Irish Australian Business Awards Peoples Choice 2022

iEnergi was started in March 2014 and we are a mechanical services contractor specializing in Air-Conditioning, Hydronic Heating, and Renewable Energy Systems for the residential building market.

iEnergi was started with a plan to make it a commercially profitable enterprise that works without us(myself and business partner Michael). We knew that to do this, we had to be more innovative in the systems and service we provide. We could see from some of the big players in the market that they had common weaknesses such as poor service rating, competing in the bottom price range, unqualified salespeople, poor quality standards, and a limited range of traditional Heating, Ventilation, and Airconditioning (HVAC) systems. We completely flipped the above weaknesses and based our business on providing only the highest levels of innovation, quality, service, and long-term business relationships.

In the early days, we focused on providing the latest technology in HVAC systems and how we document and manage the projects. We made an early decision to embrace cloud technology. We use Xero for our financial management, Dropbox for file storage, Simpro for managing our quoting/project management/invoicing process, and a range of other communication applications. This early day’s innovation allows our employees to work remotely if needed, which really helped through COVID during lockdowns.
 

As the team grew our focus then turned to our people. As technicians turning into business owners, we weren’t sure if our management style was the right way to go about things. We undertook a Diploma in Leadership and Management with LMA. It was a pleasant surprise that our leadership style was congruent with how a modern positive workplace environment should be. This focus on learning has filtered through to the core of iEnergi with 90% of our team upskilling. Our team is currently going through a training program with Release- Hypnotherapy, Leadership, and Coaching to understand ourselves better, break down any limiting beliefs and make us stronger in everything that we do.

We are also big advocates for mental health awareness and are supporters of HALT- Hope Assistance Local Tradies.

Another competitive edge we have is our commitment to business coaching and learning. We have been heavily involved with Peter Wrench business coaching for the past 7 years and after completing the program, our attention has now turned to help other contractors in our industry follow tried and tested business practices.

Why do we deserve this award? Our team has come so far in the last few years and they have excelled through tough times. I constantly remind our team that they are not just training to become better at their role, they are training to become better leaders both in their business and personal life. We don’t just innovate with the systems we install, we innovate with everything we do, the systems, our clients, personal and business development, and how we work with each other as a team. One of our core values is innovation, so this award is for our team.

At Nexia Perth, we’ve built a stand-out reputation amongst our clients and peers for being both an approachable and forward-thinking professional services firm. We’ve carefully chosen our talent; finding a blend of smart and personable people who naturally embrace a culture of looking after the best interests of our clients, at whatever stage they may be in the business cycle.

Our multi-disciplined firm boasts over 90 highly-engaged staff including: business advisory; tax; audit; managed services; corporate advisory; wealth management. Through regular interaction across these disciplines and a genuine team ethic, we’re naturally positioned to help clients through all or just some of the business lifecycle – start-up, growth, maturity, exit.
This integrated ethos is further substantiated by means of our unique “Bridge” model, where members of our team engage and carefully manage specific components along a given business journey.

We’re part of an international network of firms under the Nexia brand, embracing the benefits of the broader network whilst allowing our individual ‘localised’ flavour. This in itself, for example, has enabled us to help many people from the Perth Irish business community where international and country of origin aspects need to be managed equally well.

Our relationship with the Irish business community in Perth is strong. Over the years, we’ve helped many clients of Irish descent achieve great things. We’ve recently completed work on a successful acquisition of one of our clients; we have a member of our team who is on the Board of the IACC (WA); and we’ve hosted and supported IACC (WA) events in our capacity as a corporate member. To cap it off, one of our latest recruits has moved from Castle Bar, County Mayo, to join our existing cohort of Irish-born employees.

Our operational structure is designed to place the client at the centre of everything we do. Our constant research and adoption of cloud technology stood us in good stead during the pandemic, enabling us to be as open and accessible to clients as if they were with us in person. Being long-standing Xero users, we utlise the extensive app ecosystem to help demystify and explain the numbers in a digestible form. In addition, our account management model facilitates even better relationships between the client and our teams.

We believe a key part of the future of professional services firms such as ours is its ability to offer genuine value in the field of Business Advisory. What makes us stand out, is that we treat the important tax and compliance work separately to the Business Advisory support we offer our clients. Our business leaders invest heavily in developing their skills and the toolsets required to raise the bar in this respect. Our offering includes partnering with experienced experts to deliver specific support to meet client requirements. We’ve recently adopted the internationally recognised Mindshop™ resources as further evidence of aspiring to be a leader in this field. Initiatives such as our client ‘Growth Hub’ also demonstrate how we add value to our client relationships.

Maddocks focusses on being a "great place to do great work", bringing together the focus on having a strong culture and a strong client service ethos.

We regularly measure:

- our engagement scores of staff (which is current 89% of all staff acknowledge that Maddocks is a great place to work)
- our client service (which is currently at 99% of clients saying we understand their business needs and 94% of clients saying Maddocks are friendly)

This is coupled with our market leading legal support on some of the largest and most complex matters in the market during FY22 including acting for more than half of the ASX 100 and all 3 segments of Govt (Commonwealth, State and Local).

 

As of today, Keypath is the largest business of its kind in Australia. Employing 300 people and supporting over 20,000 students across 9 University partners, Keypath is helping to solve some of the most considerable skills and development gaps in the country. Keypath Education exists to transform education by partnering with Universities to deliver programs that meet the needs of the future of work and help solve our global social and economic challenges. We are driven to create an impact on the lives of our students, our people, and the communities they serve. We achieve this through our partnerships and purposefully designed programs that deliver career-relevant skills to advance student outcomes exponentially. Our actions embody our values – diversity, inclusion, and care for our community and the environment.

As a global EdTech company, our vision is to be the global leader in education transformation - the key that unlocks greatness in educators and individuals. By transforming education, together, we can transform the world. Keypath Education Asia-Pacific is quickly becoming the largest of its type delivering career-relevant programs that advance student outcomes exponentially. We’ve achieved this whilst building an award-winning culture that supports our people to be the best they can be for our partners and their students. In 2021, Keypath was named the 11th Best Place to Work in Australia by WKR+, and received a Bronze Award from the Australian LGBTQ Inclusion Awards. We consistently receive high Gallup survey engagement scores and employee feedback ratings on Seek and Glassdoor – 4+/5 stars.

Looking forward, Keypath will continue to grow value for our partners, students, employees and shareholders by expanding into South East Asia – positioning the business for accelerated growth over 5-10 years. Just recently some of the executive leadership team visited our newly inaugurated Asia Operations Centre located in the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur, spending time with our growing team of enthusiastic educators. Reflecting on the journey of Keypath Education Asia-Pacific so far, we as a company feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment – and we’re excited to see where the next part of our journey takes us.

Although OTI has been buying, racing and exporting thoroughbred racehorse in France and Enaglad for over 15 years, it has only been in the past 5 years that we have moved our international focus to Ireland.

OTI's ongoing expansion in Ireland, which now also includes breeding thoroughbreds is indicative of the respect we have for the quality of Irish stock, its horse trainers and administrators. Our colours are now a familiar sight on Irish tracks and a source of pride for both OTI's clients and the Irish thoroughbred industry. When combined with strong personal contacts with bloodstock agents, sales houses and breeders, there is an doubted win/win relationship between OTI and the Irish thoroughbred industry.

We believe that such characteristics would make OTI a worthy winner.
 

The Climate Reality Project was founded and is chaired by former US Vice President and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Hon. Al Gore. The Climate Reality Project’s mission is to catalyse a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action a necessity across every sector of society.

We develop and nurture a diverse ecosystem of people advocating for urgent action on climate change. The centrepiece of our work is in-person leadership training led by Mr. Gore on the science, impacts and solutions to the climate crisis.

Our alumni of trained climate reality leaders are intentionally selected from as wide a cross-section of society as possible — from company CEOs to Hollywood actors; from politicians to paediatricians; and from farmers to faith and First Nations leaders.

With communities across Australia and the Pacific increasingly experiencing severe impacts of climate change, the urgency of this work has never been clearer.

In 2020, global health restrictions forced us to radically overhaul our offering and switch rapidly to an online format. This was an extremely challenging undertaking as it had never been attempted before. We hoped in advance that we might receive one or two thousand applicants worldwide. However, the demand for the training far exceeded the capacity of the training platform —and in the end we had almost 10,000 people go through the course over those two weeks in 2020 alone!

Our innovation resulted in over 20,000 people graduating through our online course during the pandemic. This equates to a jump of 105% in the number of people we have trained since we started running leadership training in 2006. The switch also dramatically increased our global reach to the point where we now have leaders in 174 countries advocating for urgent change. (This includes over 2,000 in Australia and 122 in Ireland).

Portwest is a world leader in the design and manufacture of superior quality workwear that meets recognised international standards. Innovation is in our DNA; our team of world class designers specialise in flame-resistant and high-visibility workwear, protective footwear, hand protection, PPE and wearable technology. We are constantly researching the latest trends and innovations which we weave into our cutting edge designs. We pride ourselves on the quality of our range and because we manufacture all products ourselves we are in a position to offer exceptional value to our customers.

With global distribution from bases in Australia, UK, Ireland, Poland, Dubai and the USA, manufacturing facilities in Bangladesh, Myanmar and China, and customer support staff in over 130 countries, Portwest is uniquely placed to deliver the quality improvements and cost reductions at every stage of production and distribution that our customers have come to expect.

Our large team of world-class product designers, specialists in flame-resistant workwear, high-visibility workwear, protective footwear, hand protection and PPE, strive to develop new products to meet the changing needs of workers in all industries.

At Portwest, we are dedicated to increasing the use of sustainable and recycled materials in the manufacturing and packaging of our products.
We launched a new range of eco – conscious products in 2021, using sustainable materials, such as recycled polyester made from 100% PET consumer waste and bamboo viscose. 85% of our garments also carry the OKO-TEX Standard 100 label. All our garments are now packed in recyclable packaging and use FSC cartons. We offer a textile and PPE recycling service to our customers for end-of-life garments and PPE. Portwest comply with ISO 14001 which means that we have worked hard to set up a fully integrated and proactive environmental management system, which enables us to reduce our carbon footprint.

Our main aim is to minimise the impact our operations have on the environment and the natural resources we consume.
We understand that our workforce is integral to achieving our business goals and we are fully committed to ensuring that all our worker's safety, human rights and wellbeing are respected. To achieve this, we have developed a new initiative with clearly defined short and long-term sustainability goals. We call this initiative Portwest Planet.

I’d be a worthy winner as I have used innovation to solve the access to justice crisis over the past few years by building Virtual Legal my online law firm 9 years ago and within that then developing my self-service telelaw platform Law On Earth (“LOE”). I have also supported many Irish businesses, university students and individuals, locally and nationally, so our contribution directly betters the Irish community.

Innovating in the legal space has been a difficult task the past 9 years but one that I relished in given my passion for efficiency and also for solving the access to justice global problem. During this time, I became a lawyer in both New Zealand and also the United Kingdom and opened up both Virtual Legal in both regions and will open Law On Earth in the UK in the coming months. England, Wales and also Ireland are excited for what both Virtual Legal and LOE can do for the community given we’ve created a way for the 73% of the population who can’t afford lawyers, to have access to legal help, protecting their rights and reducing anxiety and mental health issues that would normally plague them without having help of this nature when things go wrong.

LOE which teaches the public how to self-act in legal matters, provides the tools to complete the work and then has lawyers immediately available in recorded video session to reverse the screen and finalise the work while giving advice. Members of the public are kept safe given the education is created at a grade 7 reading standard and with simple spoken wording; the entire platform is geotagged so only the correct information, documents, guides and advisors are visible in the users location (unless they request a different location); the advice sessions and chat are recorded and encrypted so the advice is safe but available to the user and lawyer to review at a later date; and mood sensing technology and AI is inbuilt so we can monitor a user’s experience live, to jump in an help them in times of stress or confusion.

LOE’s probono function enables qualifying users to obtain legal help for free and provides training to students from QUT along with grading the performance of those students by the advisor in the timesheets which feeds directly to the University’s dashboard. The corporate dashboard enables corporates like Drake Workwise to onboard any of their 300,000 employees easily when they require legal services as part of their Employee Assistance Program.

We have won several awards for our impact but what matters most are the emails we get from so many people telling us this platform has made their lives easier and, in some cases, saved their lives, including some users who were experiencing domestic violence, business owners on the brink of insolvency and people bed ridden with terminal conditions. I think a contribution like that deserves recognition for my team who work tirelessly with me to build this business and have massive impact.

Since our launch in May 2018 in UK and in Jan 2021 in Australia, we’ve helped thousands of businesses find millions of dollars in funding. By launching the Swoop funding tech, Swoop has put the power of business funding into the hands of business owners everywhere.

We understand business funding is the lifeblood of every business. No matter what the business’ individual circumstances are, the aim of taking an active approach to it is to give the organization options and a cash flow buffer year-round and through different business cycles. And that’s embodies the reason why Swoop exists.

The passion to help SMEs drives is reflected at every level of the organization and drives the team to continuously reshape and revamp Swoop’s industry leading technology geared at facilitating SME growth by making access to funding easier, timely and affordable. Swoop offers a better choice of funding products that are better suited to each business’s needs, easier for business owner to understand, faster to apply for and faster to be accepted.

This means that business owners can spend less time searching for finance, and more time running their businesses, looking after their staff and customers and making strategic plans for growth.

This ties in with Swoop’s commitment to helping SMEs in Australia enhance their business performance. By offering combined essential services of business funding and financial planning, we hope to ensure these businesses are set up for success in the path to revival post COVID-19
Our industry is more than merely transactional, it celebrates the real people who are the beating heart of face-to-face business in Australia.

Whilst not indulging in self-praise excessively, our passionate dedication to helping the business community reiterates our advocacy for SME growth.

Swoop has been a champion for SMEs since inception. Andrea Reynolds, CEO, co-founder and a proud Irish Woman, says: “I have dedicated my career to finding funding solutions for SMEs. Swoop was built out of a desire to create a platform that put power in the hands of business owners, giving them ownership of their finances and helping them to run their businesses more efficiently.”

We believe this makes us worthy of winning an Irish Business Award. This will not only recognise our innovative product offering but solidify our commitment to keep enhancing our ground breaking tech while keeping the best interest of our customers at heart.

PokitPal is a fintech business that is disrupting the established loyalty and rewards industry. The company's mission is to remove costs and complexity from the current delivery models and redirect some of the costs into customer benefits.

The traditional operating model adopted by the loyalty industry has resulted in people being issued with individual loyalty cards that must be shown to retailers in exchange for loyalty points, the points are typically valued at less than 1% of the purchase made. These rewards are then accumulated over a long period of time, possibly years, before being exchanged for something tangible, like a box of wine or a flight.

Pokitpal’s SaaS platform uses real-time transaction data captured from the largest payment platforms in the world including Visa and Mastercard. The data is checked against a list of eligible rewards and cashback is issued to the customer within seconds of completing the qualifying transaction. This innovative approach eliminates the need for POS Integration and loyalty cards and a myriad of IT systems required to maintain balances and manage redemptions.

By offering retailers a simple low-cost solution, the rewards themselves are increased in value and on average users get 10% cashback when they make a qualifying purchase. PokitPal then automates the settlement process between merchants and consumers on its SaaS platform. Unlike alternative loyalty programs, PokitPal’s service means that the retailers avoid the setup and training costs and only pay when a qualifying purchase is recorded by PokitPal.

PokitPal’s SAAS platform has been adopted by a number of corporate partners including Banks and Telcos who wish to reward their customers. Merchant-funded retail offers are displayed in banking Apps that access the content through APIs and the offers are promoted as rewards to the bank's customers.

PokitPal’s platform has reduced barriers to adoption, and instant cashback rewards are being used to change consumer shopping behaviours. PokitPal’s service continues to evolve and uses the following technologies:

Geofencing to identify users within a certain distance from a retail merchant.

Real-time data and a rules engine to select only those PokitPal users that are most likely to respond positively to the rewards.

Automatic payment to be made from the merchants directly to the consumer’s personal bank account with 100% accuracy.

The business plans to introduce artificial intelligence to generate a message/notification to influence user engagement.