BusinessCloud’s inaugural UK Business Tech Awards are set for November and will recognise the individuals and businesses who are making the most impact in the world of technology.
Every day we are highlighting a different category ahead of a glitzy ceremony at London’s Montcalm Marble Arch on November 20.
There will be 18 gongs up for grabs including Tech for Good, with five finalists shortlisted by our stellar line-up of judges: BCRemit, Cognitive Rehabilitation in Dementia, Crisp Thinking, Lightful and StarLeaf.
We profile them below. Tickets are available at the Business Tech Awards website.
Anyone interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact [email protected].
The judging panel included David Hardman, MBE, managing director of Innovation Birmingham; Louize Clarke, co-founder, ConnectTVT; Elizabeth Clark, CEO, Dream Agility; former director of Tech North Richard Gregory; Tom Cheesewright, founder of Applied Futurism Practice; former Vodafone exec Rob Mukherjee, director of Greater Sport; Chris Dymond, director, Sheffield Digital; and Scott Henderson, managing director of Jumpstart.
TECH FOR GOOD AWARD SHORTLIST
BCRemit is bringing money transfer and related services online for the benefit of migrants worldwide. Its main objective is to disrupt the money remittance industry by making it cheaper, more convenient and secure for migrants to transfer money.
Migrant workers are burdened by the high transfer fees charged by banks and other remittance companies. BCRemit’s proprietary technology and unique process allows it to provide transfer fees that are as much as 90 per cent lower compared to those charged by traditional players.
So far it has processed more than $14 million of transactions and is averaging more than 15 per cent monthly growth. Already cash positive, it is looking to expand to the rest of the European Union in 2019.
It also goes beyond money transfer by offering relevant value-added services such as bills payment, mobile top-up and even fast food delivery to create a ‘marketplace’ for migrant workers.
Cognitive Rehabilitation in Dementia
In 2017, NHS Education for Scotland appointed Connect to design, build and launch a dedicated mobile app to be used by frontline healthcare staff in Scotland. The ‘Cognitive Rehabilitation in Dementia’ app supports people in the early stages of dementia.
It allows staff to use cognitive strategies to meet rehabilitation goals, providing them with access to information on-the-go from any location.
The app features two distinct sections: ‘Learn’ and ‘Rehabilitation’. The ‘Learn’ section provides information on cognition and cognitive impairment, and the interactive ‘Rehabilitation’ section guides healthcare staff through the process of cognitive rehabilitation.
It provides up-to-date information on the different types of dementia and their presenting problems; a guide detailing rehabilitation strategies and a guide detailing the stages of assessment; provides staff with the ability to set goals, upload worksheets and securely export them; offers links to relevant resources; and collects demographic data for research purposes.
Crisp Thinking protects brands, advertisers and kids’ platforms from brand-damaging, toxic and illegal content posted by users online. Crisp is a cutting-edge online safety company whose service protects millions of people online every single day.
Crisp achieves this through its proprietary AI, which works in combination with its expert risk analyst teams to detect, analyse and act on toxic user-generated content, ranging from sexual grooming and hate speech, to reputation-damaging PR issues, security threats and co-ordinated attacks, 24/7 and in over 50 languages.
This toxic content all has real-life impact on people’s jobs, lives and wellbeing, so its technology is our first defence to ensuring that no harmful content slips through for the public’s viewing.
Starting out with just a handful of people in 2005, it now employs 100+ innovative thinkers and has risk analyst contractors around the globe. Its services are used by some of the biggest kids’ brands in the world and it works closely with governments and law enforcement agencies to ensure the latest techniques being used by these bad actors are shared across all parties.
Lightful is a technology company for social good, helping charities and beyond-profits get the most out of technology. It has built a social media management platform that is designed for good causes by people who work with good causes.
The platform integrates Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all in one place to enable charities and social enterprises to effectively plan, create and manage their social media content, improve supporter relationships and build campaigns from a single intuitive dashboard. It allows them to become more strategic with social media, organising their content and using best practice to tell their stories in the most effective way.
Sitting alongside the platform is Lightful Labs, a full-service creative technology consultancy that helps beyond-profits transform how they do digital. It builds bespoke technology solutions (e.g. community portals, donation pages for digital fundraising campaigns etc) for clients including London’s Air Ambulance, The Big Give and Frontline to help them scale their impact. Lightful is also trialling experiential technology including artificial intelligence, machine learning, bots and voice recognition to discover the best ways to help charities succeed with innovative and audacious ideas.
The social media fundraising platform has already attracted more than 4,300 sign-ups from charities, individuals and beyond-profits. The firm has raised £4m in Series A funding, one of the largest amounts raised in the tech-for-good space in the UK, with the support of several high-profile backers such as Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti, among others.
Reaching a large telecoms, water company or financial services institution is frustrating at the best of times – and is made worse by the use of IVRs (interactive voice response) computers that interact with people when they call customer service departments. If you are deaf it can even more difficult – and sometimes impossible – to resolve issues using this process.
Sign Solutions, a specialist provider of British Sign Language interpreting services, is using StarLeaf’s advanced video communication technology to help providers and their deaf customers communicate in real-time whether using a smartphone, tablet or PC.
The Click-to-Call service offered by Sign Solutions runs on StarLeaf’s cloud-based video conferencing service and allows secure and high-quality video conferencing calls with clear audio, between small or large groups of people from any location around the world at the click of a mouse or the touch of a button.
The Click-to-Call service is also now used by NHS Trusts and services, due to its easy-to-use interface and the high level of encryption and security. When a deaf patient turns up unexpectedly at A&E, the tech can communicate symptoms immediately to the clinical staff, for example. Big-name brands such as Virgin Media, EE, Anglian Water, The Ombudsman and Three have also embedded the technology into their consumer-facing websites.