2012 Consensus Awards Put Australian and New Zealand Innovation Centre Stage
SYDNEY, 9 November 2012: Four outstanding technology companies have been named winners of the 2012 Consensus Awards, celebrating Australian and New Zealand innovators developing technology with the potential to transform industries and compete on the world stage.
The awards were presented at the Amora Jamison Hotel in Sydney on Wednesday, 9 November, by The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Minister for Communications & Broadband, bringing together members of the technology and business community to recognise some of the region's most exciting software innovation.
The 2012 Consensus Award winners were:
Astute Payroll — astutepayroll.com
Sentient Software Limited — Sentient PPM
Arrow Research Corporation — Tencia
TestPro Pty Ltd — TestPro Automation Framework (TAF PRO)
While the four winners are solving very different problems, each demonstrated the combination of innovation, commercial potential and practical value that sits at the heart of the Consensus Awards.
Astute Payroll was recognised for its cloud-based payroll solution purpose-built for the recruitment industry. The business had averaged 150% growth in each of the previous four years, with its platform already processing more than $1.25 billion in wages and expenses by 2011.
New Zealand's Sentient Software Limited received an award for Sentient PPM, its cloud-based enterprise project portfolio management platform. Already being used by organisations including Telstra, Foster's Group, Jetstar and Vodafone, Sentient was preparing to take its technology into further international markets, including plans to enter the United States in 2013.
Melbourne-based Arrow Research Corporation was recognised for Tencia, its Australian-developed accounting and business management platform for small and medium-sized businesses. With an established customer base of approximately 3,000 businesses and a sales and support channel of 40 partners, Tencia was designed as a platform capable of supporting Arrow's continued expansion into markets across Asia and Europe.
TestPro Pty Ltd took home an award for the TestPro Automation Framework (TAF PRO), technology designed to dramatically increase the speed of software testing while reducing its cost and making sophisticated automation accessible to both technical and non-technical users.
The quality of this year's field also saw four technologies receive Highly Commended recognition:
Valued Communities Pty Ltd — Paradigm Platform
Ausenco Rylson Pty Ltd — Rylson8
ClearCost Software — ClearCost
Emersion Software Systems — Billing and Provisioning System
A further two technologies were recognised as 2012 finalists: Synercon Group's a.k.a. Software and Holross Systems' IRIS-Marks.
Together, the 2012 winners and recognised finalists demonstrate an increasingly mature Australian and New Zealand technology sector.
These are not simply interesting ideas waiting to find a market.
They are technologies already helping businesses manage billions of dollars in payments, oversee major portfolios of projects, run their financial operations and improve the quality of the software on which modern organisations increasingly depend.
And increasingly, their ambitions extend well beyond Australia and New Zealand.
The 2012 Consensus Awards were endorsed and supported by Austrade, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the Australian Computer Society and the New Zealand Computer Society.
Cliftons, TiE and Alinement supported the awards as Program Partners, with Wholesale Investor as Media Partner.
With Malcolm Turnbull presenting this year's awards, the evening provided an opportunity not only to recognise four outstanding winners, but to celebrate the growing strength, ambition and commercial potential of technology being developed across Australia and New Zealand.
The problems may be different.
The industries may be different.
But the common thread is unmistakable: smart people identifying problems worth solving — and building technology capable of solving them.