Smart 100 2012

Proving that smart, solid ideas can more than hold their own against flashy ones, BuildingIQ takes home the third spot overall in the 2012 SMART 100 for an innovation with immense relevance: a management system for optimising energy consumption in commercial spaces. The BuildingIQ EMS, which grew into fruition through years of research at CSIRO, takes care of two important elements of energy management at once. First, it supplements the standard building management system by monitoring energy usage based on weather and room temperature. Second, it adjusts these settings as necessary to strike a balance between efficient consumption and human comfort.

Innogence was repeatedly asked to develop solutions for customers that ensured the data on which they were reporting was accurate and up to date. With the explosion of data volumes and the speed increases in which data can now be accessed it was increasingly critical that the data was accurate. Upon developing a solution that appeared to have a significant need by organisations, Innogence developed the solution into a product that can be rapidly implemented to meet organisations' needs.

We looked at the coupon systems used by companies such as Groupon that are bad for customers as they risk not being able to redeem an offer that has been fully paid for, and also bad for merchants as they do not get paid for unredeemed coupons which are kept by the group-buying site. We have removed the risk from both parties while keeping a revenue stream from the website.

We built a cloud-based online training platform to give the experience of being guided through social media platforms in real time. This was technically difficult, since we wanted users to experience the real technologies, not a video reproduction. After a lot of trial and error, we had it: an online training software with a video guide and an interactive window. We took it to clients, but they wanted the software, not the course.

Following my 23 years in graphic design and illustration, I was searching for something new but not alien to my background. An interior designer friend suggested I study at her school to learn interior decorating and thus create artworks for designers based upon the rules of interior design. I did this and later the colour psychology course and from this I started the business.

A media executive, having sold his media agency to a global conglomerate, and a senior marketing executive from a multinational FMCG organisation saw an opportunity to add an innovative, aligned service to the marketing services industry. Tired of advertising "guff", the founders take a portion of risk in a business for whom they work and therefore focus first and foremost on the most effective client outcomes.

CEO Craig Deveson is a cloud computing specialist and serial entrepreneur. This is his second cloud-based business and it aims to deliver enterprise services at consumer prices. The innovation came to life last last year when a security software idea was forged with a cloud computing architecture then aimed at the very popular WordPress market.

As an ex-financial planner, clients were constantly asking me for help with managing their everyday money, and nothing was available. Budgets failed to address the problems. The purpose of this innovation is to show people how to eliminate their debts in the fastest possible manner, saving wasted interest and valuable time.

CLebLabs will run inside all JANSTONAPPS including the Vinciazee Mother and Baby release for the Vincigenius device. Apart from music and experimentation with sound, there are therapeutic uses in rehabilitation for those with brain damage or various brain disorders, as well as creating perfect relative pitch hearing in babies.

Jordan and Alex Knight, brothers from Bendigo in regional Victoria, left their employed positions to work in their area of interest without creative limitations: developing applications on new and cutting-edge technologies. As solution architects, graphic and user-experience designers, developers and Microsoft MVPs, we identified that as a small-scale operation we could effectively produce exciting applications with exceptional hands-on customer service to deliver high-quality and rapid solutions.

Clients were unable to select from a promotional flash drive product that best suited their particular needs. In our quest to provide clients with a product that meets their needs specifically, we expanded the capability of our team members to include custom tooling as well as design capabilities to create a flash drive that can be customised in shape.

We saw that government was responding to social media risks by shutting down and adding bureaucratic approval processes that destroy the conversational spirit of services like Twitter. When we heard they had a Twitter committee that would meet once a week to approve tweets we knew we had to do something. Our idea was to add a simple time delay to social media updates, just like a live TV broadcast.

I heard of the devastation caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I realised that I had the skills and opportunity to make a positive difference in similar future catastrophes and set about creating a telecommunications system that could operate without relying on large, expensive and easily damaged infrastructure. My vision has attracted a talented, passionate and dedicated team, who are now turning it into reality.

Yellowfin’s new application aims to differentiate the company from the dryness and complexity of other BI vendors by delivering a consumer-oriented mobile application for business analytics. Why? Because analyst firm Gartner states that ease-of-use is now the most important factor in any BI solution, but TDWI research shows that user adoption rates – the number of people within an organisation who actually use BI software on a regular basis to help make business decisions – are low.

Our Operations team wanted to become more proactive with leak detection from our water main network in order to a) minimise non-revenue water; b) minimise customer disruptions/frustration; c) minimise repair/reinstatement costs for water main bursts; and d) gain greater understanding of the water network (i.e. make it smarter).

I discovered that there was a way of giving people who experienced financial difficulty a way to declare bankrupt, to become annulled from bankruptcy within six months. However the "innovation" is giving the client their life back and a clear credit rating as if the bankruptcy never happened or existed in the first place.

As a digital solutions company, we noticed several similarities in our clients' requirements even when they belonged to different industry sectors. They had full-service agency needs, needed to be trained and had comprehensive delivery requirements but low budgets. We built a service package from scratch that could provide all these services but in a process-driven system at a price that they could afford.

We admit that some of our maven judges are known to use salty language the way Lady Gaga uses animal products in costumes, to which we can only add: try reviewing a hundred inventions in one week and see how well you behave under pressure. Other businesses may not be so forgiving of personnel indiscretions. Which is where Bleeply enters in. If you've ever tweeted something -- especially at work -- that you immediately came to regret, you'll appreciate what this fifth-place SMART 100 innovation brings to the table.

Over a period of some 10 years, I wrote sales copy for product vendors. I saw that most vendors require professional quality copy, but don't have the budget for it. Instead, they write it themselves or don't use copy at all. In late 2010, I came up with an idea for automating the creation of property descriptions for real estate agents and vehicle sales copy for car dealers.

The purpose Campaign Social is to give creative and media agencies, as well as corporations and organisations, the ability to develop their own promotions and campaigns on Facebook. It does this by offering a cloud-based digital platform, allowing users to build their own Facebook campaigns, without needing technical knowledge (i.e. coding).