IDC has announced this year’s winners of its Digital Transformation (DX) Awards for Australia and New Zealand. The Awards recognise the achievements of organisations that have successfully digitised one or multiple areas of their business through the application of digital and disruptive technologies.

Non-bank lender, GetCapital went home with 2 awards, the overall award for Digital Disruptor of the Year and Omni Experience Innovator. New Zealand Inland Revenue also won 2 awards, taking out the Information Visionary and Operating Model Master categories.

New Zealand supermarket chain Countdown took out the overall Digital Transformer Award. Other winners included New South Wales Police Force, Newcrest Mining and Auckland Council who all distinguished themselves for their discernible and measurable excellence in their digital transformation (DX) efforts across the five DX masteries and significant efforts to transform or disrupt the market. 

This year saw the inclusion of the Special Award for Resiliency which was awarded to City of Port Phillip – Film Fest. The award distinguished organisations that have shown the ability to adapt and respond to changing circumstances especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, while maintaining the organisation’s central purpose, especially for its workforce, customers and other stakeholders.

Tehmasp Parekh, Managing Director of IDC Australia and New Zealand, applauded the winners and finalists for their outstanding work.

“IDC’s DX Awards celebrate the tech-enabled resilience of enterprises as they reimagine their business in the new normal. This year’s best-in-class have been chosen as DX champions for being able to successfully implement digital initiatives that address the CEO’s agenda on meeting new customer requirements, developing new capabilities, ensuring new critical infrastructure, and participating in new industry ecosystems.”

The 2020 winners are: 

GetCapital – Shift Payments

2020 Digital Disruptor for Australia and New Zealand

2020 Omni Experience Innovator for Australia and New Zealand

New Zealand Inland Revenue

2020 Information Visionary for Australia and New Zealand

2020 Operating Model Master for Australia and New Zealand

Countdown was named as the 2020 Digital Transformer for Australia and New Zealand

Mark Denvir, Director ICT, Auckland Council was named as 2020 DX Leader for Australia and New Zealand

New South Wales Police Force was named as 2020 Talent Accelerator for Australia and New Zealand

Newcrest Mining – Data Science Platform for Optimising Mining Process was named as 2020 DX Gamechanger for Australia and New Zealand

City of Port Phillip – Film Fest was awarded the 2020 Special Award for Resiliency for Australia and New Zealand

GetCapital - Digital Disruptor and Omni Experience Innovator

GetCapital, a non-bank lender dedicated to meeting the needs of Australian businesses, gained notability by developing and offering technology-empowered finance solutions designed to solve common business problems.

Shift Payments is GetCapital’s new payments platform, implemented to simplify the use of trade credits. The platform allows GetCapital to act as an intermediary between suppliers and their buyers which conduct business using trade credits – an innovative change from status quo. By paying suppliers on the spot and having buyers pay GetCapital later, Shift Payments removes potential friction caused by trade terms from the business relationship.

NZ Inland Revenue – Information Visionary and Operating Model Master

Te Tari Taake, New Zealand’s Inland Revenue, plays a significant role providing economic and social wellbeing for ~3 million New Zealanders each year. In a multi-stage digital transformation, Inland Revenue has fundamentally transformed New Zealand’s revenue system.  Its new technology platform, START, enables seamless integration of all tax and social policy products. Inland Revenue says this is a world first for a revenue organisation.

Payroll information is now collected in one place for all employers, allowing citizens to see their income in real time, and reducing additional costs for employers. Most individuals no longer need to do anything at the end of the tax year, illustrated by the $690 million automatically paid out at the year-end 31st March 2020. SMB’s also benefit, as they each save 9 hours a year in manual work, increasing economic value by $280 million. New online services are more robust, handling 50% to 60% more transactions than before. The transformation included office 365 and mobility solutions for Inland Revenue employees. This transformation significantly contributes towards improving outcomes for New Zealanders, ensuring they pay and receive the correct amounts and making it easy to interact with government services.

Countdown – Digital Transformer

The new CountdownX digital unit expanded Countdown’s digital operations and accelerated transformation over the three-month period of the initial pandemic response.

CountdownX brings together teams across online shopping, payments, digital marketing, loyalty rewards, and IT for a complete digital first experience. In addition, CountdownX developed and launched a virtual assistant, 'Olive' to triage customer queries and issues in real-time, holding over 300,000 conversations in April alone. This supported Countdown's Customer Care team in providing more efficient and positive outcomes for customers. Fast turnaround time is a hallmark of CountdownX, with the team also creating an in-house store queuing application with a minimum viable product deployed and tested within a week.

Digital transformation was underpinned by solid internal communication. CountdownX embraced agile ways of working and pivoted to Google hangouts and chats to augment connection and communication across the team. The business unit created team support sites and channels across multiple business units in two days. It invested in remote desktop capacity to service the new ways of working, including a peak of over 10,000 virtual meetings in just one week, strengthening its transformation efforts.

This strong response with a focus on CX, against the backdrop of COVID-19 lockdowns, makes CountdownX a deserving winner for this year’s Digital Transformer.

Mark Denvir, Director ICT, Auckland Council – DX Leader

Mark Denvir is the Director of ICT at Auckland Council. ICT supports over 10,000 devices across 300 unique locations, connecting community facilities including libraries, parks, pools and leisure facilities to the Council. Denvir navigated the Council's technology investment to adopt cloud-based infrastructure and emerging technologies such as robotic process automation. This enables the Council's service to be streamlined and adaptable to the changing needs of serving the communities, while at the same time delivering significant IT cost-savings.

Denvir empowers his team through embracing autonomy and has fostered a team culture of accountability and transparency, which enables the team to own and drive out technological delivery to the organization. Denvir also leverages his influencing skills to drive cross-directorate collaboration, ensuring the Council's operations are resilient and responsive to the disruption brought by COVID-19.

New South Wales Police Force – Talent Accelerator

New South Wales Police Force's BluePortal is the cornerstone of its digital transformation. BluePortal is a digital platform combining 200 disparate processes and systems used by police and commanders across different squads. BluePortal generates efficiency benefits through digitisation of workflow, freeing internal customers and suppliers from administrative burdens. Work completed around risk management has created a safer environment for operational police officers. Teams are also able to respond quickly to emergency needs, which has been crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. A solution was developed to support and manage the distribution of personal protective equipment to those with the greatest need.

The BluePortal system is also capturing new data in forms that can easily be reported and analysed. Data has been used to manage work volumes, asset utilisation, identify training issues and lessen employees’ repeated exposure to traumatic events. The BluePortal system has shifted employee mindsets, with employees filling the pipeline of digitisation needs unprompted. Early commands that onboarded to BluePortal can explore opportunities for wearables and artificial intelligence to support the health and wellbeing of police.

Newcrest Mining – Gamechanger

Newcrest Mining is one of the world’s largest gold mining companies. It uses a variety of efficient mining methods for large ore bodies, together with selective underground mining methods to optimise high-grade epithermal deposits and porphyry deposits. The company operates mines in Australia, Canada and Papua New Guinea. Newcrest Mining has a clear digital focus, employing digital platforms to collect and mobilise data, as well as advanced analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data science to provide insights.

This focus can be seen in their latest digital project, concentrated on the importance of a data science platform to optimise mining processes. They have successfully implemented an IoT edge platform using Osisoft's PI System and Machine Learning (ML) at their largest underground mine in central New South Wales. This platform monitors and manages crushed ore bin levels using near-real time data in science models. It functions as a ‘Coarse Ore Bin’ (COB) soft-sensor, delivering an ROI within the first three months of operation. This has enabled an efficient and accelerated delivery of digital initiatives to optimise Newcrest Mining's ways of working.

City of Port Philip – Film Fest – Special Award for Resiliency

The City of Port Phillip (COPP), a small council in Victoria, Australia, is embarking on a Digital Transformation strategy. Harnessing technology through agile thinking, the COPP team staged the 37th Annual St. Kilda Film Festival without disruption caused by COVID restrictions

In a short span of time, the team pivoted online. Using an open source .NET based content management system (Umbraco) and Azure Cloud platform, COPP built a robust, resilient, and secure delivery model. The user experience for 47,000 viewers was seamless. The digital experience has set the COPP team planning for future events - accepting that the combination of hybrid format with physical and online will co-exist. Harnessing data with AI and Machine Learning will open further opportunities for producing more successful events. This is an example of a government organisation’s ability to be more efficient and savvier in technology adoption to ensure better community outcomes.