance activities, and streamlining welfare payments:

AGL

As one of Australia’s leading energy companies offering electricity, gas, solar and renewable energy services, AGL sought to provide its employees with the same user experience of its customers following consolidation of its back-end systems in 2018. Its objective was to digitally enable its employees and provide them with greater mobility and a faster mobile user experience for actioning Purchase Orders, reporting safety issues, completing workplace safety assessments, booking workspaces in the office and booking leave. Its aim was to increase employee satisfaction and engagement across the board by making employees鈥� work lives easier and more efficient. AGL partnered with Bourne Digital to create the world-first AGL One iOS app, which utilises 麻豆原创 Integration Suite and 麻豆原创 Extension Suite to bring together its employee network into a single digital experience. By using the app, the business now has one approvals aggregator to manage approvals from 50+ systems, one app to manage multiple applications system-wide and one login for app access. For more information, see .

OMV New Zealand

OMV New Zealand is one of the largest liquid hydrocarbon and gas producers and is a major explorer in several offshore basins around New Zealand. Previously, the planning and execution of its onshore and offshore inspections was an intensely paper-heavy process using mark-ups, instructions, isometrics and piping and instrumentation drawings. This created significant data redundancy across multiple systems. In partnership with Evora IT solutions, it implemented an integrated workflow management using 麻豆原创 Plant Maintenance, 麻豆原创 Intelligent Asset Management Suite, 麻豆原创 Asset Manager and HoloLens 2. This enabled staff to create a smart digital twin, using an interactive environment through augmented reality (AR+) to assist with planning and execution of inspection and maintenance activities. Since implementation, the business has reduced planning time and back-office work by 25 per cent, reduced costs by 10 per cent and reduced work execution time by using new technologies by 30 per cent. For more information, see .

Services Australia

Services Australia is the federal government agency responsible for delivering support services and payments for health, social and welfare. While its previous payments platform, met the needs of the department, its staff needed a more modern, extensible and agile solution that would enable them to rapidly enact new policy proposals. To support its digital transformation, the agency embarked on a seven-year program designed to transform the delivery of its welfare payments and services called Welfare Payments Infrastructure Transformation (WPIT) based on 麻豆原创 Public Sector Collection and Disbursement (PSCD) on 麻豆原创 S/4HANA. The platform, which leveraged machine learning and advanced and augmented analytics, has streamlined payments, standardised business processes and allowed for increased automation, enabling staff to improve how they process and distribute payments. Since implementation, staff have been able to disperse $3.5 billion in social benefits across 5.38 million payments. It is also enabling faster processing times with staff able to process half a million payments within five minutes.

Notably, at the height of COVID-19, staff distributed urgent relief payments worth more than $1 million within four days to 1,400 Victorians who required emergency support to isolate and quarantine. It also distributed more than $1.2 million in one-off stimulus payments to 5,000 people experiencing hardship in the Australian Capital Territory. For more information, see .

Damien Bueno, President and Managing Director 麻豆原创 ANZ says, 鈥淭hese awards recognise the remarkable achievements of our customers and partners who are solving complex business challenges to drive improved business outcomes and better experiences for employees and customers 鈥� a big congratulations to AGL, OMV NZ and Services Australia. The ingenuity, teamwork and innovation reflected by the winners of this year鈥檚 awards demonstrates the positive impact of technology in not only improving people鈥檚 lives but revolutionising how we work across many industries. We would like to thank all our customers who participated in this year鈥檚 competition鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 fantastic to see so many organisations from our region represented in the global awards, which underlines that Australian and Kiwi companies punch above their weight when it comes to using innovative technologies to solve business problems.鈥�

To see the full list of global winners, visit the

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