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The 10 most innovative technology companies

An instant payment gateway is the winner of the technology innovation prize.

Mark EggletonContributor

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The AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies list recognises the most innovative organisations in Australia and New Zealand, as judged by the expert panel assembled by The Australian Financial Review and Inventium. The assessment methodology is outlined here.

In 2020, the list has been split into 10 industry-specific categories. These are the top 10 innovations in the technology category.

1. Split Payments

Innovation: Instant Account Verification

Number of employees: 30-99

Split Payments uses a modern computing interface called Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to make it easier for businesses to submit individual payments.

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According to the company’s co-founder, Adrian Kennedy, Split is the world's first open banking, real-time settlement payments platform.

Split Payments is the world's first open banking, real-time settlement payments platform.

Split Payments Is the world's first open banking, real-time settlement payments platform. iStock

Kennedy says a real-time payment scheme is the ability to make an account-to-account bank transfer in real time. So instead of it being through a traditional file exchange, it actually goes through an almost instant payment gateway which confirms the availability of funds and the honouring of that payment.

He says where the company really adds value is “we have instant account verification which enables us to confirm who the person is and that they have actual access to the bank account in question which reduces bank account fraud”.

Instant Account Verification allows customers to verify their account details with 100 per cent data accuracy using Open Banking connections and consent to "available funds pre-checks" before processing direct debit payments.

Winner of the Best Innovation in the Technology category and the Most Innovative Technology organisation.

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2. Property exchange Australia

Innovation: PEXA Key

Number of employees: 100-499

PEXA Key is an encrypted app that provides a simpler, more secure way for property buyers and sellers to track the status of their property settlement.

At present, lawyers and conveyancers use email to regularly communicate with their clients. In a property settlement, these emails can include highly sensitive information, such as bank account details. These details are a ripe target for scammers who can intercept emails between lawyers, conveyancers and their clients to misdirect settlement funds, causing huge emotional and financial distress.

With PEXA Key, home sellers can enter their account details in an encrypted app and have them populated securely and directly into the PEXA file the practitioner has opened for their transaction.

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PEXA Key has helped secure Australian real estate transactions valued at more than $3.4 billion for 35,000 home buyers and sellers, preventing phishing attempts and securing home buyers and sellers in what is often their most import purchase.

3. Nuheara

Innovation: IQbuds² MAX

Number of employees: 30-99

Combining high-end headset features with sophisticated hearing technology, Nuheara’s range of smart hearing buds, including its third-generation IQbuds² MAX, provide affordable hearing enhancement. They are ideal for people who are not quite ready for a hearing aid but need some help hearing.

With the IQbuds² MAX, Nuheara has developed a high-quality headset that delivers personalised hearing amplification, customised location controls, and the ability to focus on speech in noise, combined with the audio quality including active noise cancellation and connectivity you would expect from a high-end headset.

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According to Nuheara chief executive and co-founder, Justin Miller, IQbuds² MAX delivers personalisation to your ears which hasn’t been done before.

4. InfoTrack Pty Ltd

Innovation: Video WebVOI – A Remote Verification of Identity Solution

Number of employees: 100-499

WebVOI is an online identity verification platform that allows lawyers to complete verification of identities easily and accurately to the same standard every time. It provides lawyers with a solution that protects the private information of their client while ensuring their client is who they say they are.

A lawyer’s client uploads their identity document, for example a driver's licence, which is checked for consistency against government databases. The client then takes a photograph of themselves and facial recognition technology matches the photograph to identity documentation. Finally, video verification technology asks the client to video themselves speaking a randomly generated code in real time.

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Infotrack’s chief executive John Ahern says the SaaS-driven platform reduces the risk for lawyers and helps reduce fraud as well, while obviously freeing up more time for them to service client needs. Interestingly, COVID-19 has accelerated the uptake of the technology and Infotrack is now doing more than 2000 identity verifications a day.

5. Alcidion Group

Innovation: Miya Precision

Number of employees: 100-499

Miya Precision is an AI-powered clinical decision support platform that can detect emerging risks in real time. Miya takes in data from all sorts of systems across healthcare organisations, from electronic health records and diagnostic systems such as pharmacy and cardiology to consumer wearables such as the Apple Watch.

If a patient receives a lab test result that shows that their kidney function is worsening, Miya can trigger an algorithm to work out what might have caused the problem based on a patient’s condition and medications or that works out how urgently the clinical team need to respond or how long the patient may stay in hospital.

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Miya Precision takes all this data and provides recommendations – “doctor should be notified” – and pushes those out to a smartphone device in real time.

Miya Precision supports the care of about 1.85 million patients and will be actively deployed in the UK in the coming months.

6. Citadel Technology Solutions

Innovation: AVAssist

Number of employees: 30-99

AVAssist is the first video-based audio-visual technical support application allowing users to receive expert help with just a single click. It is a trusted advisory service that connects users with an experienced technician without the expense of an on-site visit.

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And with so many Australians relying on video-conferencing technologies in the aftermath of COVID, AVAssist gives subscribers a quick, simple way to connect in real-time with a technician to discuss a problem and, if needed, show the environment using a smartphone camera.

It is currently the only application that provides instant video support for AV/VC issues from an Australian-based support centre and is easily deployable across organisations of all sizes.

7. LEAP Dev

Innovation: LEAP Working From Home Integrations

Number of employees: 100-499

LEAP Dev is making it easier for the legal profession to work from home and has developed Microsoft Teams and FaceTime integrations which allow lawyers to send links to documents or matters for peers to action via Teams or simply make a call via FaceTime which are all automatically saved and recorded to their electronic matter.

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Further integrations with Apple Watch and Alexa Skill make time tracking simple and accurate. The company says LEAP Dev's innovation has made lawyer's transition to working remotely much simpler.

8. TrafficGuard

Innovation: TrafficGuard Pay-Per-Click Protection

Number of employees: 30-99

In the world of marketing where advertisers can’t always be sure their marketing message is being read by a human or a “bot”, TrafficGuard's pay-per-click protection integrates directly with Google Ads to identify invalid traffic, exclude them from clicking and ensure businesses are not paying for fraudulent clicks to their website.

TrafficGuard uses machine learning to create a session score on each individual click based on the user's behaviour and uses this to determine whether that IP address should be excluded.

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According to the company, Pay-Per-Click protection has an average return on investment of over 28 times based on the estimated savings for 400+ organisations using TrafficGuard on their Google ads campaigns.

9. BGL Corporate Solutions

Innovation: BGL SmartDocs

Number of employees: 100-499

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BGL SmartDocs provides a simple-to-use solution to importing transaction data from documents. Clients can scan documents via their mobile phone and SmartDocs will extract, categorise and link all transactions to their original document.

More than 60 clients have used SmartDocs to input more than 250,000 transactions. This has reduced the time taken to input transactions by 60-70 per cent while also reducing the error rate from 6 per cent to below 1 per cent.

10. AutoGuru

Innovation: Mobility Mechanics –scale up and automation

Number of employees: 30-99

AutoGuru's Mobile Mechanics service was forced to scale up and automate to cope with the impact of COVID-19. Mobile Mechanics went from 14 to 118 in two weeks and a new booking system was required to allow their higher operating cost traditional mechanics to compete with the low-cost mobile service providers.

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AutoGuru's ability to pivot in a matter of weeks saw their bookings per supplier rebound to normal levels by May while also enabling their mobile mechanics to enjoy a 355 per cent increase in mobile service bookings.

A centralised hub for identifying people digitally

Co-founder of Split Payments Adrian Kennedy says the company is focused on being the first payments company in the world to initiate a guaranteed payment.

He says there are three pillars in achieving that goal with the first being able to instantly identify the client “and we're working at the moment with EFTPOS who have a product called connectID”.

ConnectID will basically be a centralised hub for identifying people digitally.

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Kennedy says once people have been identified, the second pillar is obtaining their consent to proceed and the third pillar is eliminating settlement risk, which is where the real-time payments piece comes in.

Putting it all together means saying to a merchant “we've identified the person who's making this payment and linked that person to a bona-fide bank account in their name, obtained their consent and authorisation for the payment, and finally confirmed that the funds have actually been settled all in one frictionless process”.

“We believe that we can deliver that across all realms of payments, not just e-commerce payments, but also recurring payments such as bill payments and the like,” Kennedy says.

Speaking about fostering an innovation culture, Kennedy says it is a mindset – a cornerstone of an egalitarian, respectful and collaborative culture.

He says it’s about ensuring people take genuine ownership of a product or idea and listen to the customers to create solutions that are fixing real problems.

Pain points

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Understanding customer pain points also drives innovation at legal technology firm Infotrack, says chief executive John Ahern.

“It's a really simple approach to innovation at InfoTrack and that’s understanding what issues or what problems your customers have,” Ahern says.

“What our people do is spend time in a law firm, understand the problems the firm's having and then connecting the two together.

“Furthermore, the second key ingredient (in creating an innovation culture) is diversity. I've been in the software game long enough to know that if you've got a team that's not diverse, you get no innovation.

“If you're running a software company anywhere in the world, and you've got no innovative ideas, it's usually because you've got no diversity or you're not speaking to your clients,” Ahern concludes.

Mark Eggleton writes and compiles special reports for The Australian Financial Review. Email Mark at meggleton@afr.com.au

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